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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.