Minister Jumeau officially opens the meeting

Environment officials are starting to formulate what would be an internationally supported plan for environmental management across the country’s entire archipelago.

In a meeting on Monday December 1,  at the International Conference Centre, officials from the Ministry of Environment, the Global Environment Facility (Gef) and representatives from several government ministries and conservation organisations discussed plans for what’s been dubbed as “integrated ecosystem management.”

With an estimated cost of US$17 million over seven years, the project will entail the cooperation of a number of parties, locally and abroad, to participate in the management of different aspects of the country’s environment. 

The project would cover seven of the 10 programme areas outlined in 2001’s Environment Management Plan of Seychelles, the ministry’s blueprint for sustainable development up to 2010.

Monday’s meeting provided a platform to “plan the plan” that would eventually be submitted to the Gef for approval, said Rolph Payet, director general of Policy Planning and Services in the Ministry of Environment.

Mr Payet said however that Seychelles has a small window of opportunity to get the Gef’s approval, and ultimately its funding, which is slated to be around US$5-6 million.

The next available time to push through such a project to the Gef, he said, would not come until 2007, leaving the ministry and other stakeholders with only the better part of 2004 to negotiate for funding and outline the entire breadth of the programme.

According to Mr Payet, as of now the project would be divided into two key components. One would be dedicated to the ecosystems on the inhabited inner islands of Seychelles, with the other looking at ecosystems management on the outer islands.

Mr Payet said that the two island groups had different environmental priorities, with the inner islands facing the increasing pressures of human impact, and the outer islands, Aldabra aside, challenged by sporadic management and a lack of resources due to their remoteness.

If approved, the Gef’s funding for the project would be complemented by about US$4 million from the government of Seychelles, with the rest of the US$17 million total coming from international donor organisations and the private sector.

Minister of Environment Ronny Jumeau officially opened the meeting, describing the project as the largest and most ambitious Seychelles has ever put to the Gef and “one of the most important in the history of environmental protection in our country.”

But Minister Jumeau warned that emerging problems, both in Seychelles and on a world stage, have forced a certain urgency in implementing such a programme with outside help.

“The stark truth is that the challenges ahead for Seychelles far exceed the national resources available to address the threats we face and ensure continued long-term sustainability,” Minister Jumeau said in his speech.  “I can think of no better way to describe the importance of the project than that it is being prepared at a time when the pressures, both human and natural, on Seychelles’ environment are of an intensity that is unprecedented in the relatively short history of man’s inhabitation of these islands.”

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