Within the framework of the PARCC West Africa GEF project, national workshops were held in The Gambia and Togo at the end of February and beginning of March to design systematic conservation planning systems for each of the project countries. The workshops were co-organised by IUCN PACO and UNEP-WCMC and led by Dr Bob Smith from DICE University of Kent.

National workshop on systematic conservation planning in The Gambia. Participants and opening ceremony attendees. Image copyright Elise Belle.

These national level workshops built on a regional meeting held last year in Accra, Ghana, which aimed to build capacity in the region on systematic conservation planning. The national workshops not only provided more training, but most importantly, directly involved the participants in the design of national systematic conservation planning systems for their country.

At the workshops, participants were able to learn about the principles of systematic conservation planning for identifying where to locate new protected areas. Through a number of exercises, they were taught how to undertake a gap analysis, set protection targets, and use CLUZ (Conservation Land-Use Zoning software) and Marxan.

Preliminary systematic conservation planning systems were created for each of the four countries represented at the workshop: The Gambia, Chad, Mali, and Togo. Unfortunately due to the current Ebola crisis no participant from Sierra Leone could be present. The participants then provided their input by: 1. checking conservation targets, 2. identifying areas that should always be included or excluded from the set of priority areas, 3. checking fragmentation levels (i.e. size of new protected areas suggested by the software), and 4. identifying a set of priority areas for meeting the targets.

National workshop on systematic conservation planning in Togo, with participants from Chad and Mali. Image copyright Elise Belle.

Based on the participants’ feedback, Marxan was run again and the new results were presented, including a map showing existing protected areas, areas to be excluded and planning units needed to be selected as new protected areas in order to meet all the targets set, as well as a map showing irreplaceability areas. These results will be further refined and summarized in a national report for each project country.

Both workshops were highly successful. All participants were very enthusiastic about the project and the systematic conservation planning systems designed for their country, and provided excellent feedback on the usefulness of the workshop.

Opening ceremony in The Gambia by Hon. Pa Ousman Jarju, Minister of the Environment of The Gambia, with Mrs Ndey Bakurin, Director of the National Environment Agency; Dr Elise Belle, UNEP-WCMC and Dr Bob Smith, DICE University of Kent. Image copyright Elise Belle.