To engage a Consultancy firm for “Co-management of Coastal and Marine Resources Supporting Biodiversity Conservation in Palk Bay” under the Conservation and Management of Existing and Potential Coastal and Marine Protected Areas Project under the IndoGerman Biodiversity Programme.

The Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Government of India (MoEFCC) has entered into a technical cooperation agreement with the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB) for implementing the project ‘Conservation and Sustainable Management of Existing and Potential Coastal and Marine Protected Areas (CMPA)’. The BMUB has commissioned the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH to jointly implement the Project with the MoEFCC in selected states in India.

The overall objective of the project is ‘to contribute to the improvement of the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity in the pilot areas, while taking into consideration the economic circumstances of the local population’.

The CMPA Project intends to improve the protection of biodiversity by promoting participatory approaches to the conservation and management of existing coastal and marine protected areas, and supporting conservation and management of identified biodiversity rich coastal and marine areas in the future. By involving stakeholders at local, state and national levels, it is expected to make a significant contribution to the conservation of areas rich in biodiversity. At the same time the Project is concerned with identifying economic activities in protected coastal areas in concordance with agreed conservation strategies.

The MoEFCC-GIZ CMPA Project has identified pilot areas in four states on the Indian seaboard and one among them is Tamil Nadu.

The top contributor to coastal livelihoods in Palk Bay area of Tamil Nadu is fisheries. However, the rate of and the techniques/ practices used for exploitation immensely affect the health of this marine coast which is a mosaic of critical ecosystems such as corals, seagrass beds, mangrove patches etc. Hence, a starting point in tackling the issue of conservation could be tackling fisheries management. Thus, specific actionable fisheries management measures could directly (than indirectly) support conservation. In similar scenarios such as Palk Bay (critical ecosystems with high-livelihood-dependence), any measures towards management or conservation need to be designed and executed with people’s involvement which largely determines its success and failures. This makes a case for co-management of coastal and marine resources in Palk Bay.

The detailed documentation with regards this call for proposals includes –

• The Terms of Reference for the Assignment
• The Technical Evaluation Grid
• Bidding Conditions
• The General Terms & Conditions of Contracts

Timeline

Deadline to receive queries                                    : 6th Jan’ 2016
Clarifications to the queries                                   : 8th Jan 2016
The deadline for submission of proposal is           : 15 January 2016, by 17:00hrs

This documentation is available at the following link –