UNORCAC and its Women’s Central Committee organize annual food festivals to reconnect communities with ancestral culinary traditions, promote the use of native crops, and enhance the market appeal of agrobiodiversity-based products. These events feature the preparation and sharing of traditional dishes made with local maize, tubers, herbs, and wild fruits, often linked to the agricultural calendar and Indigenous celebrations like Pawkar Raymi or Koya Raymi.

Farmers, women leaders, and youth co-develop menus, displays, and tasting booths that showcase underutilized crops and recipes. Exhibits often include Chicha de Jora, medicinal teas, and dishes made from mellocos, oca, or mortiño. These festivals are intergenerational, involving local schools, cultural groups, and tourism initiatives, helping to increase awareness, cultural pride, and consumer demand for native products.

By merging culture and commerce, the events position local crops as valuable and healthy, supporting both food sovereignty and livelihoods. They also complement other marketing strategies, such as the community fair La Pachamama Nos Alimenta (Mother Earth feeds us).

Community-managed seed banks and seed exchange fairs are central to conserving agrobiodiversity and ensuring climate resilience in Cotacachi. With support from UNORCAC and its Women’s Central Committee, local farmers maintain and store diverse native varieties of maize, beans, tubers, and medicinal plants. Seeds are selected from each harvest based on quality and stored in traditional clay pots, tanks, and drying racks. The Bioknowledge Centre functions as a seed bank and educational site, hosting 12 varieties of maize and 39 of beans.

The Muyu Raymi Seed Fair, held annually for over 20 years, allows hundreds of producers to exchange seeds and knowledge, including traditional medicine and ancestral cuisine. These events strengthen local seed systems, promote culturally relevant crops, and reduce dependency on external inputs. Exchanges also take place at the La Pachamama Nos Alimenta community fair and through interregional bartering events between highland and subtropical zones.

Lastly, this solution has included capacity-building activities and awareness-raising meetings across all 21 provinces and the capital since 2022. For capacity-building, trainings have been provided online and in-person, while forums and workshops were also organized for broader discussions. Awareness-raising meetings have targeted specific local decision-makers and have been conducted in-person.  

The objective of these activities is to equip local actors with the knowledge and skills needed for environmental management and budgeting aligned with the NRUF, through exercises on planning, execution reporting, and monitoring and evaluation of local environmental budgets. Trainings have also focused on the Environmental Budget and Expenditure Database, helping local governments to disclose their information and improving data-driven planning and decision-making.  

 Moreover, UNDP BIOFIN is working with the government of Mongolia in the development of an expenditure taxonomy, which will provide a standardized categorization of environmental expenditures, adding clarity and consistency to budget reporting.  

A public Environmental Budget and Expenditure database was developed to disclose environmental budgets and expenditures (since 2023). Its intuitive and visual layout allows users to track how much each province has spent on biodiversity each year. This has two main implications.  

 First, by having to thoroughly fill the database, local governments can use it as a tool to better understand how to develop their own environmental budgets and clarifying which categories should be included.  

 Second, the public database promotes accountability and transparency in environmental planning and budgeting, encouraging governments to fulfill their biodiversity finance responsibilities under the NRUF and, ultimately, functioning as an effective monitoring tool.  

BIOFIN and the National Audit Office of Mongolia jointly assessed the implementation level of the NRUF and examined institutional and regulatory gaps affecting law enforcement. The review found that weak enforcement resulted from legal ambiguities, inconsistent regulations, and ineffective coordination among government agencies. Following this process, BIOFIN provided technical assistance to develop revised regulations that address these legal ambiguities.  

Beyond regulatory enhancements, a fundamental component was strengthening cooperation and communication between government agencies — ensuring that the NRUF and its revised regulations are understood and effectively implemented. This is particularly important since local governments are responsible for incorporating the NRUF, a national law, into their budget processes. To support this, the Ministry of Finance (MoF) began to issue bi-annual budget call circulars: official instructions that explain the procedures to prepare next fiscal year’s budget, helping local governments to incorporate biodiversity expenditures. The MoF also increased efforts to review and approve dedicated budgets for environmental protection and natural resource rehabilitation.  

Develop a low-carbon lifestyle and carbon reduction verification standard focused on repairing used items. Establish a “low-carbon credits” system to incentivize participation and allow residents to redeem community services. Specifically, residents earn carbon reduction credits by repairing old items, which can then be redeemed with community partners for benefits such as reduced hospital registration fees, and discounted grocery products or repair materials. This approach promotes resident engagement and encourages sustainable living practices.

Residents with repair needs can submit requests through community staff, a repair hotline, or a convenient online app. Services primarily target the elderly, with the repair hotline serving as the main point of contact. Call center staff assign work orders based on the locations of residents and technicians, typically within a 3-kilometer service radius.

Identify skilled technicians within communities and organize them into repair and public outreach volunteer teams. Establish a structured, tiered training system: new staff learn basic operational standards, technical experts focus on repair techniques, and team leaders develop project management skills. Partner with vocational schools and enterprises to create “training hub” that share faculty resources and equipment. Build a “cloud-based repair service platform” to integrate training resources with service demand data.

The Project gains access into communities through formal institutional channels and collaborates with the communities to better understand local needs, which informs the service plan design. They leverage community resources to conduct promotional activities and post repair service notices. Service offerings cover home repair such as kitchen and bathroom renovations, plumbing, electrical work, appliance fixes, lock and screen replacement, pipe unclogging, waterproofing, as well as home installations like setting up appliance, faucet, lighting, and toilet.