Programme Cooperation Agreement 2012 – 2013

tations in Mongolia at all levels of government and with the reindeer herder community. These efforts have been well spent, as the Mongolian government has committed (and confirmed in writing) over one million USD in cash financing, and several million USD in co-financing for this project. As a result of these efforts, awareness of the is- sues has been significantly raised within Mongolia, and the project has played a role in the development of a new policy on reindeer husbandry. Capacity Building & Assessments Within our African Programme, the AfricaEIN network members had planned a publication on land and ocean connections. This did not materialize because the re- quired funding was not received. Efforts will be made to pursue the funding in 2014 as part of efforts to keep the network active. As part of efforts to better understand the impact of large- scale land acquisitions on local livelihoods, especially of nomadic cattle herders, a Rapid Response Assessment on Drylands had been planned. However, the assessment did not materialise due to failure to obtain the required fund- ing. Within GRID-Arendal’s engagement in Eastern Europe and Central Asian countries (EECCA region) on “Chemical Safety”, national reports on toxic substances in children’s products were planned as well as national outreach cam- paigns. However, we did not plan to do national reports ourselves – it was out of scope and beyond the budget. However all 6 project countries have prepared and cir- culated their national reports conducted by the NGO coalitions involved. The project has been primarily an awareness raising one, and it has succeeded in this be- yond expectation. Searching the internet gives more than 120,000 web sources republishing the results of the tests

based on the overall report prepared by IPEN and GRID- Arendal.

Though there has been no national outreach campaign in Tajikistan, which was not feasible within the given budget, elements of campaigns in two main cities were achieved. And most important: the project results were taken into the National Action Plan contributing to the forming of the positive position of Tajikistan towards the Minamata Convention. Sound policy work has been per- formed. Within GRID-Arendal’s support to the Interim Secretariat of the Tehran Convention on the Caspian Sea, the produc- tion of a biodiversity atlas was envisioned. However, the initial commitment of Agip to support the production of the Biodiversity Atlas as well as other joint projects has been withdrawn, due to internal reasons. For some time the company has frozen its communications and GRID- Arendal had to stop the planned project with Agip and return the funding. However in November of 2013, talks have resumed on the request of Agip and the re-install- ment of the contract is under negotiation with very good prospects of implementation in 2014. At the same time negotiations with the British Petroleum have been successful, and the commitment to continue the funding of the Caspian Sea Environmental Informa- tion Centre (CEIC) has been received from the manage- ment of the BP office in Azerbaijan. Though the major breakthrough has been achieved in getting data for the CEIC from both companies, the overall decision-making on funding is very slow. The project “Linking Tourism & Conservation” was stopped in 2013 as the project leader used more time than expected on his PhD thesis and therefore could not com- plete the work.

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