Information
for the dialogue between science and civil society
#DIDEM Info
"Mapping the Deltas together" workshop @Stéphanie Duvail
Faced with the destruction of biodiversity, it is becoming urgent to make political and management decision-makers, as well as the general public, aware of the value of nature and the costs that its destruction entails.
Is it enough to talk in terms of "natural capital"? Or should we be more precise, and detail the "ecosystem services" that this natural capital renders to human populations? Other questions are just as fundamental: what values and costs are we talking about? At what spatial scale are these values and costs measured?
Answering these questions requires us to position ourselves in one of two camps: those in favor of monetary valuation and those opposed to it. Each side has its own arguments to put forward, and land managers are often at a loss when it comes to the choices available to them, so much so that in the end, we come back to the main question: would this environmental accounting really help me to manage my land better?
Kenya
Knowledge Sharing Workshop on Impacts of Sea Water Intrusion at Kalota, Tana River Delta
The workshop was held on June 17th 2023 at Semikaro Primary School. It allowed scientists, community leaders and community members to share knowledge and to jointly analyse the environmental changes observed in the Kalota section of the Tana River Delta.
It was organised by the DiDEM Project-Kenya, facilitated by the team from the National Museums of Kenya (NMK), French Institute of Research for Development (IRD) and the Kenya Wetlands Biodiversity Research Team (KENWEB).
Filmmaker Khamis Ramadhan was able to gather testimonials from workshop participants. Two videos are available:
Comoros
Video : The Mohéli National park in the Comoro Island
Next stop: Mohéli National park in the Comoro Islands! Adifaon gives a close-up of his daily life with fishermen, scientists, and locals who live in the Indian Ocean. In this first video about the #BlueEconomy in the Indian Ocean, he explains the importance of protecting the ocean and controlling fishing to maintain a blue economy that respects the environment and sustains the population.
Mozambique
Video : How does river flow influence the entire estuary ecosystem?
How does river flow influence the entire estuary ecosystem? That is the subject of Dinis Juizo’s research. We met him in the Incomati Delta in southern Mozambique. As part of an interdisciplinary team, he identifies the flows needed to preserve Indian Ocean deltas which are nurseries for fish and a source of income for the local community.
The attack was observed in 2020 and became massive in 2022 in the Betsiboka estuary. The culprit is a defoliator caterpillar Hyblaea puera (Cramer, 1777) that specifically attacks the mangrove tree Avicennia marina that constitutes the monospecific stand of mangroves downstream of the Betsiboka delta.
The DiDEM/Deltas-Madagascar team was mobilised by the Boeny region to assess the situation.
> Read the report (french only)
Mozambique
The Incomati Estuary Festival
October 15-17, 2021, to highlight the role and functions of the estuary and its floodplains, well known to the locals but unknown to passing visitors, as well as to showcase the exceptional biodiversity of the site (it is the 2nd hotspot of biodiversity of birds in Mozambique after Gorongosa) and the expertise of local people.
The video is also available in Portuguese.