Project description

SCAC stands for "Strengthening Adaptive Capacity in the Caucasus: Enhancing Regional Cooperative Action for the Benefit of the Caucasus Mountain Region".

The larger Caucasus region, which also includes parts of the Russian Federation, Iran, and Turkey, is a unique ecoregion, rich in diverse landscapes, cultural history, and bio- and agro-diversity; the regional character of the Caucasus is evidenced by a connected system of Caucasus mountain ranges, the large Kura-Aras transboundary hydrological basin, and numerous cross-border habitats. Today, this natural and cultural heritage is under threat as the combined result of a political agenda dominated by rapid economic growth; rural poverty and natural resource dependence; nontransparent and ineffective environmental and spatial planning coupled with a lack of accountability for negative outcomes; underfunded and inadequately coordinated public agencies; and serious gaps in the development of integrated and evidence-informed policy making, implementation, and monitoring.

The SCAC project is a four-years project funded by the Swiss Co-operation Office-South Caucasus and coordinated by the Sustainable Caucasus organisation (https://sd-caucasus.com/). It has as overarching goal to aim at reducing the vulnerability of populations to climate-induced natural hazards and strengthening regional cooperation on climate adaptation and sustainable mountain development in Caucasus. Among other outputs, it seeks to highlight enhanced processes and tools for Caucasus data, information, knowledge collection, analysis and dissemination, which led to the development of a Caucasus Spatial Data Infrastructure, currently available at http://sustainable-caucasus.unepgrid.ch/. UNEP/GRID-Geneva is responsible for leading this output on Spatial Data Infrastructure, with the support of regional project’s members.