The open data portal on mangroves socio-ecological systems

The Mikoko Project Team is on the verge of creating a collaborative, open data  portal platform on Kenyan Mangroves socio-ecosystems  for collaborative conservation and monitoring.

The Objective

The main objective of the open collaborative conservation platform  is to facilitate the sharing of data and knowledge on mangroves socio-ecosystems between various stakeholders.

The portal will run on an open data policy in order to get across all information on mangroves ecosystem to the wider spectrum of stakeholders and public by aggregating, analyzing and disseminating knowledge with ease.

The portal focuses on connecting the two main  axes that, when in proper collaboration, will play a great role in the monitoring and conservation of Kenya’s Mangrove Ecosystem. These two entities are the Mangrove Conservation Themes and the Actors involved.

1. Mangrove Conservation Themes 

The platform focuses on four main themes:

• Mangrove Ecosystem – this is a key theme as it covers the biodiversity of mangrove forests: plants & animals’ inventory (how many species there are), species distribution and composition, ecology and an identification tool to facilitate the identification of plants.
• Usages – we focus on the diversity of uses of the mangrove ecosystem, extent of uses & harvest, market & demand and methods of extraction.
• Rehabilitation – this theme focuses on causes of degradation at various scales, intensity of degradation, methods of rehabilitation as well as the best practices and failures.
• Monitoring – the monitoring theme covers mapping (land cover, landscape units, etc.)

      2. Actors

The actors involved include:

• • Local communities – these include the Community Based Organizations (CFA, BMU, wood cutters, women groups…) interests, their activities, knowledge, practices and lessons.
  • Research & Academia – this focuses on data available, state of the art research and the scope for engagement & collaborations for generation of new knowledge

• Implementation agencies – the platform disseminates who the implementation agencies are, priority interventions, data, planning, constraints, experiences and lessons. 

• Policy makers – this focuses on international frameworks, protocols and agreements, existing national policy frameworks across economic, legal, trade, environment, synergy across sectors and contradictions and governance at different levels & scale.

 

 The team is working tirelessly to ensure the launch of the portal as soon as possible.