Sierra Leone - State of the Marine Environment 2015

Figure 4. The Inherent Risk Rating score for each risk is calculated by adding the Likelihood and Consequence ratings. This provides a risk score of between 0 and 10 that gives a risk rating of High (0-3), Significant (4-5), Moderate (6-7) or Low (8-10).

6. Conclusions The Production of State of Marine Environment Assessments and Reports based on Expert Elicitation provides an alternative to the classical data intensive environment reporting methods which may prove very useful to allow make most use of existing expert knowledge in regions where environmental data has not been recorded and reported in a systematic way. The existing expert knowledge may be enough and the only available means to draw an assessment that allows stakeholders taking decisions to initiate or improve environmental management without further delay in hope that enough systematic data is recorded. The Expert Elicitation Approach if used to the full extent of its capacity may deliver a high quality report within a limited budget. The pilot workshops conducted so far have proven to be very useful means of gathering available knowledge in the pilot regions and have received very good feedback for the experts participating in it as they allowed a quick and meaningful integration of the knowledge existing in a certain region. Ongoing efforts should lead to the finalization of the Reports emanating from these workshops in the near future. References Australia state of the environment 2011. Independent report to the Australian Government Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities. Canberra: DSEWPaC. Feary, D.A., Fowler, A.M., Ward, T.J., 2014. Developing a rapid method for undertaking the World Ocean Assessment in data-poor regions - A case study using the South China Sea Large Marine Ecosystem. Ocean & Coastal Management 95, 129-137. Johnson, D., Benn, A., Ferreira, A., 2013. Review of ecosystem-based indicators and indices on the state of the Regional Seas. UNEP Regional Seas, Nairobi. Ward, T. J., 2012. Workshop Report: Regional Scientific and Technical Capacity Building Workshop on the World Ocean Assessment (Regular Process), Bangkok, Thailand. 17–19 September 2012. UNEP/COBSEA, Bangkok, Thailand.

70