Posted on noviembre, 10 2016

West Papua, Koon Island, and Cenderawasih National Park in Indonesia and the municipalities of Aborlan and Cagayancillo in Palawan, the Philippines—all located in the Coral Triangle—have been the sites of noteworthy marine protected area (MPA) success stories. These stories were shared recently at a two-hour workshop on “Innovation in Protecting Marine Ecosystems and Managing Fisheries and Tourism in the Coral Triangle—Collaborative Approaches,” conducted last 2 September during the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress 2016 in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The workshop was held in partnership with the Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries & Food Security (CTI-CFF), Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, and WWF.

The congress, held September 1-10, had as its theme “Planet at the Crossroads,” and revisited the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). More than 10,000 participants, including heads of state, government officials, scientists, and business leaders, attended the congress.

The workshop took off from the work currently being done by CTI-CFF partners to expand and strengthen MPAs to replenish fish stocks relied on by local communities and businesses. Time and again, experience has proven that collaborative management approaches, involving all stakeholders, are essential for MPAs to be effective, sustainably funded, and well-managed.

MPA managers, government officials, coastal resource owners and users, tourism and business workers, and fisheries authorities attended the workshop, which shared lessons from MPAs that were designed, established, and maintained as collaborative efforts. The workshop also aimed to encourage the expansion of such marine areas, to increase understanding of and drum up support for MPAs in order to counter marine biodiversity loss and fisheries decline, and to identify key lessons learned.

Three case studies were shared with the attendees. First was “The Bird’s Head Seascape: Designing for fisheries and tourism benefits in an Indonesian MPA Network,” presented by Laure Katz, Seascapes Director of Conservation International. Located in West Papua Province, Indonesia—an area now undergoing dramatic development—the seascape measures 22.5 million hectares, and is home to 12 MPAs with a combined area of 3.6 million hectares.

Empowered communities

The Bird’s Head Seascape Initiative was started 11 years ago to protect the area’s incredible biodiversity, with the vision that “empowered Papuan communities, governments, and local partners must protect their critical coastal and marine ecosystems, thereby protecting the single greatest reservoir of tropical marine species on the planet, while enhancing food security, livelihoods, and their traditional way of life,” Katz reported during the presentation.

Thanks to a concrete set of objectives on which the project design was based; capacity building for community members, local leaders, and stakeholders; and MPA co-management with funding from thriving tourism, poaching in the area has been reduced by over 90 per cent, and fish biomass increased 114 per cent.

The case study on Koon Island and Cenderawasih National Park in Indonesia was presented by Veda Santiadji, Coral Triangle Programme Support, WWF-Indonesia. In Koon Island, the Kataloka community has looped in the tourism industry to support fisheries improvement. In 2011, the community signed a marine conservation agreement with WWF to protect 2,076 hectares of reef fish habitats and spawning aggregation sites; fish aggregation almost quadrupled within the next three years.  

Most recently, a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) mechanism with the Jangkar Indonesian Liveaboard Association was instituted to generate an additional revenue stream for the local community from payments for accessing Koon Island’s waters.

Teluk Cenderawasih National Park, meanwhile, is the largest marine park in Indonesia, covering 1,453,500 hectares, established in 1993. After participatory mapping with WWF to identify critical areas and resources, regulations on coastal and marine resource management were finalised for six villages in 2015, and bomb and cyanide fishing, as well as fishing activities using liftnet, compressor, handspike, and trawling, were prohibited.

Benefits were evident after locals were trained in areas such as scuba diving, conducting basic ecological surveys and reef fish data collection, and resource use monitoring. Community patrols effectively increased park surveillance, with the support of local tour operators.

Finally, Jackie Thomas, Leader of the WWF Coral Triangle Coordination Team, presented “The Philippines: Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and Local Governance in Aborlan and Cagayancillo Municipalities in Palawan Province, Sulu Sea, Philippines” on behalf of WWF-Philippines.

