Seychelles is currently chairing its first international meeting on coral reefs since its appointment in July as co-chair and co-secretariat of the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI).

ICRI, which Seychelles is jointly chairing with the United Kingdom for the next two years, brings together governments, international organisations and NGOs in a global forum to address coral reef issues.

The Seychelles co-chair of ICRI, Mr Rolph Payet, is currently in the Turks and  Caicos  islands in the Caribbean where he is presiding over a November 17-20 meeting of some 60 high-level officials from the US State Department, USAID, the US National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the UK, Australia, France, Japan and 12 small island states and key coral reef organisations.

These include the United Nations Environment Programme’s Coral Reef Unit (UNEP-CRU) and World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN), the International Coral Reef Action Network (ICRAN) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), among others.

The meeting is seen as a milestone in the history of ICRI as it is adopting the organisation’s first formal operating procedures, launching a new Coral Reef Small Grants Fund, discussing a coral reef resolution for next year’s summit of small island states in Mauritius, reviewing the work of its operational networks, and initiating a discussion on cold and deep water corals.

Mr Payet, already nick-named the “coral reef ambassador”, is chairing a number of high-level sessions and leading the discussions on the coral reef resolution for small island states.

Seychelles has already benefited from ICRI in several ways. A Seychellois scientist has received a year’s scholarship from the UK to work at the UNEP-WCMC in Cambridge, England.

Seychelles has also been requested to play leadership roles in the development of several global initiatives and publications and has received several grants for coral reef and marine work.

The co-chairmanship of ICRI is also proving to be an ideal opportunity to further strengthen the Seychelles Centre for Marine Research and Technology Marine Parks Authority (SCMRT-MPA) at Cap Ternay as a national and regional centre for coastal and marine research. 

The SCMRT-MPA will soon become the regional coordinating centre for the CORDIO (Coral Reef Degradation in the Indian Ocean) programme in the small island states of the Indian Ocean, and will start to implement one of the first marine invasive species programmes in the Indian Ocean in January 2004, along with Kenya.

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