A Google Alert pointed me to an article in the Times of Central Asia purportedly about a new Global Environment Facility-funded project in Tajikistan intriguingly entitled “Sustaining Agricultural Biodiversity in the Face of Climate Change.” Alas, the article is behind a paywall, so I wont even link to it, but some judicious googling led me to a UNDP press release. Which eventually led me to the project documents. Here are the objectives of the project in brief:
- Strengthened institutional and financial framework for the agro-biodiversity conservation and joint use of the benefits of the sustainable use of the agro-ecosystems.
- Increased mechanism of co-operation with local communities on agro-ecosystem management including the traditional knowledge of conservation.
- Ecosystem-based conservation and management of wild crop relatives established in the selected territories/communities.
- Lessons and experiences from target Jamoats created conditions for replication and expansion of conservation programmes.
A bunch of “possible interventions” are listed under each of these headings, but it’s unclear to me from the documents that are available online what will actually be done. This may be a project to write a bigger project. I just don’t know enough about how GEF works. If you know more, drop us a line.
Thanks for keeping us informed, a useful project under UNDP.
I’m reliably informed that Andy Jarvis and Sam Fujisaka of CIAT helped in the development of this project. Small world.