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An Abundant
Catch of Lessons Learned on Coral Reef
Management
In declaring 2008 the International Year of the Reef, its
sponsors called, not just for increased awareness of the value of
coral reefs and associated ecosystems, but for simple actions that
benefit them. While hardly simple, one action taken recently by the
WorldFish Center - a comprehensive analysis of numerous major
projects - should yield significant benefits through improved reef
management.
 Heeding the call to action
Since the early 1990s, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) has
invested more than US$320 million in projects aimed at enhancing
the management of coral reef, seagrass and mangrove habitats. Many
of those projects form part of an overall investment of more than
$600 million in coastal-marine initiatives. Such efforts reflect a
significant commitment to sustainable development of coral reefs
and of the tropical marine ecosystems associated with them as well
as to conservation of the rich biodiversity they harbor.
Now that the projects have built up a considerable body of
experience, it was deemed appropriate, indeed necessary, to
identify best practices, based on lessons learned over more than a
decade. GEF assigns high priority to this strategic task, because
it is critical for raising returns on future investments.
Toward that end, WorldFish researchers analyzed 30 GEF-funded
projects plus another 26 supported by other agencies. The chief
objective was to translate lessons learned into good practices and
information sources, which can then be used globally to improve
project design and implementation in the coming years. While
previous studies have extracted lessons learned from specific
projects, this was the first comprehensive and systematic analysis
of a large and diverse array of projects on coral reefs.
Many of the projects covered by this review responded to a
previous call to action, issued by the International Coral Reef
Initiative (ICRI) upon its creation in 1995. ICRI, which sponsors
the International Year of the Reef, is a partnership of
governments, international institutions and nongovernment
organizations. One of the four key themes of ICRI's call to
action involves review and evaluation of efforts to improve reef
management. The WorldFish study thus represents an important
contribution, promising to making future actions more
effective.
Rainforests of the sea
Coral reefs have received much attention lately, because they
are exceedingly rich in marine biodiversity, ranking among the
world's top conservation priorities. They are also among the
earth's most productive ecosystems, providing a unique set of
goods and services, which include food, livelihoods and protection
of coastal areas. With an estimated total value of $375 billion per
year, those goods and services are extremely important for hundreds
of millions of people in thousands of communities around the
world.
Two-thirds of all reefs belong to developing countries, with a
third found in Southeast Asia alone. People there depend on fish
and other reef organisms for a quarter of their food supply and up
to 60 percent of their protein. The region's "Coral
Triangle" provides a home for more than 150 million people,
with several million depending directly on marine resources for a
livelihood.
Ninety percent of the coral reefs in Southeast Asia have been
heavily damaged or are seriously endangered. More than half of the
world's reefs, often referred to as the "rainforests of
the sea," are at risk from the effects of disease, pollution,
overharvesting of fish and other organisms, natural disasters and
climate change. Particularly ominous are threats arising from
outside reef areas. Climate change, for example, is expected to
have a profound effect on reefs and on the people who depend on
their resources.
A key part of the WorldFish Center's effort to protect coral
reefs consists of a strategically important information service
called ReefBase. The team that developed and maintains this service
received the CGIAR's Outstanding Scientific Support Team Award
in 2007. ReefBase holds vital information on 10,000 highly
vulnerable reef ecosystems in 40 countries, including maps, risk
assessment indicators and details on global reef-monitoring
activities.
Keys to project success
The insights, lessons learned and recommendations generated by
the WorldFish Center study represent a valuable addition to the
pool of knowledge available to managers of projects on coral reefs.
The study's findings are organized around a set of general
issues, which particularly concern project staff in their work with
poor communities at mostly remote locations.
In commenting on project design and management, for example, the
authors underscore the importance of local participation from the
start for ensuring that the work is based on realistic assumptions
(e.g., about local capacity and infrastructure) and can thus be
more readily sustained in the future. Similarly, as projects go
forward, community-based management approaches - like participatory
establishment of protected areas and monitoring of natural
resources - are essential to foster local ownership of new
arrangements for reef management.
Such projects cannot operate in a vacuum, especially if they are
based on an integrated approach to coastal and watershed management
and even more so if they use community-based approaches. Rather,
they must build linkages across development sectors and actively
promote multi-stakeholder collaboration, if they are to manage
effectively the conflicts that arise between different user groups
(e.g., fisheries and tourism) and between different government
departments with overlapping mandates in coastal areas.
The WorldFish report strong recommends that coral reef projects
be managed from a holistic, ecosystem perspective. Such an approach
takes into account, not just the immediate local pressures on
people and coral reef resources, but other threats in the
surrounding environment, which are often major drivers of change
within the project area.
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