Community Engagement in Restoration Implementation Session 1

Heirs To Our Oceans is not just a global movement empowering youth to protect their oceans and waters for their generation, it is a representative of how the education system must change to prepare our kids as they will inherit the problems our oceans face including the coral crisis. 14 year old Charley Peebler, a Founding Heir who focuses on coral outside of brick-and-mortar schools, learning from experts in the field, and speaking publicly nationally and internationally on the subject, both the problems and solutions, will share about how she learns is most effective in creating change for the next generation. Accompanying Charley will be a teen from the Republic of Palau who will share his story in facing the problems corals face and how as an islander the schools have removed him from his waters, the vast ocean laboratory that is not accessible to him in his learning. The challenge is no different in the middle of Kansas as it is in the islands of our oceans -- our youth have been extracted from their waters and oceans due to our education system that is not preparing the next generation to adequately process solutions for ocean challenges. Heirs To Our Oceans is working toward a prototype school where youth partner with coral restoration aquarist such that the kids are not only learning about the real world problems their oceans face but are also learning through an interdisciplinary curriculum in which they are actively attempting to solve the issue.

CORAL RESTORATION IN MARINE PROTECTED AREAS, SUSTAINABILITY FOR WHO? A STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS OF FACTORS OF SUCCESS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF ‘RECEPIENTS’ Daryl McPhee, Lynne Armitage, Igo Gari, Faculty of Society and Design, Bond University, 14 University, Robina, Queensland 4226, Australia Sustainability remains a challenge despite significant investments in developing countries and this research aims to examine the factors that contribute to or impede project sustainability from the perspective of ‘recipients’ in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Stakeholders have varied perceptions of what sustainability means and how to achieve it. Understanding sustainability in projects and using that understanding to bring maximum benefit to the recipients of a project would be the ideal option. The best and possibly the only way sustainability can be realised is through relevant projects that transform decision-making, community consultation and participation, and on-ground actions. Importantly, these projects need to demonstratively improve the standard of living for citizens. Furthermore, they should also have a lasting effect or continue beyond the formal completion of the project itself. In January, 2018, the researcher planted 500 coral fragments in a Marine Protected Area in Bootless Bay, PNG as part of his PhD research to test ‘rural livelihood sustainability’. The objective is to promote awareness, conservation, sustainable management of marine ecosystem and create local economic opportunities while ensuring food security and creating a platform for scientific research. This project is the researcher’s way of giving back to his local village. There have been several publications by international development organizations that have contributed to and share a common understanding of sustainability and the key factors that affect project sustainability. However, the focus has been mainly from the perspective of the funding authorities and project teams and not from the beneficiary governments and communities. Thus, there is lack of knowledge on what defines sustainability in rural development projects. The results and findings of this research will increase knowledge on sustainability and assist stakeholders in future decision-making processes and actions in rural development in the Pacific. The study has the potential to influence policy and project management research. igo.gari@student.bond.edu.au

Colombia’s largest coral rehabilitation project is currently taking place in the Archipelago of San Andres, Providencia and Santa Catalina, Colombia. This Archipelago, a pluri-ethnic territory, is part of the Seaflower Biosphere Reserve and comprises an MPA with the same name. The Archipelago’s predominant income comes from tourism, having almost a million visitors each year, attracted mainly by the white beaches, the clear and warm waters and the vibrant and colorful underwater life. The coral reef ecosystem highly supports the economy, food security and wellbeing of the islands and has experienced severe degradation over the last decades due to anthropogenic impacts. As a response, the first large-scale reef restoration program following the coral gardening concept is being implemented by a group of governmental and non-governmental organizations. Project’s main objective is to intervene selected degraded reef areas to accelerate natural recovery and enhance adaptation to climate change. Additionally, it intends to achieve great social impact by engaging the local community in the decision-making process, building capacity among local leaders and developing a business model that will provide for alternative likelihoods for community members. As for community involvement in decision-making, a program will be carried out with relevant social actors in which a number of workshops and south-south exchanges will result in the selection of the intervention sites and the development of a management plan for the designated rehabilitation areas. This will include managing solutions regarding protection, threat mitigation, law enforcement, research and education. For this, a Conservation Coach will mediate the process using the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation, a tool for conservation project planning and executing. We expect a cross-sector participation so the interests of the overall community are metand the intervened area is effectively rehabilitated.

The coral gardening concept which follow terrestrial standards for massive cultivation and transplants had varios scientific applications during the las two decades. Nevertheless, few investigation had tried to establish management tools for its use as an educative tool and a community based plan for citizen conservation. While scientific development of coral nurseries cultivation and transplant as conservation and restoration beneficiary increase, tools for application through the civil community are important to achieve goals of massive, constant "reforestation" work. The Calipso Foundation for Reef Conservation Efforts had worked since 2011 on tools for community participation in reef restoration activities. During that time few SCUBA diving courses were evaluated as promoters of reef conservation and educative tools that can facilitate manpower for long term reef restoration projects, managed by coastal communities. Courses such as Coral Gardener and Coral Reef indicators identification, had derived a lot of attention and received help from dive centers, tourists and the local fishermen community in Taganga. The practical part of the course help to reduce significantly the cost of restoration work and amplify the benefits furthermore than coral coverage and volume gain to a massive local interest in transforming activities in the Taganga bay to a community based management marine area. The data collection and analysis evaluation had focused in standardized work of ecological volume, while measuring the donors colonies (purely corals of opportunity) and comparing it to corals volume in one year cultivation and after transplantation (two years in the natural habitat). The result is an easy control tool of coral gardeners that can be used by local authorities to supervise community based restoration work, as the results suggest SIGNIFICANT increment in ecological volume (including nurseries and transplantation mortalities) and low managing costs through stakeholders participation that can not be ignored as a posible management tool.

CLEAR Caribbean has been implementing coral restoration projects inside marine protected areas in St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines in partnership with local communities and the private sector. Several nurseries were established in 2017 for Acropora palmata and Acropora cervicornis and outplanting was initiated in early 2018. The focus has been on encouraging community engagement by providing mechanisms and incentives for training and active participation. The paper will outline the main ecological and social achievements to date, as well as the strategies being developed for scaling-up restoration efforts.

Coral nurseries have expanded throughout the Caribbean, and many now have the ability to outplant tens of thousands of corals annually. Nevertheless, these efforts are inadequate to address coral losses from bleaching, disease, hurricanes and other stressors due to resource and capacity limitations, and challenges in propagating slower-growing coral species. Dive operators recognize the need to rehabilitate damaged reefs, as it is in their long term marketing interests and they benefit when their customers are aware that they are proactively conserving their reefs. Yet, reef restoration is often seen as prohibitively expensive, technically difficult, and beyond the scope of these businesses. Through adoption of a business model that encourages dive operators to rehabilitate reefs as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR), restoration practitioners can work with these operations to establish coral nurseries adjacent to reefs frequented by tourists, and transfer the knowledge, care and ownership of the nurseries to those businesses. By promoting low-tech, low-cost, “adopt a reef” coral nursery programs, tourism enterprises will be more engaged in coral reef conservation, and can use their marketing and CSR leverage to expand awareness of and support for these efforts, thereby increasing the scale of reef restoration. This approach can transform the marketing benefits of enterprise tourism CSR into a framework to expand reef restoration with mutual benefits to 1) management agencies attempting to optimize resource integrity through active rehabilitation, 2) enterprise partners by ensuring customer satisfaction with their operations, 3) restoration practitioners by increasing the commercial potential of coral restoration outplanting, and 4) local communities and recreational divers through increased awareness and community engagement in restoration work.