Regional Workshop on Exchange of Environmental and Socioeconomic Monitoring Results

A regional workshop on "Exchange of Environmental and Socioeconomic Monitoring Results and Inter-calibration of Methods" has been organised in Aqaba, Jordan during the period 3- 5/11/2015. The workshop was attended by about Fifty five specialists from the participating countries, as well as a number of national and international consultants. It came within the implementation of component 3 of the SEM project, which is concerned with the environmental and socio-economic monitoring in the coastal areas of the region. The main objectives of the workshop are:

  1. To discuss early finding in national monitoring activities
  2. Discussing lessons learnt and identify difficulties facing actual monitoring
  3. To verify effectiveness of common tabulation of data to feed in a regional database.

Monitoring in the participating countries is conducted by institutions actively involved in coastal and marine environmental as well as socioeconomic monitoring. Personnel involved will have good knowledge of the theory and principles of this type of monitoring. This includes monitoring natural and anthropogenic variables in seawater, sediments and biota; key habitats and species as well as socioeconomic variables. Monitoring involves stakeholders and community members from PERSGA Countries. This is in fulfilment of the SEM Project Results Framework Indicator 2.1: Percentage of fishermen involved in fisheries monitoring, control and surveillance activities; and Indicator 3.1: Number of PERSGA member country staff trained on common monitoring variables and methods. The workshop took place directly after actual monitoring has started, so that it would enable exchange of early results collected and inter-calibration of methods.

The workshop was highly interactive and witnessed a fruitful discussion between the participants. It also provided an ideal platform for exchanging of experience and lessons learn through conducting actual environmental and socioeconomic monitoring.