The Ministry of Environment and Forest Resources, as part of the Project to Improve Togo's Environmental Information System (PASIET), is organizing from 1 to 4 December 2020, in Lomé, with the support of the Mami Wata project, a training workshop on the methodology for preparing the report on the state of the marine environment (REEM) in Togo for stakeholders in this process. The aim is to train staff on the methodology for preparing the report on the state of the marine environment.

The Report on the State of the Marine Environment in Togo (REEM) provides a sine qua non basis for the planning of development projects/programmes, a specific environmental assessment focused on a periodic review of the health and status of a number of key elements composing the marine environment, an essential element of the integrated ocean management (IOM) cycle. Thus, reports should be prepared regularly in order to facilitate the assessment of the effects produced by existing management measures and to identify new environmental developments that may be harmful to the state of the environment.

For this purpose, PASIET produced the first report on the state of the environment in Togo (REET). In this report, Chapter 6 is devoted to the marine and coastal environment. Thus, support was requested to push the work to develop the first report on the state of the marine environment (REEM) of Togo, in accordance with the achievement of SDG 14 related to the oceans, like the pilot countries in West Africa, all parties to the Abidjan Convention, all parties to the Abidjan Convention, in particular Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire and Benin.

The development of this REEM must be done using an adapted methodology, in accordance with the sub-regional and international standard, which must be mastered by all the stakeholders in the process of preparing this report.

It is in this context that this training for stakeholders in this process is being held and will cover all stages of the implementation of REEM.

For four days, the aim is to train staff on the scientific concepts of the REEM; on the various aspects of the DPSIR method for the development of the REEM; to stimulate the implementation of the DPSIR method for the development of the REEM and to define the calendar of activities for the realization of the REEM.

“Essentially, we are going to try to review the process steps that lead to the report on the state of the marine environment, we are going to analyze together, present the analytical framework developed in this REEM as well as the three types of methodologies that lead to that. We will of course discuss environmental data and indicators but also about structuring. Because Togo already has a major advantage. They recently published the REET. From this document, we will go deeper into everything about the marine and coastal environment, all the work that has been done on the coast,” suggested the trainer Jacques André Ndione.