In Togo, fishermen and other resource users depend directly on water (watercourses, water retention, mangroves/lagoons productivity) and forests (wood fuel, forest products from the harvest, non-wood forest products...).

These ecosystems are highly degraded, due to a number of factors, including: (i) lack of clarity of land rights/land insecurity; (ii) lack of law enforcement/institutional weakness in resource governance; (iii) land competition associated with population growth, urbanization, and industrial development; (iv) unsustainable resource extraction (for example, wood extraction, sand etc.); (v) the overexploitation of fishery resources; and (vi) the extensive use of wood fuel for the processing of agricultural products.

In response to increasing pressures from this phenomenon, ecosystem approaches such as ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) have proven to be a promising strategy to increase the resilience of communities in the face of climate change to support sustainable livelihoods. EbA is thus a use of biodiversity and ecosystem services as part of a global adaptation strategy in order to help populations adapt to the negative effects of climate change.

To this end, as part of the implementation of the project Strengthening the resilience to climate change of coastal communities in Togo (R4C-Togo) initiated by the Togolese government through the Ministry of Environment and Forest Resources, financed by the Global Environment Fund (GEF) with technical support from FAO, training sessions were organized for actors in the central and decentralized administration to take into account the adaptation to climate change based on ecosystems in policies, laws, in program planning, projects.

The rest of the training courses on adaptation to climate change based on the EbA approach has been taking place since October 24, 2023 in the prefectures of the Gulf, Agoè-Nyivé, Lacs1 (Agbodrafo and Aného) and Vo (Aného) and Vo (Vogan) and concerns field actors such as fishermen.

These courses are given by the Commander, Dr. Eric AGBESSI, the climate change expert on the R4C-Togo project.

 

The objective of this training is to help fishermen understand the EbA approach for the integrated coastal management approach, taking into account their particular adaptations in the implementation of measures at the level of sectoral policies and communal development plans.

Specifically, it is about:

Strengthen the knowledge of fishermen in the project implementation area about the risks and impacts of climate change;

Strengthen the capacities of fishermen in the project area on identifying and prioritizing the impacts of CC as well as the adaptation option;

Train fishermen in integrating CCA into development policies and plans by taking into account their concerns.