The Conservation and Sustainable Management of Below-Ground Biodiversity (CSM-BGBD) Project's main goal is to generate information and knowledge that can be used to better manage and conserve BGBD in tropical agricultural landscapes as the basis for maintaining agricultural productivity and thereby reducing the extension of agriculture into otherwise natural landscapes that provide other important but necessary ecosystem services. Apart from understanding the role BGBD plays in agriculture, the project also expects to produce knowledge that will help in the understanding of the link between BGBD and other environmental services at different scales from small spot processes to global processes. This will create the basis for recommending BGBD conservation and for recommending continued investement in BGBD sustainance both in abundance and divesity. The project also expects to enhance the visibility of BGBD as an important element with commercial as well as commodity value that governemnts and even individuals can regulate for use in trade. This is not a simple undertalking it being an intercalation of processes, species complexes, functions, roles in the food chain, roles in environmental services as well as existing opportunities for commercial explotation.

It is for the above reasons that the project in its formative stages created working groups that would deal with different elements of the project to derive the following outputs.

Output 1: To develop and come up with internationally accepeted standard methods for characterizing and evaluating BGBD, including indicators for BGBD loss .

Output 2: To inventory BGBD at sites represneting a broad range of globally significant ecosystems and land use types, and to develop a global exchange network for information on BGBD.

Output 3: To identify sustainable and replicable land management practises for BGBD conservation, and to pilot implementation of these practises at demonstration sites in the seven countries where the project is being implemented.

Output 4: To promote alternative land use practises that will enhance consrevation of BGBD especially through policy advice support systems and thereby improve the capcity of institutions and other stakeholders to conserve amd manage BGBD in a sustainable and efficient manner.

In order to produce these outcomes the project has been technically organised to take care of and achieve the expected outputs. Four working groups were created based on the four outcomes as follows: Working Group 1 (WG1), Working Group 2 (WG2), Working Group 3 (WG3) and Working Group 4 (WG4).