Guinea Current Large Marine Ecosystem - Regional Coordination Unit (GCLME - RCU)

The Guinea Current Large Marine Ecosystem (GCLME) Project is an ecosystem–based effort to assist countries adjacent to the Guinea Current Ecosystem to achieve environmental and resource sustainability. This would be accomplished by shifting from short-term sector by sector driven management objectives to a longer-term perspective and from managing commodities to sustaining the production potential for ecosystem-wide goods and services. The GEF pilot phase included a six country Gulf of Guinea

Large Marine Ecosystem project that ended in November, 1999. This new phase extended the Gulf of Guinea Project from six to sixteen countries, all of which are influenced by the Guinea Current. This new Project will assist these sixteen countries in making changes in the ways that human activities are conducted in the different sectors of national life to ensure that the GCLME and its multi-country drainage basins can sustainably support the socio-economic development of the region. One of the project goals is to build capacity of Guinea Current countries to work jointly and in concert with other nations, regions, and GEF projects in West Africa to define and address priority trans-boundary environmental issues within the framework of their existing responsibilities under the Abidjan Convention and its Regional Seas Programme.

The following defined Broad Objectives :

1. Protecting Human Health through Assessing and Mitigating Ecosystem Pollution ,
2. Ensuring Sustainability of Living Resources for Human Nutrition and Foreign Exchange Earnings ,
3. Redressing Loss of Biodiversity ,
4. Enhancing National/Regional/Global Marine Data and Information Acquisition and Exchange,
5. Building Capacity for Rational Marine Resources and Environmental Management,
6. Establishing a Basis for Sustainable Economic and Human Development, are incorporated in the 5 Project components, that are as follows:

   1) Finalize SAP and develop sustainable financing mechanism for its implementation;

   2) Recovery and sustainability of depleted fisheries and living marine resources including mariculture;

   3) Planning for biodiversity conservation, restoration of degraded habitats and developing strategies for reducing coastal erosion;

   4) Reduce land and sea-based pollution and improve water quality;

   5) Regional Coordination and Institutional Sustainability.

The Project promises an auspicious future not only for the region but also for International Waters at large.