Mainstreaming Biodiversity Management into Production Sector Activities

An integrated ecosystem management approach for the Seychelles will be developed contributing to key objectives under the national environmental strategy. A number of concrete measures will be developed to conserve globally significant biodiversity, reduce land degradation through better management of land resources, increase greenhouse sink functions, and reduce potential long-term impacts of climate change. The existing network of protected areas will be modified and extended as needed to provide much more effective conservation of the full range of terrestrial ecosystems on the granitic islands. Here, special attention will be given to rehabilitating, creating or maintaining corridors to minimize habitat fragmentation. A special management focus will be on Silhouette Island to put in place a long-term conservation, restoration and management framework to be supported with revenues of sustainable activities such as nature-based tourism. With improved tools for coastal zone management, land use planning as well as management of coastal resources such as fisheries, Government and other stakeholders will be in a better position to plan coastal development in such a way that coastal habitats are preserved. The outer islands will get much needed attention in terms of assessment of biodiversity, as well as the development of viable conservation programmes on Cosmoledo Atoll. To ensure lon-term effectiveness of these activities, the project will also support the improvements in current institutional capacity for project management, monitoring and support. The project will build better cooperation pathways among all local implementing agencies and provide mechanisms enabling broad stakeholder participation in decision-making and management of ecosystems. This cross-cutting approach will most importantly build a strong stakeholder constituency for more concerted action against poaching and other environmental problems