Welcome to the ASCLME Project
Over the next five years, the nine countries of the western Indian Ocean region, including Comoros, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Seychelles, Somalia, South Africa and Tanzania, will work together through the Agulhas and Somali Current Large Marine Ecosystems (ASCLME) project.
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ASCLME and SAIAB celebrate World Oceans Day |
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The ASCLME Project and the Project Coordination Unit's host organisation, SAIAB, celebrated World Oceans Day today by showing the film Rivers of Life, Oceans of Plenty today.
The film opens by showcasing some of the spectacular undersea wildlife and landscapes the western Indian Ocean region offers, but then goes on to address critical issues of sustainable management of marine and coastal resources; firstly by outlining some of the pressures facing the marine environment, and then by showing regional initiatives which are addressing these pressing needs and how scientific information can be translated to policy for effective and sustainable management. Despite the considerable challenges, the film's ultimate message is one of hope, and at the same time, a call to action.
The film was produced by Francois Odendaal Productions for the ASCLME and WIO-LaB projects with funding from the Global Environment Facility.
First suggested by Canada at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992, World Oceans Day was finally ratified by the UN General Assembly in 2008 and will be celebrated annually on the 8th of June. The UN's World Oceans Day website can be found here. |
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 The ASCLME Project has combined forces with sister project SWIOFP, to bring you a combined newsletter, Current Affairs. The first edition has just been published and covers news about both Projects over the last year. At 56 pages, it shows just how much work is being done in the region!
To read it, please download a PDF version from our document library here.
Current Affairs is published in English, French and Portuguese in the same edition.
The hardcopy edition also includes a DVD copy of the joint ASCLME/WIO-LaB documentary, Rivers of Life, Oceans of Plenty. We are working on a way of showing this film online and will publish a news story on the ASCLME website as soon as it is available. The film was produced by Francois Odendaal Productions. The film has been released in four languages: English, French, Portuguese and Swahili, and all are available on each DVD. |
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 The Project has taken big strides forward over the past year. One of the most important steps it has taken has been to raise the profile of governance and policy issues, as well as the issue of financial sustainability. This is important because we don’t want the Project to deliver a Strategic Action Programme ( SAP), we want the Project to deliver a SAP that can be implemented. In other words, there should not be a gap between the signing of the SAP and the start of implementation of the SAP. I am very happy with the Project Coordination Unit. It is not common to have a project running in “real time” like this. I hope that the countries follow this dynamic and that at the country level the work will also be on track. One thing I would like to make a plea for is stability at the PSC level. We want people to be informed about the project and actively participating in it. But when people are new to the PSC they need to be informed and brought up to speed. Changes at the PSC level set us back.” Hajanirina Razafindrainibe, Natural Resource Management Expert, Service d'Appui a la Gestion de l'Environnement (SAGE), Madagascar.
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