Posted on February, 10 2017

By Jackie Thomas, WWF Coral Triangle Coordination Team Leader

Finding positive news in this chaotic world we live in is sometimes very hard, amidst the terrible human suffering of displaced and disaster affected communities, environmental degradation, and increasingly dire climate change predictions.

Sometimes it seems like the world’s problems are too big to overcome, and you find yourself asking, what can I do, as one person in a world of around 7 billion, that can make a positive difference in improving the state of our planet and the quality of life on it?  

It’s easy to become overwhelmed with the scale of the challenges.

But there are amazing things being done by individuals, communities, industries, civil society, companies, and governments, and across a diversity of sectors from forest protection, energy efficiency, and waste management to health care, food production, and improving protection of our oceans.

Often it’s the small things that make a big difference.    

Big wins come from small steps

In previous editions of this newsletter, we’ve proudly reported on the great achievements around marine resource management and improving sustainability of fisheries. This includes establishing large Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) for biodiversity, fisheries production, and in many cases, for marine tourism. Some recent examples are Tun Mustapha Park in Sabah, Malaysia and in Cagayancillo, Palawan in the Philippines.

But let me assure you that there are many communities in the Coral Triangle whose work in small Locally Managed Marine Areas, some just several hectares in size, is also critical to the future of their fisheries and health of the marine environment.  

This was recognized by WWF International President Yolanda Kakabadse in her recent commentary on oceans in The Guardian. Here, she cited the “truly inspirational” work undertaken by an increasing number of local communities to protect and manage their islands and local coastlines and said the “Locally Managed Marine Area Network (LMMA) in Asia and the Pacific provides one example where communities in developing countries are taking the initiative to secure their ocean futures.”

The challenge is how to scale up these efforts across the thousands of coastal communities who are the owners and stewards of inshore reefs and marine resources.

Scaling up our work

In the Coral Triangle, for many years now, significant effort, funding, and human resources have been channeled into marine habitat protection and management. It’s critical to human survival that we take care of the oceans. But the trick is how can we do this on a scale that covers many thousands of kilometres of inshore reefs and marine habitats that are so vital to food security, livelihoods, and resilience of communities and infrastructure against the impacts of storms, sea level rise, and natural disasters.

More and more frequently, I am hearing conservation practitioners ask ‘How can the collective “we” work together in supporting coastal and inshore fisheries that are important sources of protein and livelihoods for millions of coastal people across the Coral Triangle?’

Many conservationists, scientists, academics, fisheries managers, and community resource owners are tackling this in different ways with a range of tools and approaches. Many involve marine spatial planning, like MPAs and LMMAs; others are through fisheries regulations and gear restrictions or market and financial mechanisms; most use a combination of these. The Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security (CTI-CFF) has, over the years, developed a number of excellent resources and tools to guide communities and conservation practitioners in designing MPAs and implementing Ecosystem-Based Management Approaches. In the Pacific countries, a strong emphasis is on community-based resource management and co-management approaches.  

And it’s not one size fits all. The CTI-CFF has six member countries, each with its own land tenure systems, culture, governance mechanisms; some have small government agencies with limited and stretched resources to work on sustainable fisheries and marine resource management, whilst others have very large agencies and significant resources.

WWF is trying to understand its place in this growing imperative to support sustainable small-scale fisheries as part of the food security and development context for developing countries where we’re working in the region. We are looking at how we form strong partnerships and also be continually innovative in confronting the pressures impacting sustainability. Much discussion is taking place in the Coral Triangle region among concerned stakeholders, and within WWF, on what’s working effectively and what’s not, as well as what’s needed to take these efforts to a scale that’s going to enable coastal communities and their governments to better manage their resources and increase the sustainability of fish. That’s for the future of not just coastal communities, which are closest and often most dependent on the marine resources, but also for those of us who love our seafood and want to continue to be able to sit down to a delicious meal sourced from our oceans.

For many of us, eating a delicious fillet of snapper or fresh mussels is a luxury, but for millions of people around the coasts of the island nations that make up the Coral Triangle, that food is a necessity.

These issues and other related topics such as tackling Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) fishing through technology and traceability systems will also be on the agenda for a number of fora planned this year in the region, including the proposed 3rd Coral Triangle Fishers Forum and events to share lessons learned, encourage innovation, and build partnerships.

New year, new hope

In 2017, this critical issue of improving the sustainability of coastal and inshore fisheries for people in developing countries, like in the Coral Triangle, will no doubt be a very high priority and focus for many development organisations, governments, industries, and civil society organisations in the lead-up to the Sustainable Development Goal 14 Oceans conference in June.  

As a fitting example of how something small can tackle the big issues, Fiji is putting its hand up to co-host the inaugural SDG14 Oceans conference together with Sweden in New York. As if that wasn’t already a bold move, Fiji is also chairing the Council of Parties for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and is heading up the UN General Assembly.  

This tiny nation of less than a million people in the massive Pacific Ocean is willing to take on the big global challenges through a “think local, act global” philosophy, and play its role on the world stage to tackle head-on those issues which affect its own people and the future of the country.    

This proves that no matter how small or seemingly insignificant you think your contribution is, you can always make a big difference. Let’s make 2017 a collection of meaningful acts that, when put together, can create powerful waves of change.