Monitoring Framework for Durable Freshwater Protection

Overview

This guide provides a conceptual Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning framework for Durable Freshwater Protection projects. It outlines key principles and core components to help teams develop monitoring plans that support adaptive management and long term freshwater conservation. The framework focuses on three core indicator groups: freshwater ecological integrity, human well being and DFP mechanism performance. It provides guidance for assessing key ecological attributes such as hydrologic regime, connectivity, water quality, habitat and biotic composition, while also considering human well being, equity and the effectiveness of freshwater protection mechanisms. The framework builds on established conservation planning approaches and emphasizes selecting indicators based on relevance, feasibility, funding and local context. A case example from the Mrežnica and Tounjčica Rivers illustrates how the framework can be applied to a Durable Freshwater Protection project.