Last 16th September, MedCities and ETC UMA representatives co-organised a session with the city of Sfax – MedCities member and ENSERES partner- to present the ENSERES Catalogue of Tools for ecosystem-based management to local stakeholders. The session, hosted by the Sfax City Council, aimed to result in the selection of the most promising tools to address the region’s challenges. 

Participants included 20 institutional stakeholders and 15 representatives of Civil Society Organisations (CSO) in a morning session dedicated to:

• Inform on the content of the Catalogue as to the typology of tools included, the challenges addressed and potential beneficiaries.
• Showcase the functionalities of the ENSERES toolkit online platform.
• Jointly identify local challenges that could be addressed by those tools.
• Pre-select, in a participative way, the most promising tools to address the specific local challenges. 

The participants estimated the whole toolkit very useful, especially the tools related to waste and marine litter prevention and management, co-management of artisanal fisheries, governance methods for wetlands conservation and ICZM Decision Support System.

During the next months, MedCities will consolidate with Sfax and Tyre the final list of tools to be transferred and will provide online in-depth capacity building for interested stakeholders in Sfax and Tyre. The trainings will be followed by a mentoring process to test in depth the application of at least one of the tools within the Catalogue.

*The ENhancing Socio-Ecological RESilience in Mediterranean coastal areas (ENSERES) project is a European co-funded project that seeks to spread best practices in nature-based solutions (SGD 13), especially for marine protected areas and (semi) urban coastal zones  (SGD 14).  MedCities leads the “Transferring and upscaling” component of the project.