Using the IMET to identify priorities for management in two protected areas in Boa Vista, Cabo Verde
Summary
Cape Verde is an archipelago (4,030 km²) in the Atlantic Ocean 570 km west of Africa. It is recognized as a hotspot for marine biodiversity and has established 47 protected areas with the majority being designated in 2003. The process of evaluating the management of Reserva Natural das Tartarugas (RNT) and Parque Natural do Norte (PNN), located in Boa Vista island, with the Integrated Management Effectiveness Tool (IMET) in October 2021 offered key stakeholders a much greater understanding of management challenges. It provoked everyone to ask questions and broaden the knowledge available to all stakeholders regarding the stengths and weaknesses of both PAs. We were able to identify priority areas as a group and for each individual stakeholders. We identified that the PAs lack financial and personnel resources and also a lack of data regarding biodiversity and climate change monitoring. Fundação Tartaruga initiated this training in partnership with the local environmental ministry (MAA-BV) and it was funded by BIOPAMA.
Classifications
Region
Scale of implementation
Ecosystem
Theme
Species Conservation and One Health Interventions
Challenges
Sustainable development goals
Aichi targets
Challenges
Cabo Verde has officially established 47 protected areas (PAs). However, the country lacks readily available data in terms of their PAs. Only 7 are registered on the World Database of Protected Areas. There is also a lack of climate, habitat, species, biodiversity and ecoregion information or misclassification.
In both sites, main threats are centrered around human-wildlife conflict including poaching and habitat degradation, marine pollution, unregulated tourist activities. The management plan and action plan for the PAs in Boa Vista are not aligned, nor are they site-specific meaning that a lot of the management objectives are not applicable to these PAs.
Beneficiaries
- Local and national government, municipality, law enforcement agents, NGOs, Port & Maritime Institute, local communities, tour operators & tourists.
- Endemic, endangered & data deficient species.
- Nesting loggerhead turtles.
Building blocks
How do the building blocks interact?
All of the building blocks are necessary to make this process effective. Identifying the right stakeholders was essential, but it is clear that everyone needed to be capacited in the IMET, to be fully engaged in the process and understand the assessment results. The building block #3 - the identification of sources of data is critical as one of the main challenges of these two parks are the lack of baseline information. However, this baseline information is not available without the stakeholders (#1) and without the training of how to identify the data (#2). The interpretation of results (#4) allows us to disseminate the information gathered during the evaluation and provides the foundation for future action.
Interaction Gallery
Impacts
- Completion of management effectiveness evaluations on two PAs in Cabo Verde.
- Alignment of management priorities with the specificities of the two protected areas.
- Communication between all stakeholders has improved.
- Detailed and passionate discussions evoking empathy from various stakeholders.
There is a vast knowledge gap relating to the habitats, species, ecosystems and resources that can be found, their abundance, distribution and specifically species population trends. The IMET results highlighted this lack of information and as stakeholders in the PAs, we all now know that we need to focus research efforts on collecting data. First we need to collect baseline data for the species and habitats and then continue a monitoring program to unsderstand the health of these ecosystems.
With the results of this project it is easier to apply for focused funding with justification and evidence. We are specifically applying for the BIOPAMA Medium Grant to implement the necessary changes we identified.
Story
The person responsible for the management of the protected areas in Boa Vista: Ivone Monteiro Delgado really benefitted from the IMET evaluation as it enabled her to:
- Identify the threats and pressures within the PAs and evaluate their impacts and trends
- Identify measures and actions for more favourable results
- Identify weaknesses of the internal structure of the governance most importantly thelack of resources including people and materials
- Difficult to find funding due to reliance on the government and so without the NGOs on Boa Vista it would be almost impossible to implement the action plan of the PAs
- Identify that it is necessary to update the current management plan.
She would like to repeat this process on the other PAs she is responsible for in Boa Vista and also repeat the evaluation in 2023 after the implementation of further projects targetting the priority measures identified during the IMET.
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