“GEF-Satoyama Project” to achieve societies in harmony with nature, with sustainable primary production sector based on traditional and modern wisdom, and making significant contributions to global targets for conservation of biological diversity.

While protecting pristine natural areas and other high conservation value areas continue to be important, global conservation of biodiversity will not be achieved without the sustainable management of areas in which people and nature interact. Production landscapes and seascapes refer to the space in which primary industry activities (agriculture, forestry and fisheries) take place in general. Among the production landscapes and seascapes, those that integrate the values of biodiversity and social aspects harmoniously with production activities, such that production activities support biodiversity and vice versa, are termed the socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS), the focus of this project. This project addressed the barriers that SEPLS faces globally, such as insufficient recognition of their values and dynamic nature and weak governance, and contribute to the achievement of multiple Aichi Biodiversity Targets and Sustainable Development Goals.

The GEF-Satoyama Project was funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), implemented by Conservation International’s CI-GEF Project Agency and executed by Conservation International Japan in cooperation with the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS, the Secretariat of the International Partnership for the Satoyama Initiative) and Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES).