Owing to the uniqueness of the Iraqi Marshlands ecosystem and its socio-cultural heritage, the technical and programmatic responses needed to address the above priorities may be quite different from those most appropriate for other settings. Also, an underlying factor that hinders the response is the limited capacities of, and availability of credible information for, policy makers, experts, and communities to assess and implement solutions. Given these observations, the goal of this project is to support the sustainable management and restoration of the Iraqi Marshlands by facilitating strategy formulation, monitoring and analysing current conditions, raising capacities for policy and technical management, and implementing environmentally sound technology (EST) options on a pilot basis.