Mozambique, with the support of international partners, has conducted a long effort to conserve biodiversity since the establishment of the Pilot Program of Transfrontier Conservation Areas of Mozambique (TFCA), which began in 1996. In November 2014, the World Bank and GEF approved a grant of USD 46.3 million to renew this commitment by creating the so-called MozBio project. The MozBio project has the following components:
- Institutional strengthening for the management of conservation areas;
- Promotion of tourism in conservation areas;
- Improved Conservation Areas management;
- Support for community development pilot projects within and around Conservation Areas;
- Project management, monitoring and evaluation.
The main objective of the assignment was to develop and implement a Socio-economic Household Survey and Community Focus Group Meetings to monitor and evaluate the MozBio project results. This goal was accomplished through the following specific objectives:
- Socioeconomic questionnaire improvement through testing phase and field test;
- Field application of the developed questionnaire in four Conservation Areas to collect around 1,500 responses and conduct participatory focus group discussions in communities where the household survey was being implemented; CAPI tablet-based data collection was used;
- Deliver a final dataset with the results.
The collection of data covered three specific themes: economic well-being; benefits from natural resources and level of satisfaction with the management of the protected area. The results of this endeavour gave a true picture of the social and economic reality of the approximately 275,000 people living in conservation areas.