Personal reflections from a visit to Guinea-Bissau

Kari Synnøve Johansen recently travelled to Guinea Bissau to help run a regional workshop on linking marine ecosystem services and development planning.

Situated on the West African coast, Guinea Bissau is a small country with big opportunities, and equally big challenges.

Since its independence from Portugal in 1974 it has struggled with political instability, hand-in-hand with socio-economic problems. At the same time, the country is recognized for its beautiful Bijagós archipelago, richness of biodiversity as well as extraordinary carnival celebrations. As a first time visitor, my experience in the capital city Bissau exceeded any of my pre-arrival expectations. Vibrant. Colourful. Sunny. Chaotic. A buzzing city with little infrastructure but resilient people.

However, most of my time was not spent in Bissau, but in the fictitious country of Bakul, which provided the backdrop for our training on integrating ecosystem services in marine and coastal planning.

Initiated by the Abidjan Convention, the Regional Partnership for Coastal and Marine Conservation in Western Africa (PRCM) and the West African Network of Marine Protected Areas (RAMPAO), the workshop for 25 participants from west and central African countries offered a mixture of perspectives, experiences and languages. Some participants worked on biodiversity conservation while others had a financial background. The common denominator was an interest in the links between marine ecosystem services and development planning.

Once the participants have “travelled” to Bakul, they worked as four consultancy agencies helping the Governess of the country in her election campaign. Through hands-on exercises they analysed the link between ecosystems, the services they provide, drivers of change, relevant stakeholders and policy mechanisms. Their active participation and practical work helped them understand how to recognize and capture the value of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

For those new to ecosystem services, they´re commonly defined as services provided by ecosystems that benefit people (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005). Certainly, humans have always relied on the benefits provided by nature, but our understanding of this dependency has been lacking. The quest for economic development has often, sometimes unwittingly, gone forward at the expense of the environment and the role it plays in human wellbeing. The repercussions of environmental degradation are felt by people. This is especially true for those in poor and particularly rural poor areas who often depend directly on ecosystem services.

The interconnectedness of nature and people was especially evident in Guinea Bissau. For a country with one of the lowest Human Development Indexes globally, ecosystem services provide a daily lifeline for local communities. Increasingly aware of its natural wealth, Guinea Bissau has created a number of protected areas and national parks over the last decade.