The Foundation for the Conservation of Biodiversity (BIOFUND) points to the management of conservation areas and human cohabitation as the biggest challenges facing national conservation areas.

According to the coordinator of BIOFUND's biodiversity offset program, Denise Nicolau, who was speaking during the Marine Biodiversity conference taking place in Maputo until today, August 2, the conservation challenges in Mozambique are many.

"If we were to aggregate the different challenges, we would look at the anthropogenic ones associated with people and the extinction of resources," said Denise Nicolau, quoted by AIM.

The coordinator added that "conservation areas are places of high ecological value, but there are many people living within these spaces, so I think the big challenge, in fact, is this cohabitation".

For the source, the country's legal framework favors different mechanisms for managing its natural resources, especially coastal and marine resources. However, he pointed out the pressure on them, including "challenges associated with extreme weather events".

"As Biofund, we are mobilizing funding to support the national network of conservation areas, including fishing and marine areas. We support more than 60% of conservation areas in Mozambique and, with environmental education, we have already reached more than 30,000 people directly, through our debates, environmental education, training and others," he noted.

The director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Marine Program in Mozambique (WCS), Hugo Costa, agrees with Biofund and points out that the biggest challenges facing national conservation areas have to do with the management of their own spaces, especially marine conservation areas, which, because they are marine, "require more complicated means, personnel properly trained for the marine environment and means that have high costs".