Posted on December, 28 2011

The WWF Coral Triangle Programme has entered its second phase and developed new 3-year strategies following a review conducted with WWF colleagues and partners in the Coral Triangle region.

As a result of this review, it has been decided that the WWF Coral Triangle Programme will continue to enhance the achievements made by WWF programmes in the Asia Pacific region by mobilizing more significant collaboration among the private sector, government and communities. The reason for this approach is that when these parties co-invest and share responsibilities for building ‘blue economies’ that combine the protection of high priority places with the reduction of unsustainable practices, and promote social and economic equity and environmental sustainability, change can occur faster and more effectively than when these actors continue to work in silos.

The WWF Coral Triangle programme retains its original vision—that the oceans and coasts of the Coral Triangle, the world’s centre of marine biodiversity, and their ecosystem services on which human wellbeing depends, remain vibrant and healthy, providing food and livelihoods for generations to come.

In its second phase, WWF’s Coral Triangle Programme will focus even more on promoting sustainable livelihoods and lifestyles in this region, and will continue to motivate regional and national agents of change—governments, the private sector and civil society—to transform their way of doing business, whether in terms of how they use ecosystem services and/or consume products from the Coral Triangle.

The desired outcomes are enhancement of environmental protection through better governance and collaborative management between governments, the private sector and communities; and reduced negative footprints by seafood related and tourism industries to enable Coral Triangle societies to sustain their livelihoods while supporting to some extend the region’s demands and ambitions for economic growth.

To support these outcomes, our regional programme will be centred on three strategies: Transform, Protect and Sustain. These strategies will be delivered in the context of a “blue economies” approach, aiming to create the impetus for a new paradigm that involves:

• developing more equitable socio-economic models and instruments that promote human wellbeing;
• distributing the world’s wealth and natural resources more equitably within sustainable limits; and
• maintaining healthy ecosystem services for future generations.

TRANSFORM focuses on transforming targeted industries, as they are important agents of change to support the aspirations of the Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral reefs Fisheries and Food security. This will be achieved by expanding WWF's work with the seafood and fisheries sector, and increasingly with the tourism sector.

PROTECT focuses on the protection of the critical places in the Coral Triangle that host vital biological processes and ecosystems, which are needed for biodiversity and sustainable livelihoods and economies (those that are fuelled by fisheries and tourism).

SUSTAIN focuses on the enabling conditions necessary to sustain the above transformation and protection objectives. This includes our policy work, strategic communications, sustainable finance, community empowerment and conservation science work.

WWF welcomes any input and collaboration for the coming 3 years.