Training on MPAs Network Monitoring

A diverse group of 19 participants, comprising experts, ministry officials, fishermen, divers, and NGO representatives, received training focused on developing ecological indicators for monitoring the five criteria for establishing an effective MPA Network in Lebanon: Representation; Replication; Connectivity; viability and resilience; Size and Shape; Critical Areas, as well as governance and socio-economic indicators.

After the welcoming notes and an overview of the project’s progress and updates by LEF, Ms. Lara Samaha, Head of the Department of Ecosystems in the Ministry of Environment, presented an overview of Lebanon’s MPA Strategy of 2012 and related updates, and Ms. Rawan Al Jamal on behalf of the MCR-IOE-UOB introduced the workshop objectives and the work methodology, Attendees were divided into four roundtables working independently on the five criteria. Discussions were extremely lively and all participants had the chance to contribute to developing a broad set of ecological indicators for each criterion.

Participants highlighted the challenges that might be encountered in achieving some of them. Financial Resources are a crucial need to be able to implement monitoring procedures with a big necessity for cooperation and coordination between public authorities to ensure maximum efficiency. Within a lack of law enforcement, awareness raising, and volunteer work can benefit the establishment of the MPA Network and its monitoring protocol besides data availability and data transparency are key to successful monitoring. The results of the roundtables were consequently added to the indicators already developed by MCR-IOE-UOB in the report on MPAs Network Monitoring