Support to the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture for Improvement of State Funding for Biodiversity

Project Description:

PMCG is working to support the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture of Georgia (MEPA) to increase the allocation from the state budget for its activities.

This initiative entails developing the capacity of the MEPA, providing justification for its claim for an increased budget for the upcoming year, providing written guidelines for the development of program budgets, and training employees of relevant departments.

More specifically, in order to achieve its desired goals, PMCG is conducting the following activities:

• Identifying the priority areas in biodiversity to be funded from the state budget;
• Defining major issues for each priority area and key causes of biodiversity loss;
• Assessing the socio-economic consequences of biodiversity loss and outlining specific actions to address the outlined major issues;
• Preparing budget programs for year 2019 based on outlined activities and actions (including timeframes, capital and operational budgets, role in overall vision, impact, etc.) with clear justifications for the required funds;
• Preparing written guidelines for future budget motivation exercises;
• Providing trainings to the staff of the MEPA who are involved in the budget motivation process.

The project is being implemented in collaboration with the Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BioFin) under a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project, the budget for which is prepared in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance and related stakeholders.

As a result of this collaboration, a clear biodiversity vision and action plan for up to four priority biodiversity areas, as well as justifications for increased budget allocations, will be developed.