RESILAND: Armenia Resilient Landscapes Project

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The project follows an integrated approach to restore and sustainably manage forests, and wetland ecosystems. In mountainous countries such as Armenia, where the various ecosystems are interrelated within the same mountain ridges, a landscape-scale approach can provide a systemic solution to ecosystem restoration. Restoration across the complex of ecosystems found at the landscape level is the most sustainable way to recover biodiversity and makes the ecosystems more resilient towards external stresses, including climate change. Healthy ecosystems provide range of ecosystem services, which in turn reduce costs of their further maintenance, contributing to their productivity and sustainability. The project will contribute to institutional development, address policy gaps in wetlands, forest, and protected area management, and involve local communities in landscape restoration which can be replicated in other important ecosystems in Armenia. Global environmental benefits from this project would include conservation of globally significant biodiversity considering its enrichment within the restored ecosystems; raising of ecosystems’ resilience towards external stresses, including climate change; conservation and enhanced carbon stocks in wetlands, forest, and other land use; mitigation of GHG emissions; and Improved provision of goods and services of wetlands and forest ecosystem.The project’s approach will be based on the integration of scientifically justified methods and data, improvement of supporting policy, development of institutional capacity, and improvement of the livelihood of those communities, which depend on these ecosystems. The project will have four components, which include both technical assistance and investment type of activities. Component 1 on institutional capacity and policy development has two subcomponents that will finance: (i) analysis and recommendations for revision of existing policy and legal frameworks for managing forests, wetlands, and protected areas to help align these with national and international obligations, including Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) commitments; (ii) capacity-building through financing purchasing equipment for and training of operational and technical staff, including community representatives, through on-the-job training, workshops, seminars, etc., on a range of topics related to landscape management and alternative livelihoods business models.Component 2 on forest and wetland restoration and conservation for climate resilience has two subcomponents covering forest restoration in Lori, Syunik and the vicinity of Lake Sevan in Gegharkunik Province and wetland restoration in Ararat Plain and Lori Plateau Lakes: (i) planting of indigenous trees and bushes, sowing seeds of the same species, fencing to prevent the livestock penetration, and monitoring biodiversity’s recovery, and around Lake Sevan, removing the infected pine trees and planting the deciduous trees and bushes; and (ii) wetland restoration including diversification of wetland habitats, restoration of degraded wetlands and transitioning existing wetlands to closed water-use system, decrease of water extraction and ensuring seasonal flooding, setting up food plots to provide additional high-energy food resources for wildlife, control encroachment of non-native plants, and monitoring of bioindicators; and (ii) restoring what are understood as an abandoned waste-ore disposal site in Northern Kapan (Syunik) and an abandoned open pit in Tandzut (Lori), and conducting feasibility studies for abandoned Kavart mining site (Syunik) including analysis of geomorphology, hydrology, soil analysis, environmental and social (E&S) analysis, as well as financial analysis.Component 3 on increasing communities’ benefits has two subcomponents covering Lori and Syunik provinces: (i) improving community based forest management by revising the legal basis for the participation of forest-dependent communities in the forestry and/or sanctuary management and livelihood support through apiculture, agroforestry, and communication of traditional use of non-timber forest products (NTFPs), including their collection and processing, and construction of infrastructure to reduce pressure on the forest resources based on certain selective criteria. This component will target communities in Lori and Syunik Provinces; and (ii) ecotourism development in wetlands and forest areas through improved knowledge and skills of the local communities in ecotourism and hospitality and construction and renovation of infrastructure, such as bird watching and other wildlife watching trails, hiking and horse-riding trails, info-boards, trail markers, watching towers, etc. Component 4 on project management, monitoring and evaluation, and communication will finance the operating costs of the Environmental Project Implementation Unit (EPIU) in the Ministry of Environment to carry out project management functions including E&S risk management and operation of feedback and grievance redress mechanism (GRM).The proposed project is fully aligned with Armenia Country Partnership Framework (CPF) 2019-2023, in particular – with Focus Area 3: Sustainable Management of Environmental and Natural Resources, CPF Objective 8: Improved management of natural resources, and CPF Objective 9: Enhanced climate-change resilience, water security, and disaster risk management capacity. The project is also well aligned with the upcoming Armenia CPF 2024-2028, where the climate-related aspects are targeted in many objectives, to which the proposed project could strongly contribute. Additionally, the project is consistent with the new Bank’s Evolution Roadmap that will focus, inter alia, on supporting the global public goods such as Climate Change and Biodiversity.