Over the past 10 years, we have focused on assessing the conservation status of endemic species and their rehabilitation in the wild. We have made a great effort to preserve it and plan for its sustainability. The most important thing that my team and I reached is that the surrounding community, users of resources, researchers, and decision-makers, whether in the site or in the government away from the place, the private sector, and students even the public can destroy everything we built during the previous years as a result of their ignorance of what we work and its importance to us and them. Dissemination of information is an external protection shield to ensure the sustainability of activities on the site. Continuous training and awareness activities should be in the target area and throughout the country in order to avoid destruction due to ignorance. Also, not documenting the traditional knowledge inherited by the local community is extremely dangerous and its loss is a waste of wealth that will cost the state and the world huge sums to discover again.

Education, awareness, and documentation, could reduce the current and future pressures and reduce the impact and the cost of recovery.

The local communities that are located inside Protected Area suffer from some restrictions on the use of natural resources, which they believe are their property and right, and that they are the people of the place before the establishment of the PA. Usually, restrictions on the use of natural resources are for the purpose of protection and reducing pressures, which may affect the livelihood of some members of the local community, which they consider a process of denial of their rights. The local community owns cultural wealth that has been passed down from generation to generation on the optimal use of resources, their protection, and their propagation in simple ways. Involving that community in planning processes to protect natural resources will remove many of the penalties, whether for the management of the PA or for the community itself. Traditional knowledge is a hidden treasure that can be used to improve the state of natural resources and enhance the local community's sense of ownership and importance in protecting its resources, which will support the sustainability process and reduce disturbances

Having valid and up-to-date information on the ecological and conservation status of threatened species is one of the most important elements in the establishment of an effective conservation program. Collecting data about the current geographical range, population characteristics, threats, ecology, and habitat in which species occur will help t determine the suitable habitat for the most effective rehabilitation process. The IUCN Red List is one of the most important tools and indicators for determining the conservation status of biological diversity in the world. As well as Species Distribution Models (SDMs) in determining the potentially suitable habitat for target species.

Adopting a “complex-systems” approach meant mobilising all stakeholders in the elephant range around a common vision – the preservation of the Gourma elephants, a national and international heritage. This meant holding engagement workshops with each (government administration and technical services, tourism industry, schools, projects, programs and NGOs operating in the area) to understand their perspectives, and design impactful outreach materials and activities (including a schools program). It also meant engaging and coordinating the support of other institutions in-country (e.g. foreign embassies, MINUSMA, UNDP) to deliver.

At national level this has included working with government to draft an elephant management plan; create a mixed (forester-military) anti-poaching unit and engage expert anti-poaching trainers from Chengeta W.; and create a new protected area that covers the whole elephant migration route, using a biosphere reserve model. Multi-use zones are governed by local CBNRM conventions with foresters providing supplementary enforcement if required, thereby strengthening the community systems. This aligns government and community interests to mutually reinforce each other and provide a cost-effective approach to reserve management. This top-down approach complements the bottom-up approach of community engagement.

Combines solar solution to provide ligth and access to power and charge phones 

Build partnership to implement projects in biogas in niassa reserve and other reserves in Mozambique

This vulnerability assessment methodology allows for the accurate targeting of nature-based solutions to critical areas of need in cities and sectors of the population. It specifically includes a gender focus to ensure that adaptation efforts take into account how climate change affects women differently than men, given their varying roles in society. The vulnerability studies allow identifying the areas of greatest danger from weather-related events (such as landslides, floods, etc.) based on the exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity of the analyzed territory. They are carried out through participatory processes with communities and key stakeholders and climatic scenarios that integrate climatic, environmental and socioeconomic variables at the same time. The analysis also allows estimating the risk of loss of ecosystem services and therefore the potential needs for adaptation to climate change. This exercise is the basis for designing and implementing nature-based solutions to strengthen the resilience of communities in urban and peri-urban systems. Finally, this process builds a sense of co-ownership and relationships for partnerships to carry out the project.

Fisheries are complex systems with ecological and social components in which different challenges have been identified. One of these is to visualize the work performed by women in the fishery, which usually goes unnoticed because it is related to post- and pre-capture activities, and the rest of the value chain.

In 2017, COBI identified that, in the clam fishery in a fishing community in Sonora, women's work was not recognized as part of the fishery or given the opportunity to be part of the family fishing business.
COBI developed strategies together with the fisherwomen and fishermen to recognize the work of women and formalize their participation as members of the fishery. To this end, workshops were given to both men and women in the community, focusing on leadership and gender equality, and training was provided to women on database management. This has brought results with economic, social and personal benefits for the fisherwomen and the fishing organizations, since it improved the organization and administration of the cooperatives.

By their nature, small-scale fisheries tend to have limited, poorly systematized data and short time scales. This scarcity of information represents a challenge for understanding, for example, the interaction of fishing gear with the ecosystem and its impact on the habitat; such information is fundamental in the implementation of a fishery improvement project. Around the world, different methodologies have been developed to generate information on the impacts of the fishery on the ecosystem; one of them is the modeling based on the Ecopath program with Ecosim.
COBI used this tool including information generated by fishermen and fisherwomen through fishing logs, as well as biological and ecological information for the species that inhabit the fishing zones. In addition, to strengthen the model, the traditional ecological knowledge of the fishing communities was integrated through the application of interviews, from which relevant information was obtained on the diet of the species, their geographic distribution, reproductive season, etc.

The collection of fisheries data is one of the commitments acquired when there is a right of access to the resource, as well as when working under a sustainable fisheries scheme. In order to demonstrate that the fishery is developing its activities under this scheme, data and information are obtained by implementing a fishery monitoring system.

The clam and tripe fishery had been characterized by a sustainable fishery, however, there was no data systematically captured to document the activities carried out in the long term. To address this need, COBI and community partners jointly implemented a fishery monitoring program. With the fishermen and fisherwomen, a logbook was designed with data such as date, time, boat, diver, target species, fishing site, number of organisms, size of organisms collected, income and expenditure. All the members of the cooperatives and fishing technicians were trained to fill out the fishing logs and one person per fishing cooperative was responsible for recording the data.