The educational training material provided here aims to enable practitioners on national, regional and local level to effectively plan, initiate and institutionalize transboundary conservation. 

In order to address a gap in tools and training material tailored to experts and practitioners interested in initiating and institutionalizing transboundary conservation, a project for developing such material was undertaken by the IUCN Regional Office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECARO, Boris Erg), the IUCN WCPA Transboundary Conservation Specialist Group (TBC SG, Maja Vasilijević), and the IUCN Environmental Law Centre (ELC, Lydia Slobodian). It was initiated by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) and funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU).

Thanks go to those who have served in the project steering group:

· Clara Bocchino, Network Coordinator and Facilitator, SADC TFCA
· Goran Gugić, Senior Adviser NATURA2000 and Protected Areas, GIZ/CIM-IF
· Alois Lang, Public Relations and Ecotourism Expert, Neusiedler See-Seewinkel National Park
· Bert Lenten, Former Deputy Executive Secretary of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) and former Executive Secretary AEWA, Lenten Conservation Consultancy
· Andrea Strauss, International Academy for Nature Conservation, German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation

The resulting material presented here is a generic, globally applicable training module on initial phases of transboundary conservation and steps towards its institutionalization. It aims at strengthening national and local authorities, protected area managers, and enabling communities and stakeholders to be able to assess the feasibility of establishing a Transboundary Conservation Area (TBCA) and to develop strategies to address the most important factors for success in the process of establishing a TBCA.

This module is designed to be used for face-to-face instruction led by a trainer. The material is suitable to be taught by diverse actors in nature conservation. It includes all training material with detailed training notes so that it can be adapted to target groups in terms of skill level, geographical context, level of expertise, language and training needs. The module consists of the Trainer’s Manual and includes presentations and case studies on different regions that illustrate different aspects of transboundary conservation. 

The module is free for use. Any modified versions must be distributed non-commercially and pursuant to the Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC-SA, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and include attribution to IUCN and BfN. Please read carefully the trainer’s manual before applying the module.

In case you wish to send us your feedback, please write to IUCN at ecaro@iucn.org and to BfN at andrea.strauss@bfn.de.