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Tools to Connect People with Protected Areas: Community-Led Advisory Boards
Yaghnob National Nature Park was established in a remote mountainous region home to the Yaghnobi people, a community with ancestral ties to the area. The park creation shifted local land governance. Previously, pasture use was shaped by traditional ownership rights, long-term arrangements, and locally negotiated community practices.
Subsequently, park authorities control and allocate grazing areas through rentals, upending access for local, outside, and transiting herders. These changes fuel friction over access, trust, and decision-making. Community members are concerned grazing allocations lack environmental assessments or equitable access, while park staff must implement ambitious management plans in difficult terrain with limited experience.
In response, TNF supports a community-led advisory board. This voluntary, collaborative body connects locals, pastoralists, park staff, government authorities, and scientists to improve communication, strengthen coordination, resolve conflicts, and share conservation responsibilities.
ISEA Scheme – Integrated System for Evaluation of MPA Management Effectiveness
The ISEA Scheme (Integrated System for Evaluation of Marine Protected Area Management Effectiveness) is a standardised framework developed to improve management effectiveness across Mediterranean Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). It responds to persistent challenges such as uneven management performance, limited technical capacity, fragmented governance arrangements, and the absence of a harmonised assessment system.
The scheme uses a structured set of indicators covering governance, planning, resource allocation, monitoring, enforcement, and stakeholder engagement. Through periodic self-assessment supported by external review, MPA managers identify strengths and weaknesses, define improvement priorities, and establish roadmaps for adaptive management.
By promoting comparability, accountability, and peer learning, the ISEA Scheme helps strengthen long-term MPA governance across the Mediterranean.
Wildlife-Friendly Pasture Management Model in Kyrgyzstan
In the Kyrgyz Republic, pastures cover about 89% of agricultural land, and livestock production is a key sector and main source of income for rural communities. Over the past 20 years, livestock numbers have increased significantly, placing growing pressure on pasture ecosystems and leading to declining productivity. Climate change, including more frequent droughts and shifting precipitation patterns, further exacerbates these challenges. In response, a pasture management model was developed based on improved data collection and alignment of sustainable livestock use with biodiversity conservation. The model combines participatory data collection, pasture carrying capacity assessments, integration of ecological corridors into pasture planning, introduction of ecological thresholds, and regular monitoring with adaptive management. This integrated approach reduces pressure on pastures, enhances climate resilience, and balances livestock production with wildlife and ecosystem sustainability.
Eco-Tourism for Mountain Communities in Khan Tengiri State Nature Park, Kyrgyzstan
In Kyrgyzstan, livestock herding remains a cornerstone of rural livelihoods, yet inefficient resource use and unsustainable herd sizes are accelerating land degradation, increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and creating environmental and public health risks—all of which heighten the impacts of climate change. Ecotourism is often presented as a complementary livelihood option, but it also comes with its own set of challenges. These include ensuring that tours respect nature and do not harm protected areas, difficulties in connecting tour operators with new or remote destinations, limited local services and marketing capacity, and ensuring that tourism activities genuinely support conservation efforts.
Preserving the Pulse of the Delta: Rufiji’s Community-Led Initiative to Safeguard Mangrove Ecosystems
In Tanzania’s Rufiji Delta, mangroves cover over 53,000 hectares and sustain thousands of people with food, fuel, timber, and coastal protection. Yet, heavy dependence on these forests and weak enforcement of regulations have caused widespread degradation. To address this, communities in Nyamisati, Kiomboni, Mfisini, and Mchinga established the Salale Collaborative Mangrove Management Area under a Participatory Forest Management approach. This grassroots solution empowers local people to co-manage resources, strengthening governance, stewardship, and resilience. With support from partners such as USAID, UNEP, and the Nairobi Convention, communities have restored 10 hectares of mangroves and are actively involved in conservation planning. The initiative addresses habitat loss, livelihood insecurity, and climate threats by ensuring that local stakeholders are at the center of decision-making. The result is both ecological recovery and improved livelihoods, proving that community-led action can safeguard vital ecosystems.
IUCN SSC guidelines on human-wildlife conflict and coexistence : first edition (Arabic version)
As human-wildlife conflicts become more frequent, serious and widespread worldwide, they are notoriously challenging to resolve, and many efforts to address these conflicts struggle to make progress. These Guidelines provide an essential guide to understanding and resolving human-wildlife conflict. The Guidelines aim to provide foundations and principles for good practice, with clear, practical guidance on how best to tackle conflicts and enable coexistence with wildlife. They have been developed for use by conservation practitioners, community leaders, decision-makers, researchers, government officers and others. Focusing on approaches and tools for analysis and decision-making, they are not limited to any particular species or region of the world.
Tabe’a III (Arabic version)
Tabe’a III addresses the status and trends in the implementation of the World Heritage Convention in the Arab region during the period from 2015 to 2019. This review was conducted in the context of emerging global trends and priorities associated with the World Heritage Convention, as well as other related global natural heritage platforms and programmes. Tabe’a III documents progress made in the conservation of natural and mixed World Heritage sites in the Arab region, as well as providing an update on the state of conservation of natural sites. Additionally, special themes address key priorities which have emerged from heritage protection, conservation challenges and opportunities arising in the region. Finally, there is a summary update on the Arab States’ lists of possible candidate sites, known as Tentative Lists, with notes on their development since the Tabe’a II report.
Agriculture and conservation (Arabic version)
In 2021, IUCN launched the IUCN Flagship Report Series, to help demonstrate the importance of conserving nature for human well-being and all life on Earth. This report, the second in the series, focuses on agriculture and nature. The interactions, synergies, and tradeoffs between the two sit at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which calls for ending hunger and ensuring food security while also mandating the protection and restoration of nature. Whether the two can be achieved simultaneously, and if so how, are crucial questions for humanity and our planet. IUCN therefore explores the positive and negative relationships between agriculture and nature conservation and mobilises new modelling approaches to examine both imperatives within a range of realistic policies.
Global Species Action Plan (Arabic version)
The Global Species Action Plan (GSAP) is a critical initiative developed to support the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), to address the increasing biodiversity loss worldwide. The GSAP outlines strategic interventions and actions to conserve and sustainably manage species while ensuring equitable benefits. Emphasizing the critical role of species in ecosystem stability, human livelihoods, and cultural heritage, the GSAP seeks to prevent extinctions, reduce threats, and ensure equitable benefits from species use. Implementation involves diverse stakeholders, including governments, Indigenous peoples and Local communities, NGOs, academia, and businesses, fostering cooperation at global, regional, and local levels. The GSAP underscores the collective responsibility to safeguard Earth’s rich biological heritage for future generations.
Site-level tool for identifying other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) : first edition (Arabic version)
Other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) are sites outside protected areas that deliver effective and long-term in situ conservation of biodiversity. Biodiversity conservation may be the primary objective of the site, a secondary objective of a site that is managed for other purposes, or it may be an unintended consequence of the way the site is managed. OECMs may be governed and managed by governments, private entities or Indigenous peoples and local communities, or a combination of these. This tool guides an assessor through three steps to apply eight criteria which determine if a site qualifies as an OECM as set out under the Convention on Biological Diversity. For sites which do not currently meet all the criteria, the tool serves to highlight areas where further information or improvements in governance and management are required.