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The Community Mubaan at the Third IUCN World Conservation Congress, November 2004

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Equator Initiative hosted the Community Mubaan at IUCN"s third World Conservation Congress. Mubaan means "village where the home is" in Thai, an apt meeting place for voices from around the world to gather together. This cozy home, constructed in a Thai village setting, offered an informal atmosphere for local voices with a global vision to meet at the World Conservation Forum. In fact, it was the meeting place to showcase grassroot stories and sustainable development successes. Action leaders conducted lively discussions on their tales of struggle and triumph in mobilizing community support around their environmental work in protecting biodiversity and preventing species extinction. The Community Mubaan also housed a reception and dance of the earth, community dialogues on conservation, and a means for learning and sharing lessons of local conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.

It has become increasingly evident that community action is playing a central role in advancing the sustainable use of our environment. The Community Mubaan was more than hub to meet and greet, it will be a key gathering spot to learn, to share, to listen, to speak. It also served as a welcoming venue to launch publications and videos. Its community dialogue space explored the four central themes of the World Conservation Congress - ecosystem management; health poverty and conservation; biodiversity loss and species extinction; and markets, business and the environment.

UNDP's Regional Centre in Bangkok and the Thai Country Office were actively involved in many of the sessions that were conducted in the Mubaan. The country office was also instrumental in bringing together many local community representatives from rural areas of Thailand to interact and participate in discussions with community representatives from all over the world.

One such session was the incredible panel discussion on " Moving to Scale: Mobilizing Community Actions ". With facilitation by Dr. Opart Panya, from the Faculty of Environment at Mahidol University, both community members and policy makers engaged in a productive dialogue on community-based natural resources management initiatives. In the panel were Dr. Nirun Pitakwachara, Senator of Ubon Ratchathani - Chairman of the Parliament Standing Committee on Social Development and Human Security, representatives from the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plants - Mr. Charnchai Ngamcharoen and Mr. Pairoj Limcharoen who discussed various critical environmental issues with the communities representing Thailand and the rest of the world.

The Community Mubaan dialogues space also hosted a very productive first step to bring together, in Bangkok, a number of country office focal points for the Energy and Environment Practice and GEF offices in the region to a half day formulation meeting for the Regional Poverty and Environment Initiative (PEI) in Asia. The meeting allowed participants to share their experiences of linking poverty and environment at the national level as well as discussed the application of poverty-environment linkages at a regional level.

The idea for this regional initiative emerged as a continuation of the Asia Pacific Energy and Environment Practice Workshop held in Bangkok, 10-14 May 2004, Furthermore, the Regional PEI for Asia would also serve as a natural linkage between the Energy and Environment Practice based in the Regional Centre in Bangkok and the Poverty Practice based in the Regional Centre in Colombo fostering greater cross-practice collaboration.

In the Mubaan, there was also a session called "Community Dialogue in the Lower Mekong ". This was a discussion on the impacts of development in the Mekong basin. This was hosted by one of UNDP's Regional Centre in Bangkok projects: Facilitating Dialogue among the Communities of the Lower Mekong Basin. The meeting was part of the informal dialogues organized between representatives of communities in the Lower Mekong basin in order to obtain their views on how the various critical environmental and resource management issues in the Lower Mekong region should be addressed, in particular what role communities should have in decision making.