Aborlan is home to the 12,000-hectare Seven Line coral reef, and was the first municipality to declare all 81,374 hectares of its municipal waters an MPA and fishery management area, known locally as an Integrated Coastal Resource Management (ICRM) area divided into core, buffer, and sustainable use zones. It is a fine example of a dynamic partnership between municipal, provincial, and village governments, NGOs, and the academe.

The community was galvanised mainly because of food security, to defend their waters against fishermen from other areas using destructive methods like dynamite and cyanide. Backed by a strong local government and scientific data from the local university, the ICRM area inevitably became a unifying effort. “Scientific information, together with local knowledge, can show the community what impacts of human activities are doing to their environment, and helps people understand the connectivity between these,” says Thomas. “This can help bring science together with community-based approaches or customary management systems.”

Cagayancillo, meanwhile, witnessed first-hand the benefits of MPA establishment with the Tubbataha Reefs Natural Marine Park, 97,030 hectares of MPA which fall under the municipality’s jurisdiction.

Tubbataha’s spillover had increased the locals’ fish catch since it was declared a no-take zone in 1988. In 2004, Cagayancillo declared its own MPAs; from 2007 to 2015, income of local fishers increased fivefold from seaweed farming, which also translated to reduced fishing pressure on nearby reefs. Recently, Cagayancillo declared a whopping one million hectares for management: 528,872 hectares as a municipal-wide MPA, and the remaining 484,462 hectares also declared to manage the zone between the municipal MPA and Tubbataha.

Aborlan and Cagayancillo can be considered models for MPA and fisheries management, Thomas declared in her presentation. Aborlan was a model of collaboration and consultation from the beginning, while Cagayancillo, after reaping the benefits of protection for years, turned its initial resentment of Tubbataha’s no-fishing policy into motivation to push for even broader stewardship.

Part of the process

“If a community is already seeing impacts on their marine resources, ideally they will want information on how to address the impacts, and that information could come from government sources, other communities taking measures to improve management of their reefs and coastal areas, or NGOs and other networks,” says Thomas of dealing with initial resistance against MPA establishment. “What is important is to assure communities and stakeholders that they are part of the process to determine what actions are needed to secure their marine resources for the long term. The approach should be bottom up, and inclusive of people’s needs and multiple objectives.”

The workshop ended with a unique community perspective from speakers Moira Dasipio, Vice President of Isabel Mothers' Union in the Solomon Islands, and Anastasia Kaue of Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea, who brought to the fore the role of women in conservation in communities and MPA management.

“Women are still under-represented when it comes to participation in natural resource management decision-making and governance,” notes Thomas. “However, we are seeing more and more women taking strong positions in their community processes in determining how their marine resources are managed. The CTI-CFF Women Leaders’ Forum is doing a great job of raising awareness on the importance of women in managing marine resources and making decisions on the future of their reefs and coastal areas.”

Gender equality and women’s empowerment have been proven to contribute to economic growth, sustainable development, and the stability of nations, confirms Thomas, who cites 2013 studies by Harper et al. stating that in the Pacific region, women account for 56 per cent of annual small-scale catches, resulting in revenue of US$110 million and a total economic impact of US$363 million. Thus, “recognizing and quantifying the role of women in fisheries has profound implications for poverty alleviation and development,” notes the study.

Reducing gender inequality in education is now viewed as a vital part of promoting development, according to the study. The failure to educate girls limits economic growth in the developing world by wasting human capital.

Thus, Thomas enumerates the elements that make an MPA truly sustainable: “Community involvement from the ground up, women’s participation in decision-making and management, strong local leadership, scientific information plus the importance of local knowledge on natural resource management, designing programmes with clear objectives, collaboration across government, communities, civil society, private sector, and academia, capacity building at all stages, communications and awareness, and monitoring and enforcement.

“MPAs are not just about marine conservation for biodiversity, but also for sustaining people, their food, their livelihoods, and their well-being,” Thomas concludes. “That’s why, by applying the principles of a sustainable and inclusive blue economy, we would be providing social and economic benefits for current and future generations in the Coral Triangle, by contributing to food security, poverty eradication, livelihoods, income, employment, health, safety, equity, and political stability.”