Ecosystems, species and genes—the building blocks of biodiversity—are being lost across the world at an unparalleled pace. In recent years, significant progress has been made in expanding the national networks of Protected Areas, which provide a vital refuge for many species of plants and animals and which supply vital ecosystem services, however much biodiversity remains outside of the PA systems in production landscapes involving agriculture, forestry and other land and water uses such as fisheries and aquaculture. The fate of this biodiversity, and of vital ecological processes, depends on the sound management by local communities.

The Community Development and Knowledge Management for the Satoyama Initiative (COMDEKS) project is a unique global programme implemented by the UNDP as a flagship of the International Partnership for the Satoyama Initiative. COMDEKS has been designed to be community driven and support local community activities to maintain and rebuild Socio-Ecological Production Landscapes and Seascapes (SEPLS). Working through the Global Environmental Facility Small Grants Programme, COMDEKS provides small grants to local community organizations to develop sound biodiversity management and sustainable livelihood activities in order to maintain, rebuild, and revitalize socio-ecological production landscape and seascapes. The project collects and distributes knowledge and experiences from successful on-the-ground actions for replication and upscaling in other parts of the world. COMDEKS grant making is expected to generate key lessons on community-based best practices to maintain and rebuild socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes toward the realization of “societies in harmony with nature”, as defined as the vision of the Satoyama Initiative.

The five-year programme is implemented in partnership with the Ministry of Environment of Japan, the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the United Nations University- Institute of Advanced Studies of Sustainability (UNU-IAS).

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The COMDEKS project is being implemented on a wide variety of landscapes/seascapes in 20 countries around the world

Originally launched in 2011 in ten pilot countries (Brazil, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Fiji, India, Malawi, Nepal, Slovakia and Turkey), in June 2013, the Government of Japan and UNDP launched the second phase of the project in ten additional countries (Bhutan, Cameroon, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Kyrgyzstan, Indonesia, Mongolia, Namibia and Niger), bringing to twenty the number of countries involved in the COMDEKS Project.

Click on a point to find out more about the COMDEKS project in that country