The dissemination workshop of the SBAPP project (Spatial Biodiversity Assessment, Prioritisation and Planning), took place on 4 August in Maputo City and was attended, among others, by the National Director of Environment, Guilhermina Amurane, and the Country Director of WCS Mozambique, Afonso Madope, as well as representatives of the project donors (French Agency for Development - AFD) and implementing partners.
This event was organised by the National Directorate for the Environment (DINAB), in partnership with Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and aimed to raise awareness on the project objectives, explaining its contribution to the alignment of national biodiversity conservation targets with the new Global Biodiversity Framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), namely to the update process of the National Strategy and Action Plan for the Conservation of Biological Diversity (NBSAP). It was also explained the tender process that the project team (DINAB and WCS) will implement for the selection of entities that will carry out field activities to collect primary biological data in 6-8 areas out of the 15 that were pre-identified as potential KBAs during the KBAs identification and mapping project in 2019.
In their speeches, DINAB and WCS representatives praised the importance of this project for the mapping and more intrinsic knowledge of Mozambique's biodiversity and emphasised the role of collaboration between the parties and with other partners in achieving the country's national biodiversity conservation goals.
This project is led by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), which is also a pioneer in this type of work, in partnership with the Ministry of Environment Forestry and Tourism in Namibia, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in Mozambique, which works in coordination with the National Directorate of Environment of the Ministry of Land and Environment, and the University of Science and Technology of Malawi in collaboration with the Department of Environmental Affairs of that country, and is funded by the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and the Fonds Français pour L'environnement Mondial (FFEM). It should be noted that the SBAPP project officially started in the second half of 2022 and has a duration of five years.