CONANP has been forming an alliance with local universities, research centres, and NGOs, to ensure that problem solving and regulations, are guided by scientific studies and hard evidence. Examples of key products or interventions, include: 1.“Forensic ecology” activities to understand the causes of mangrove salinization resulting from the construction of road infrastructure in the 1940s, and alternatives to reverse its effects in a practicable and cost-effective manner. 2. Scientific calculations of the capacity of local water bodies to support new tourist water-borne activities 3. Market research for new non-extractive productive activities.

The guideline for façade greening was prepared by the Austrian Association for Building Construction and by the University for Soil Culture on behalf of ÖkoKauf Wien, the program for the ecological procurement of the city of Vienna. The guide was presented in February 2013 within the framework of a conference in the Vienna University of Technology. It offers valuable specialist information to architects, planners, developers, public institutions, as well as interested citizens and serves as a decision-making aid when choosing the ideal type of greenery for different facades. Contents include general information (e.g. target groups, scope, definitions, advantages of a green façade), as well as information on various facade greening systems, their ecological and technical functions and design possibilities. A system overview, funding options and a checklist serve to help users prepare and plan façade greening by examining the necessary conditions and prerequisites. Finally, the guideline highlights best practice examples from the Vienna area and further references to literature and regulations.

As this solution serves various goals and meets several objectives, it was possible to secure sufficient funding from diverse parties, domains and funding bodies to cover the entire implementation of the project. In the case of the creation of Lake Phoenix, this included funding for water management from the water board; funding for ecology from the ecological funding program by the federal state; funding for urban development from etc. The water board, for instance, provided the amount of money that was already budgeted for the construction of a flood retention basin. This basin was not needed anymore, as the lake solution already provided the required flood retention function. Some additional potential funding sources were not even used in the end, because it would have slowed down the marketing of the real estate and would have tied the project to certain restrictions, which were not desired by the decision-makers.

Top-Down is the process to create broader political awareness of the issue. It includes advocacy for national and international support. Commonly a concept paper that explains the problem initiates this process with further research to support and document the issues. It is important to appeal to the news media, as their attention is necessary to heighten the political awareness of the issues and to convey the information to the public, resulting in the creation of a broader public demand for action. Media attention mobilizes national and international engagement and can foster domestic and international resource mobilization. In our experience, public opinion plays a decisive role in dictating the political agenda to local leaders as well as national decision makers.

Local stakeholders learn to become environmental leaders. They learn about their water reality. When people understand the local problems and their community's responsibility, they can meet and engage with similar groups of stakeholders from other communities across the conflict. The common ground for these cross conflict meetings is the safeguard of the shared watershed and the communities engage in productive meetings to identify solutions. Together they identify projects that speak to the self-interest of both sides. Through this process, the communities gain the capacity to advance solutions even within a turbulent political environment. In most cases, the combination of a strong youth program and outspoken adult leadership creates the political will of mayors and other municipal leaders to get involved.

The DEA NRM land user incentive programme, along with co finance from CSA donors, allows CSA to fund alien clearing in priority catchments. Eco rangers then employed to work with farmers, on rotation grazing, they control grazing of livestock and ensure rotational grazing is enforced. They keep areas alien free, they help protect cattle through mobile kraaling and also gather data on cattle and biodiversity and monitor veld condition and determine when an area needs to be closed from grazing. They also ensure compliance with rested areas and report those not compliant. They also ensure protection of biodiversity against poaching. Also ecorangers play a crucial role in ensuring that alien invasive plants do not come back and are responsible for pulling out seedlings that grow back. It is their responsibility as well to rehabilitate degraded areas where erosion dongas are beginning to appear. Incentives for land owners include not only ecorangers but also vaccinations and access to markets through auctions. Springs and streams that have dried started flowing again after these approaches have been implemented.

The first step is to form a core team composed of two structured-decision-making (SDM) coaches with skills in decision analysis and workshop facilitation along with one authority representing each protected area in the transboundary region. In consultation with park directors, one primary contact person is identified as having the necessary knowledge and time availability to participate in the entire decision process. The core team then holds a series of conference calls or meetings to identify a joint transboundary management question. Between calls, the core team reviews any available management plans from the two respective protected areas and a guidance document on transboundary cooperation between the parks to identify shared management topics. The core team then formulates a concise 1-sentence transboundary conservation question, which summarizes the focal decision, associated objectives, and time-horizon: “Over the next 10 years, how can the managers of Triglav National Park and Julian Prealps Nature Park allocate their resources to best satisfy all stakeholders concerned about brown bears in the Julian Alps?”

The first step is to identify stakeholder groups that should be considered when addressing the transboundary management question, including but not limited to the protected area staffs themselves. Six stakeholder groups were identified: nature conservation, agriculture, forestry, tourism, research, and local communities and municipalities. The core team then identifies up to 8 stakeholder representatives to include in the decision-analytic process. Each participating park authority then independently identifies 2-5 concerns and/or wishes from the perspective of each stakeholder group. Next, each core team converts the wishes and concerns into statements of objectives, and ultimate objectives are then distinguished from intermediate objectives that are only means to achieve ultimate objectives. A reduced set of three ultimate, quantifiable objectives are then identified to represent the main trade-offs and concerns across stakeholder groups while serving as measures of success for the focal transboundary conservation efforts. Focusing on a smaller number of ultimate objectives ensures feasibility and understandability for conducting the participatory decision analysis.

Working with the coaches, the park authorities identify a list of factors that have strong potential influence on the ultimate objectives and that are at least partly beyond the control of park staff. They then narrow down the external factors to a focal set that has a high degree uncertainty about their magnitude and effects on the ultimate objectives. Next, park authorities develop two alternative scenarios representing possible future trajectories for the external factors. A status quo scenario assumes that system dynamics (i.e., external factors along with their impacts and effectiveness of management activities for achieving objectives) will follow the most likely future trajectory. An optimistic scenario assumes that system dynamics are more favorable than expected for achieving the objectives. To keep the participatory decision analysis feasible, additional scenarios (e.g., pessimistic) may be documented for future analyses. After listing possible management activities, park authorities independently assign a percent allocation toward each activity in a way they believe will most likely achieve the objectives under each scenario for external factors.