Myanmar: Building Grassroots Capacity for REDD+

Myanmar: Building Grassroots Capacity for REDD+

Myanmar is the latest addition to the grassroots project, started implementing REDD+ capacity development beginning 2013.

 

REDD+ is a relatively new concept in Myanmar, and therefore capacity across all levels of stakeholders is still very poor. Myanmar has developed its REDD+ roadmap which is now being in the stage of being implemented.

 

In order to plan for grassroots level capacity development on REDD+ in Myanmar, the project started with an inception workshop, helping to learn about the status of REDD+ knowledge, identifying potential project areas and exploring partnership approaches. This was followed by conducting a capacity development needs assessment for designing REDD+ capacity development plans and appropriate materials to support such plans.

 

Following this approach, a few of the existing training products from other four countries were contextualized in Myanmar context, and in parallel national and sub-national level training programs were also conducted in two sites  -  in Bago division and in Sagain region in northern Myanmar. The project is now in the stage of expanding its activities to third site in the delta region.

 

The REDD+ roadmap of Myanmar has clearly identified the important role of the grassroots project to develop the capacity of key stakeholders, including grassroots, on climate change and REDD+ and the grassroots project is very well responding to such needs by conducting a series of training and awareness raising events in the selected sites.  The grassroots project has partnered with two partner organizations, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) for delivering project activities in Naga region, and Friends of Wildlife (FoW) in Bago division, besides regularly interacting and taking advise from the Forest Department.

 

WCS has delivered a series of sub-national and grassroots level capacity development and awareness raising events in Sagain region in northern Myanmar, while FoW has been supporting project activities in Bago division in south-Central Myanmar.