Developing capacity in coastal and marine issues of the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) region is a very important activity, given the present growing and projected pressures on the coastal and marine resources.The region s experience in both knowledge-based, technical and equipment capacity building has been progressively growing. Many large milestones have been reached in this current effort to assess the capacity of the WIO region both in the form of increasing the knowledge base on core competencies of a good coastal manager as well as identifying the capacity-building efforts going on in the region. Management of coastal and marine issues is critical to ensure a sustainable future in a region where tens of millions of people depend on coastal resources for their livelihoods. Thus, there is an important need of increasing not only the number of competent and well trained coastal management practitioners, especially with respect to project and program management and its various aspects, but to also facilitate the creation of enabling environments in which these managers can work.
