Securing a Living Amazon through Landscape Connectivity in Southern Guyana. To strengthen landscape connectivity through improved management of the Kanuku Mountains Protected Area and North Rupununi Wetlands in southern Guyana. Note: Disbursement data provided is cumulative and covers disbursement made by the project Agency. The project seeks to generate socioeconomic benefits by improving livelihoods and land/resource management to enhance the enabling environment for natural resource management, sustained ecosystem services, and a stronger long-term foundation for economic activities.   A landscape management planning strategy for the NRW will enable better and more inclusive governance as it will allow for the interconnected elements of the landscape – biodiversity and ecosystems, socio-cultural and economic – to be managed in a way that meets the range of needed goods and services; spatially rationalizing different productive activities and conservation based on evidence and knowledge of how the landscape functions and traditional indigenous use; and enabling long-term, sustained collaboration among multiple stakeholders, with the purpose of achieving the objectives of a sustainable landscape. Enhanced coordination between agencies, for example, can reduce overlapping and conflicting land-uses, and thus reduce conflict between resource users. Multi-stakeholder participation in strategy development and implementation will further reduce conflict through transparent processes to identify and balance the needs and priorities of different stakeholders. By explicitly incorporating environmental considerations into the management planning, and allowing for collective decision making among stakeholders, trade-offs can be negotiated between productive activities, cultural and spiritual uses, and ecosystem values; sector agencies can coordinate and align on monitoring and regulation of resource use; and local communities can better influence how resources are managed. This in turn will generate socioeconomic benefits through direct use values (e.g., reliable freshwater supplies and provisioning of food resources, timber as well as non-timber forest products).   The implementation of livelihood and other initiatives that strengthen sustainable land and water management practices, with local communities and stakeholders in the NRW area, will bring many positive socio-economic benefits including: livelihood development (Output 2.1.5); enabling communities build resilience to economic and environmental shocks (for e.g., Covid-19, droughts and floods); and improving local communities’ connection with their land, culture and traditional practices.   Project support for sustainable management of the NRW and the Kanuku Mountains Protected Area will help maintain habitats that provide direct socioeconomic benefits. Conservation of priority forest, wetland and savannah areas will maintain natural assets that underpin livelihoods and green economic opportunities, which are particularly important in the interior of Guyana given its economic disadvantages relative to the coastal area. Notably, reducing the likelihood of habitat fragmentation, which enhances ecological connectivity, will reinforce Guyana’s continuing growth as an ecotourism destination, by maintaining wildlife movements, hydrological links, and other ecosystem processes that form the basis of the sector’s prospects.