The overall objective was to establish and strengthen appropriate Management Bodies and enhance its ability and of communities in project pilot sites/community conservation landscapes in order to transform them into centers of conservation excellence. Key outputs are:
- Establish new and/or strengthen existing communities to empower them to alleviate threats identified during the project design phase;
- Establish management bodies based on co-management principles, including main stakeholders, such as CBOs, NGOs, relevant government agencies and private sector;
- Ensure that comprehensive regulatory guidelines (standardized forms and templates) to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of community conservation landscapes adopted and operational.
Key activities include:
- Conduct baseline study to identify current gaps, strengths and weaknesses of community-based land-conservation and management initiatives, existing co-management structures and regulatory framework in project target sites.
- Identify existing community groups and potential neighborhood groupings which are willing to move towards more formal status; delineate their boundaries of pilot LPAs and communities, map existing resources, and ensure official documenting and registration of community conservation areas and communities as formal institutions;
- Develop methodology and work plan with verifiable indicators, baseline status, targets and timeframe that integrated into MRPA project level objectives and targets.
- Assess the training needs of different levels of national/local-level officials and communities;
- Conduct induction training, discussion and workshops with stakeholders
- Form community groups in project target sites, establish management structure, assist in developing internal rules, creation of revolving funds and monitoring mechanisms;
- Help herder communities to delineate and map their boundaries of seasonal movements, customary grazing areas and wildlife migration routes within and neighboring areas;
- Establish Management Bodies based on co-management principles develop and adopt guidelines, get approved by local government. Co-management bodies will be strengthened and will be capable of effective co-management with herders. Soums will be able to plan land use, wildlife movements and coordinate seasonal movements, resulting in better distributed grazing pressure and to improve conservation effectiveness.