On 18 Oct 2022, organizations and projects working in environmental education and communication (EEC) joined an initiative and signed a Memorandum of Understanding to implement the national campaign “My Green Mongolia”. The campaign partners are government, non-government, research, and donor organizations. These stakeholders will work together to promote EEC among policymakers, youth and local people. They have begun to share information, EEC-related training materials, guidelines and media. The campaign partners have developed a website, Facebook group and YouTube channel. Those platforms will support cooperation and experience sharing among the stakeholders.
The campaign aims at contributing to solving main issues in protected area management and environmental protection, including the lack of political will, finance and human resources, the lack of public awareness, as well as overgrazing and the unsustainable use of natural resources and excessive tourism.
GIZ SPACES has already invested in manuals, a ToolBox, outdoor guidelines, videos and comics and a website related to EEC. Also, the initiative will have radio drama of 26 episodes of 13-15 min each, to be broadcast weekly as part of 30-60-minute environmental radio shows on commercial and public radio stations from December 2022. The campaign website hosts media and materials as well as training resources created by SPACES and other partners.
The SPACES project has supported initial activities of the “My Green Mongolia” initiative, while partner organizations contributed by sharing media materials and promoting the website, Facebook group and YouTube channel. The campaign is based on a partnership model with equal rights and shared responsibilities among all stakeholders. In this way, it will support and safeguard the leverage, outreach, and cost-effectiveness of collaborations.
The campaign will support the implementation of the Environmental education and communication strategy 2022-2024 (EECS) within the framework of Mongolia’s system of protected areas. The EECS has been developed by MET DPAM and the SPACES project, and was updated in 2022.
The Supporting Protected Areas for the Conservation of Ecosystem Services in Mongolia (SPACES) project is implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH in cooperation with the Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) of Mongolia on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).