General background of the project benchmark sites

The Conservation and Sustainable Management of Below Ground Biodiversity (CSM-BGBD) is a global project being implemented in three continents and covering seven countries including: Brazil, Cote d’Ivoire, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico and Uganda. The project purpose is to enhance awareness, knowledge and understanding of below-ground biodiversity functions (BGBD) which is important for sustainable agricultural production in tropical landscapes by demonstrating alternative methods for conservation and sustainable management of land use practices and BGBD.

All the sites are located inside and next to old tropical forests where below ground biodiversity is expected to be optimal in terms of both abundance and diversity of individual soil organism class category and also in terms of species composition. Click the link to the following indvidual countries to get a description of the inventory as well as the sites where the project experiments and emonstrations were carried out. Here are the descriptions of the country sites in Brazil, Cote d'Ivoire, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico and Uganda

A Project executed by TSBF-CIAT with co-financing from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and implementation support from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

© CSM-BGBD Project of the TSBF Institute of CIAT 2004