For Immediate Release
WeMAST PHASE II, WETLANDS MONITORING STAKEHOLDERS’ ENGAGEMENT FOR THE OKAVANGO AND CUVELAI RIVER BASIN
The Southern African Science Service for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (SASSCAL) and its Technical Partners are hosting its WeMAST Phase II, wetlands monitoring stakeholders’ engagement meeting for the Okavango River Basin from the 8th to the 9th of May 2023 at the Cresta Maun Resort, Maun, Botswana and for the Cuvelai River Basin on the 11th of May 2023 at Hotel Destiny in Ongwediva in Namibia under the WeMAST Project funded by the GMES & Africa Programme of the African Union.
The WeMAST project aims to design and develop an integrated online platform for wetlands assessment and monitoring that will support sustainable management of selected transboundary river basin in Southern Africa.
This platform has been developed in WeMAST Phase Ⅰ and is now in its second phase of been upscaled and operationalized to achieve sustainable wetlands management system by drawing in the knowledge and experience of partners and stakeholders across regional, national and local institutions.
It is against this background that WeMAST will be hosting a Wetlands Monitoring Stakeholders Engagement Meeting for inputs and validation of the upscaled WeMAST Geoportal’s :
- Indicators and indices;
- User acceptance testing of the recently developed Mobile Application and the introduction of the Mapographics® as a decision -making tool for end-users.
WeMAST Geoportal is developed “with the users- for the user”, hence it’s important to promote its strong user focus by continuously engaging and collaborating with its end users, decision makers and stakeholders to ensure that the products and services are in line with its objectives.
Through this stakeholders’ engagement, WeMAST hopes to build synergies to enhance cross-fertilization with the public, private and public institutions, non-profit organizations and all relevant stakeholders.
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For enquiries contact:
SASSCAL Regional Secretariat
Ms. Tulimekondjo Pandeni
Communications and Marketing Officer
+264 61 223 997
ABOUT WeMAST
The Wetland Monitoring and Assessment Service for Transboundary Basins (WeMAST) project under the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security and Africa (GMES & Africa) Programme is jointly funded by the African and European Union and implemented by the Southern African Science Service for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (SASSCAL).
WeMAST’s project aims to design and develop an integrated online platform for wetlands assessment and monitoring that will support sustainable management of selected transboundary river basin in Southern Africa, namely the Cuvelai, Okavango , Zambezi and Limpopo River Basin.
WeMAST’s objectives are to:
- to identify existing assessment and monitoring methods applicable to southern Africa;
- to design, develop and operationalize an integrated platform that can provide wetlands information service to target groups and end users; and
- to extend existing Earth Observation capabilities to SADC decision makers for wetland assessment and monitoring through capacity building and leverage awareness.
The online platform developed known as the Geoportal provides wetlands inventory, land cover and land use, wetlands flood dynamics, soil moisture index and other indicators to assess wetland health and degradation.
For more information visit the WeMAST and SASSCAL website: http://gmes-wemast.sasscal.org/ or https://www.sasscal.org/
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