Sierra Leone - State of the Marine Environment 2015

6. Report reviewed, revised and published: Once the first draft is compiled by the Editorial Committee it should be circulated to all the experts involved in the EE assessment and writing of the report in order to be thoroughly reviewed. This review exercise could be done remotely but the organization of a validation workshop could bring added value as it would provide the editorial committee a good sense of the overall endorsement of the whole of the report by the experts that have contributed to its production. Next, peer reviewed by an independent, geographically diverse, group of experts that have not been involved in its production is carried out and the report is revised by the authors taking into account the reviewers comments. The peer-reviewed, final version of the report may go through technical edition, graphic design and layout processes prior to publication. This whole process may differ in duration depending on the natural and political heterogeneity of the assessment area, the amount of experts to be used for the assessment and the specific steps chosen from the ones suggested above. A reasonable duration would normally be between 6 and 18 months.

Figure 1. Diagram illustrating the time-line for one complete cycle of the SOME-EE process. Between 6 and 18 months are needed to plan and execute the process.

3. The SOME Assessment Expert Elicitation Method 3.1. Assessment Framework The United Nations World Ocean Assessment (www.worldoceanassessment.org) uses the Drivers-Pressures-State-Impacts-Response (DPSIR) framework (Fig. 2) as a basis on which to build its structure and organize its content. The DPSIR, in turn, clearly identifies the place of assessment of environmental condition (the State) within a broad management framework. The purpose of SOME assessments is to fulfill the need of measuring the “State” and the “Impacts” in order to design new government policy “Responses” as well as to gauge the effectiveness of those already implemented. The DPSIR framework suggests at least three possible approaches for structuring any SOME assessment: i) Pressures; ii) Habitats; and iii) Ecosystem Services.

Using pressures to structure an assessment has the advantages that the associated human activities are commonly linked with data collection and reporting structures for regulatory compliance purposes. For instance, permits that are issued for offshore oil and

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