Story | 24 Mar, 2020

Paving the road to development: Training empowers community leaders on ecosystem management and restoration

From the 12-19th of February, the Coastal Resilience to Climate Change (CRCC) team together with Global Ecosystem Management Programme (GEMP) team conducted a training in Nacala, Mozambique for the project stakeholders, mainly province and district technical level staff.

Photo: IUCN ESARO

By Pelle Bågesund

The first half of the training was on ecosystem management and restoration, with emphasis on the project target ecosystems of mangroves, sand dunes, coral reefs and seagrass beds. The focus was on how sustainable management will make sure that these ecosystems are resilient and continue to provide the essential ecosystem services to the coastal communities.

The participants from the all three target districts of Memba, Dondo and Inhassoro learnt the principles of ecological mangrove restoration and why restoration and protection of mangroves and sand dunes is important, how to establish nurseries and plantations and how locally managed marine areas can be used to allow natural regeneration in marine ecosystems.

Photo: IUCN ESARO

The second day was a field day into the mangroves of Nacala-a-Velha where the participants were introduced to all the details of mangrove biology, ecology and principles of hydrology and got an introduction to sand dune forming processes.

The second part of the training was on conservation finance and how we can find innovative solutions to achieve social, environmental and financial sustainability during the course of the project and beyond. The first day was conducted by Bruno Barreto from RARE who introduced the basic concepts of valuing ecosystems, economics and then worked with the stakeholders to brainstorm around community projects based on the CRURAPs (Community Resource Use and Action Plans) and how they can work with the communities to develop them. For the second day, our colleague Moses Egaru from Uganda introduced the Community Environmental Conservation Fund (CECF) to the participants.

This was a very exciting and engaging training for the participants.