Content and
outputs
Participants
came from most countries in the SADC region as well as the
USA
,
Australia
,
UK
,
Germany
,
Netherlands
, and other countries. The
detailed programme of sessions is available from Phoebe or
the above website.
The main
outcome will be an international “Wetlands Forum” of
practicing scientists and environmental monitoring people.
This has been developed largely by Tom Crisman of the
University
of
Florida
and colleagues (developed at a prior meeting in
the Delta).
In the
corridors
Eliot and Phoebe did a lot of talking to people at
Wetlands International and other sources to try to secure
funds for implementation of the framework, the River Health
Project (which will be a component of this), and related
(Gorongosa-Marromeu wetlands complex) work of the Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment for southern Africa with Tim Lynam of
the University of Zimbabwe's Tropical Resource Ecology
Programme.
Phoebe also discussed with Prof Sue Ringrose of HOORC
the opportunities for professional capacity-building
secondment of wetlands biology, economics and management
trainees to HOORC for variable periods to work on projects.
HOORC is very interested in this and will need
stipend support to train Namibians.
Phoebe will discuss detailed costings with Sue.
Next steps
1.
Fundraising and detailed implementation planning for
the wetlands monitoring framework!
2.
Implementation of the monitoring framework and
feeding of data into the SOER process.
