During 23-25th November 2025, PERSGA hosted an inception training workshop in EMARSGA (Hurghada, Egypt), on the IUCN Red List of Coral Reef Ecosystems (RLE) in the Red Sea & Gulf of Aden (PERSGA Region).
The workshop was co-organized by the IUCN and PERSGA, with the participation of 29 experts. This workshop brought together various coral reef stakeholders from all PERSGA member states, among them academicians, researchers, managers, government representatives, NGOs and other coral reef data contributors. It provided an overview of the regional coral reef assessment and its relation to the GBF.
This assessment globally recognized framework aims to assess risks to ecosystems to identify those most vulnerable to collapse in order to guide conservation efforts, management decisions and to prioritize resource utilization. The RLE is now recognized as a headline indicator in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
This workshop brought together various coral reef stakeholders from all PERSGA member states, among them academicians, researchers, managers, government representatives, NGOs and other coral reef data contributors. It provided an overview of the regional coral reef assessment and its relation to the GBF.
Four experts from the IUCN acted as the RLE trainers, and presented sessions on the foundations, concepts and applications of the RLE, along with detailed sessions on each RLE criteria. They explained how to measure risk of collapse of an ecosystem based on changes in key ecological processes and features (i.e. criteria C and D) and the model used to simulate future risk in coral reef in PERSGA region to demonstrate a possible approach to assessing RLE criterion E (estimating the probability of collapse).
At the end of this inception workshop, a technical core team was formed for data analysis and a team for coral reef experts and data contributor was established for going on the process of RLE assessment in PERSGA region.
