Around 64 representatives from the Western Indian Ocean region participated last October 27th in the third and last Adaptive Management Seminar for Marine Protected Areas, hosted by the Nairobi Convention and the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management (SwAM). This final seminar focused on how to design and operationalize strong management plans for MPAs.
At the beginning of the session, Dr. Arthur Tuda from WIOMSA contextualized the Seminar in the framework of the challenges and recommendations identified in the MPA Outlook report, presented last July 16th and available here. Following that, Mr. Dadley K. Tsiganyiu from Kenya Wildlife Services presented the case study of the Watamu Marine National Park and National Reserve and the successes and challenges related to strategic planning and management of this MPA. The next presentation, provided by Annette Olsson from FOS Europe, introduced the Conservation Standards, a tool to develop strong management plans, and to make the plans operational and focused on delivering intended results. Finally, Xavier Escuté also from FOS Europe gave an interactive demonstration on how to make adaptive management decisions in MPAs based on monitoring data.
The recording of the session and the documents presented are available here for consultation. For further information on the event, please email xavi at fosonline.org