by Mohamed Tawfic Ahmed, Mohamed Saleh, Adel Farid Abdelkadir, & Ahmed Abdelrehim
ABSTRACT
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) is an international initiative that means to advise decision makers on the impact of development on environmental setting and human well being. The MA is a multi-scale assessment consisting of interlinked assessments undertaken at local, national, regional and global scales. The sub-global assessments will directly meet the needs of decision-makers at the scale at which they are undertaken, strengthen the global finding on the reality ground and reinforce the local findings with global perspectives, data and models. In Egypt, an MA local community Subglobal assessment was conducted in El Maghara , North Sinai, one of the poorest, most arid, and most marginalized parts of Egypt. El Maghara is exclusively inhabited by Bedouin, characterized by a special lifestyle, predominantly governed by local knowledge. The El Maghara assessment followed the conceptual framework of MA in which ecosystem services were identified, trends and conditions were monitored. (continue…)