The Regional Environmental Centre for the Caucasus, with the financial support of the Norwegian government is starting a new project “Support Development of Biodiversity Conservation Policies and Practices in Mountain Regions of the South Caucasus”. 

The project is funded by the government of Norway and will be implemented in three South Caucasus countries – Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. The Project duration is 2011 – 2014. The project aims to build capacity of local communities and authorities to address biodiversity loss in forest ecosystems of mountain regions of South Caucasus in order to improve participatory biodiversity management. It is also expected that regional meeting will identify priorities for development of Ecological and economic approaches to structure evaluation of ecosystem services, and will help elaborate recommendations of appropriate valuation methodologies to examine the economic costs of biodiversity loss and the costs and benefits of actions to reduce these losses.

Specific Objectives

• To raise awareness and knowledge of local communities,local authorities in mountain regions and decision-makers at national level on values of forest ecosystems services and biodiversity, as well as benefits of conservation and sustainable use,
• To increase willingness to protect biodiversity
• To introduce practices of participatory biodiversity management planning at local level
• To demonstrate practical application through implementation of pilot projects on restoration of degraded forest ecosystems and respective enhancement of their values.