Maria Pentzel is now a coach in Conservation Standards, and she has already put her training into practice by coaching two Tanzanian marine parks this November.
Maria Pentzel works as a Senior Marine Conservation Warden at Marine Parks and Reserves Unit in Tanzania. She did an impressive job coaching the two teams of marine managers from Mnazi Bay Ruvuma Estuary Marine Park (MBREMP) and Mafia Island Marine Park (MIMP), together with Annette Olsson from Foundation of Success (FOS Europe) and Jenny Hertzman from the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management (SwAM).
The teams worked together in a four-day training on Adaptive Management. They focused on objective-setting for core values of biodiversity and human well-being of their sites. The marine managers analysed threats and prioritised their actions to fit the reality of limited staff and financial resources. This will be a valuable input to the General Management Plans (GMPs) that they are right now revising. And networking between staff members of the two marine parks was especially appreciated.
Maria Pentzel finalised her coach training in October with Conservation Coaches Network, CCNet Africa in South Africa.
“So far, it has been a learning process and self-improvement. I am stepping out of my comfort zone, it is not easy to transform knowledge into action and create meaningful impact but I believe I will get there. I have been empowered to protect nature with clarity, skill and purpose through adaptive management using the conservation standards and would love to see it in my MPRU team and all relevant stakeholders in the conservation sector in Tanzania and WIO region as whole. My great appreciation to SwAM and FOS for their support in making this possible.”, Maria Pentzel says.
Visit SwAM Ocean: https://www.havochvatten.se/swam-ocean and Marine Parks and Reserves Tanzania: www.marineparks.go.tz
For further information, please email jenny.hertzman@havochvatten.se or marineparks@marineparks.go.tz
Author: Jenny Hertzman, the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management