Socio ecological production landscapes (SEPL) are dynamic mosaics of habitats and land uses that have been shaped over the years by interaction between people and nature in ways that maintain biodiversity and provide humans with goods and services needed for their well being. Being proven sustainable over centuries, these landscapes are considered living examples of cultural heritage and are found in many regions of the world under various names such as muyong, uma and payoh in the Philippines, mauel in Korea, dehesa in Spain, terroirs in France and other Mediterranean countries, chitemne in Malawi and Zambia and satoyama in Japan. Some of these areas are formally recognized as protected landscape/seascapes under the IUCN protected area categories V, World Cultural Heritage Site, Biosphere Reserves, Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems, and/or Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas.
Satoyama means dynamic mosaics of managed socio-ecological systems producing bundle of ecosystem services for human well-being. The Satoyama Initiative, larger flagship programme of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) with the Ministry of Environment- Japan (MOE-J) and United Nations University (UNU) focuses on promoting and supporting socio-ecological production landscapes to maintain their contribution to human well-being and the core objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
The importance of managing biodiversity and building community resilient in socio-ecological production landscapes, and approach proposed herein, it has become clear that financial assistance to demonstrate actions at the local level as well as to contribute to a knowledge platform for capacity building is critically important. Based on this mutual understanding, the MOE-J, UNU and UNDP jointly initiate Community Development and Knowledge Management for Satoyama Initiatives (COMDEKS) focusing on delivering small-scale finance to local communities in developing countries by using the existing Global Environmental Facility (GEF) Small Grants Programme (SGP) while reviewing, analyzing, codifying results from the activities on the ground to distill and disseminate lessons which can be replicated in other parts of the world.

The project aim to collect baseline for Indicator of SEPL resilience, develop relevant SEPL idicators and prepare Nepal Landscape Country Programme Strategy