Marking Biodiversity is an initiative that was born with the double objective of improving biodiversity and increasing the economic income of workers in the agricultural and livestock sector in two Spanish rural regions with very negative social, demographic, economic and training indicators. These are the Sierra de Gata, in Cáceres, and the Pasiega Mountain, in Cantabria.

Marking Biodiversity is an initiative that was born with the double objective of improving biodiversity and increasing the economic income of workers in the agricultural and livestock sector in two Spanish rural regions with very negative social, demographic, economic and training indicators. These are the Sierra de Gata, in Cáceres, and the Pasiega Mountain, in Cantabria.

The initiative plans to carry out a combination of different tools to incorporate the protection of biodiversity as an added economic value to the agricultural and livestock products of both regions.

The general objective of Marking Biodiversity is the promotion and improvement of agricultural and livestock employment in the regions of action, through an increase in the competitiveness of companies and a reorientation of their activities, adapting criteria for the protection of biodiversity. In this way, producers will be truly conservative, convinced of biodiversity.

This general objective will be achieved through three specific objectives:

1. Increased skills and qualifications of workers in environmental issues.
2. Promotion of the modernization and innovation of companies through training in new technologies for their employees, an urgent need in the microenterprise agricultural and livestock sector.
3. Promotion of producers’ associations through the promotion of a Network, which will be part of the Emprendeverde Network, of producers committed to the conservation of biodiversity. This will allow the exchange of experiences and that they can be replicated in other areas.

The target audience of the project is workers in the agricultural sector in the work areas. Most of them are people over 45 years of age, since they are the main inhabitants of the rural areas in which the initiative is developed. It is also intended to reach another fundamental group for the fixation of the rural population, such as rural women. In both cases, these are people with a low level of qualification, both in terms of new technologies, organic agricultural production and biodiversity protection criteria.

The expected results of the project are:

• Training of 120 recipients, although the project will reach 935 workers.
• Creation of 10 companies in the organic agriculture and livestock sector or opening of 10 business lines in existing companies at the end of the project.