Country/Region Senegal/West Africa Project duration August 2020 to September 2022 Senegal is a coastal and Sahelian country with a wide range of rural areas, hosting unique and diverse species. The coastlines and deltas are characterized by highly productive marine ecosystems and are hotspots for large populations of fish. Fishes are critical to maintain ecosystem functions and services, including food provision and creation of jobs for the fishing industry. However, Senegal coastal ecosystems face numerous environmental issues linked to human activities. Solid scientific knowledge on how environmental stress affects biodiversity in the region is in urgent need to guide mitigation strategies aimed at conserving biodiversity and promoting sustainable economic growth. Biodiversity has traditionally been quantified as the number of species in each ecosystem, thus failing to account for the ecological role that species play within ecosystems. Functional diversity, measured by how species interact with the environment and with other species, has emerged as a more effective link between biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services. Despite functional diversity is key to ecosystem services valuable to humans, this metric is rarely considered in the discourse connecting science to governance and policy. The overall goal of this project is to produce sound scientific knowledge for the conservation of fish functional diversity from socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable economic growth perspectives in Senegal. Collected data will constitute the basis for the development of capacities and management strategies in support of the National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plan (NBSAP) and according to the Plan Senegal Emergent (PSE) and Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) principles. Produce sound scientific knowledge for the conservation of fish functional diversity from socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable economic growth perspectives in Senegal Assess the status of fish functional diversity and determine the links with ecosystem functions and services Build capacities for functional…
