Building local capacity in sustainable watershed management |14 July 2022
Globally forests play a crucial role in maintaining the global carbon budget, extracting up to 2.4 billion metric tonnes of carbon each year from the atmosphere. Small island states are the most vulnerable to impacts of climate change. Protecting and maintaining a healthy forest cover is important to Seychelles as it speeds up its local adaptation actions. Developing local capacity in watershed management is key to ensure forests resilience.
A five-day training workshop in sustainable watershed management approaches took place recently at the Anse Royale campus of the University of Seychelles for different organisations having a stake in watershed management.
Twenty-eight participants with a good representation of women and youth attended the training.
They were from Marine Conservation Society Seychelles, Seychelles Islands Foundation, Public Utilities Corporation, Public Health Authority, Terrestrial Restoration Action Society Seychelles, Watershed Committees, Seychelles Parks and Gardens Authority, Forestry Section, Climate Adaptation Management Section, Waste, Enforcement & Permits Division, Landscape & amp; Waste Management Agency, Department of Agriculture and University of Seychelles - Blue Economy Research Institute.
Sustainable watershed management is aimed at ensuring the preservation, conservation and sustainability of all land-based resources and for maintaining ecosystem services such as access to fresh and clean water, oxygen production, climate regulation as well as recreational and spiritual benefits in addition to improving livelihoods.
Among other things participants learnt about the principles and pillars of watershed and forest management, how to measure watershed biodiversity, monitor water discharge and water quality as well as problems that invasive alien plants cause to biodiversity.
Practical sessions took them on field trips to the La Reserve palm forest at Montagne Posée where they learnt how to conduct a rapid watershed vegetation survey and the Val d’Andorre Watershed where they learnt about data handling and data interpretation.
The participants had basic knowledge in the area but they reported that they have gained more in-depth knowledge and found the training very interesting.
“I believe that the whole community plays an important role in the protection of the watershed, therefore with adequate support and resources from different stakeholders such an approach will help to
address issues affecting the watershed,” commented one participant.
The training, which was facilitated by consultant Dr Karl Fleischman and local experts is part of the Sustainable Forest Management and Watershed Management Approaches component of the GOS-GEF-UNDP A Ridge to Reef Approach for the Integrated Management of Marine, Coastal and Terrestrial Ecosystems in the Seychelles Project (R2R Project).
The accompanying photos show some highlights of the workshop (both indoor and outdoors).
Text & photos contributed
