Environmental Governance
This is a program that works on registering and improving the governance of Man and Biosphere Reserves and Community Conserved Areas. It also works on supporting the revival of traditional ecological governance systems as well as Awareness and capacity building on environmental laws and policies.
MELCA-Ethiopia strongly believes that strengthening environmental governance is necessary to maintain biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. We need to empower local communities, local governments, and stakeholders to properly manage biosphere reserves and community conserved areas. We need to contribute to the coordination of efforts of stakeholders working on biospheres, we need to widespread the concepts and ideas of biosphere reserves in and out of school environment and bring in place sustainable strategies and systems on how the local communities can benefit from the biosphere reserves (i.e. non-timber forest products), and support communities to have bylaws that protect and properly utilize biosphere reserves and community conserved areas.