Using the IMET to identify priorities for management in two protected areas in Boa Vista, Cabo Verde

Fundação Tartaruga
Published: 09 September 2022
Last edited: 01 May 2023
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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
West and Central Africa
Scale of implementation
Local
Ecosystem
Agro-ecosystem
Beach
Coastal desert
Coral reef
Cropland
Desert ecosystems
Grassland ecosystems
Marine and coastal ecosystems
Open sea
Rocky reef / Rocky shore
Temperate grassland, savanna, shrubland
Theme
Agriculture
Coastal and marine spatial management
Ecosystem services
Islands
Local actors
Marine litter
Poaching and environmental crime
Protected and conserved areas management planning
Science and research
Species management
Sustainable financing
Sustainable livelihoods
Tourism
Species Conservation and One Health Interventions
Species Status Assessment
Wildlife Health Surveillance (to capture biodiversity, health, disease, and pathogen surveillance)
Species Monitoring and Research
Species Conservation Planning
Challenges
Drought
Erratic rainfall
Increasing temperatures
Loss of Biodiversity
Ocean warming and acidification
Salinization
Sea level rise
Storm surges
Tropical cyclones / Typhoons
Conflicting uses / cumulative impacts
Ecosystem loss
Invasive species
Poaching
Pollution (incl. eutrophication and litter)
Unsustainable harvesting incl. Overfishing
Inefficient management of financial resources
Infrastructure development
Lack of access to long-term funding
Lack of alternative income opportunities
Physical resource extraction
Changes in socio-cultural context
Lack of food security
Lack of infrastructure
Lack of public and decision maker’s awareness
Lack of technical capacity
Poor monitoring and enforcement
Poor governance and participation
Unemployment / poverty
Sustainable development goals
SDG 8 – Decent work and economic growth
SDG 11 – Sustainable cities and communities
SDG 12 – Responsible consumption and production
SDG 13 – Climate action
SDG 14 – Life below water
SDG 15 – Life on land
SDG 17 – Partnerships for the goals
Aichi targets
Target 1: Awareness of biodiversity increased
Target 2: Biodiversity values integrated
Target 4: Sustainable production and consumption
Target 5: Habitat loss halved or reduced
Target 6: Sustainable management of aquatic living resources
Target 7: Sustainable agriculture, aquaculture and forestry
Target 8: Pollution reduced
Target 9: Invasive alien species prevented and controlled
Target 10: Ecosystems vulnerable to climate change
Target 11: Protected and conserved areas
Target 12: Reducing risk of extinction
Target 13: Safeguarding genetic diversity
Target 14: Ecosystem services
Target 15: Ecosystem restoration and resilience
Target 17: Biodiversity strategies and action plans
Target 19: Sharing information and knowledge
Target 20: Mobilizing resources from all sources

Location

Curral Velho, Boa Vista, Cape Verde | Reserva Natural das Tartarugas (Curral Velho), Parque Natural do Norte (João Galego)
João Galego, Boa Vista, Cape Verde
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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.

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.

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

Fundação Tartaruga

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.

Contributed by

yeoman_41900's picture

Kathryn Yeoman Fundação Tartaruga

Other contributors

GIZ/BIOPAMA