Stakeholders from civil society’s organization and government departments has concluded a day long information session on mangrove restoration held at the department of Parks and Wildlife Management office at Abuko Nature Reserve.
The daylong meeting was organized by Wetlands International Africa in collaboration with International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to meet all key stakeholders and relevant institutions from government, NGO’s, community groups, and development partners.
Officials disclosed during the meeting that the European Union PAPBIO program has the objective of promoting indigenous, sustainable and inclusive economic development, responding to challenges of Climate Change. The project dubbed from Senegal to Benin management program of mangrove forest funded at a tune of 9,900,00,00 Euros.
This initiative is expected to achieve an integrated protection of biodiversity and fragile ecosystems and enhance resilience to climate change.
In his opening remarks, Momodou Lamin Gassama director of Department of Parks and Wildlife Management highlighted the importance of mangrove in our society and the ecosystem, thus the urgent need to protect them from human encroachment and climate change is a worthwhile initiative.
According to him, climate change is a major threat to mangrove here in Gambia because of the way our coastline is eroding and most settlements in this country are concentrated around the coastline which are all posing threat to mangrove.
“ I am happy that this project has consideration to issues of land degradation and climate change because most of our parks are disappearing , wildlife are threaten everyday but we are happy this project is looking at landscape and mangrove issues as mitigating measures”, he noted.
He added, “our population is growing rapidly and the Gambia is one of the most vulnerable country to climate change because Banjul is part of the seventy most vulnerable cities in Africa”, Gassama disclosed.
He finally urged participants to take the information session seriously so that they will share the information with their members.
For his part, Dr Malle Diagana Regional Coordinator EU-Mangrove project gave background explanation about the project. He said the management of mangrove from Senegal to Benin is a project funded by EU and coordinate by IUCN with support from Wetlands International Africa Senegal office.
Dr Malle said the project was launched on the 16 July 2019 and expected to finish in 2022.
