The Tribune

By KEILE CAMPBELL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kcampbell@tribunemedia.net

THE Bahamas has begun its first national assessment of the management of its 70 marine protected areas, a key step in a 15-year debt conversion project expected to direct $124m into marine conservation, coastal protection and blue economy programmes.

The five-day workshop, held at the Office of the Prime Minister, forms part of the Bahamas Debt Conversion Project for Marine Conservation, which runs from 2024 to 2039. Project material says the government repurchased $300m in external bonds, with savings from the restructured loan to be invested in conservation and related programmes over the life of the initiative.

Jacklyn Chisholm-Lightbourne, monitoring and evaluation specialist for the project, described the Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool assessment as a significant exercise.

"We're assessing the weaknesses and all the successes of our 70 marine protected areas," she said.

She said the workshop is one of three planned under the project and one of its major milestones. By the fourth day, officials had completed assessments of 26 protected areas.

"We've done the identifying of the attributes, all the threats, and now we're doing the full scoring of the management effectiveness of these protected areas," Mrs Chisholm-Lightbourne said.

Representatives from the Bahamas National Trust, the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources Forestry Unit, the Bahamas Protected Areas Fund, the Department of Marine Resources and the Department of Environmental Planning and Protection participated in the exercise.

Mrs Chisholm-Lightbourne said the process will give the country a clearer view of the management status of each protected area and identify what resources are needed to improve them. She said the assessment will also train local experts to continue the work beyond the workshop.

She said the workshop builds on existing environmental legislation and is intended to help ensure conservation resources are used sustainably.

"We can learn of the things that we're doing wrong, and then we can learn of the successes on how we can move forward to endure that they are there for the future," she said.

Rich Wilson, founder and executive director of Seatone Consulting, attended the workshop to guide participants through the assessment process.

He said protected areas worldwide face development pressure, and the process helps officials identify threats, evaluate how they are being managed and determine what must improve.

"What can we learn from that process, and what does it show us in terms of the ways that we can improve management over time, all the development pressures and other threats that coral reefs, coastal mangroves, coppice forest, the animals that Ive in these areas, the plants that live in these areas, how to address the pressures that are affecting all of these places," Mr Wilson said.

He warned that the workshop must lead to action, not just discussion.