The objective of the Project is to support Mongolia's capacity to improve the effectiveness of national and international efforts on coping with desertification and promote sustainable livelihoods in arid and semi-arid areas

The Project has four outcomes:
1) to assist Mongolia in improving its policy and legal framework and stregthening its conceptual, institutional and coordination capacity to combat desertification;
2) to support field level interventions to test and implement viable approaches and technologies for coping with desertification together with local communities;
3) to raise awareness about environmental challenges and desertification among the youth, general public and decision makers; and to support the integration of the principles of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) into the education system;   
4) to ensure access to relevant knowledge about desertification in the region and worldwide and to make successful technologies and approaches available for replication and to influence policies;

The 4 outcomes are interlinked and experiences and lessons learnt at field level are used for reality-based and credible input for policy discussions, as well as for knowledge management and awareness building.

Outcome 1
National Committee for Combating Desertification (NCCD) has a government mandate for supervising and coordinating the implementation of the National Action Programme for Combating Desertification (NAP CD). Component 1 of CODEP provides support to stregthen the capacity of NCCD to fulfill its tasks. Strengthening the NCCD will help to more effectively and efficiently use the allocated resources to the sector and enable it to give sound input into related regulations, legislation and good governance in the sector.

In addition, CODEP assits MNET in developing a standard methodology to assess and monitor land degradation and desertification.

Outcome 2  
CODEP empowers local communities in sustainable management of natural resources and diversification of livelihoods to cope with desertification.
Field reality based knowledge is generated and appropriate approaches, technologies and tools for combating desertification are developed, piloted and prepared for dissemination. Field level experiences are strengthening the capacity and credibility of the Project for bottom-up oriented policy input (Component 1), awareness raising (Component 3) and knowledge management (Component 4) for up-scaling. The project pays attention to gender-balanced development and empowers marginalized groups and carefully addresses governance issues in managing natural resources.

The field level implementations of Component 2 are taking place in Khovd aimag.

Outcome 3
Component 3 of CODEP approaches the youth, the general public and decision makers to raise environmental awareness and knowledge about desertification to initiate necessary changes for a better future. 

Outcome 4 
CODEP Component 4 builds the capacity of Desertification Study Centre of Geo-ecological Institute (GEI) to document and share appropriate knowledge, technologies, approaches and tools to cope with desertification in Mongolia.

are identified, tested, collected, compiled in a database and disseminated in order to support project implementation and scaling up at grassroots level and informed decision making at policy level. Despite several projects and institutions addressing issues of natural resource use and coping with desertification it is very difficult to acquire information on best practices and successful tools.

The program will support the NCCD to gather available information and establish a structure for effective knowledge sharing. The program will also support the introduction of innovative technologies that contribute to combating desertification and sustainable natural resource use. Technologies might deal with water harvesting, energy saving, irrigation, diversified production, animal management, and others.