Goals

• Improving the knowledge about threatened species by conducting targeted research and monitoring.    
• Involving local communities in the management of coastal and marine resources, biotopes, and threatened populations.

Process

A workshop was organized to launch the project and to establish a climate of trust between the stakeholders. At least 50 representatives of the Gendarmerie, the Maritime Fisheries Department of the High Commissariat for Water and Forests and Desertification, the local fishing communities and the NGO AGIR joined the participatory workshop.

A multiparty caretaking committee was elected to involve all stakeholders. The committee is presided by the Governor of Al Hoceima Province.

The AGIR team and the fishermen are equipped to participate in a study of monitoring and participatory evaluation regarding the conservation state of resources and habitat. Monitoring of threatened flagship species is led in coordination with the relevant authorities.

Weekly field trips were organized for the monitoring of the surveillance and control program of illegal activities within the MPA.

A scientific report reflects on the new conservation state (habitat restauration, threatened species, and marine resources). 

The rules and regulations of the closure need to be decided upon in a village meeting setting, encouraging participation by as many people as possible to ensure a high level of community ownership and support. If the regulations are not widely agreed upon as fair, they will be very difficult to enforce. Once the community is satisfied with the rules and regulations for the closure, locals laws should be discussed openly and agreed upon. Fines should be an amount that is realistic for fishers to pay, but large enough to effectively discourage theft. It is also important to determine procedures for enforcement of the local laws at the time of its creation to avoid future delays and/or confusion if an infraction is observed. The concept of local laws is often familiar in Madagascar, and there may already be an established procedure for enforcement. In such a case, it is best to work with well-established procedures. Local laws should be formalised in regional courts to ensure legality as well as to provide strong institutional backing if a local law infraction needs to be taken to court.

Communities select a target species for temporary closures. This should be short lived and fast growing to allow clear benefits to fisher catches, and preferably economically important to ensure financial returns on the opening. A second step is selecting the area to be closed. Communities discuss and agree site selection and fishing area with the establishment of the closure. Closures are better-suited to smaller villages to avoid them being overfished on opening day. Good collaboration between villages for surveillance and benefit-sharing at opening. Consult with commercial seafood buyers prior to closure implementation, to ensure that they are aware of the closure and supportive. If they are not supportive, they may encourage fishers not to respect the closures, or refuse to buy catches from closure-implementing villages. They also need to be ready to process a glut of seafood on opening day, which can present logistical challenges. Decide on timing of closure and opening. Seasonal variations in fishing and resource use patterns may mean that an area is only suitable for closure establishment during certain times of the year.

The slow growth rates of sponges and the seasonal variations given in Zanzibar require evaluation periods of at least two years to allow a judgement for a sponge species’ suitability. The process comprises several phases:

• Collection of specimens of different sponge species in the wild (totally, more than 100 species were found and tested).
• Evaluation of each species’ suitability as bath- or cosmetic sponges (e.g. consistency, hardness, water absorption capacity, attractiveness). Promising samples were directly taken to potential customers to evaluate market acceptance.
• Growth tests of promising candidates (e.g. growth behaviour, growth rate, pest resistance, susceptibility to algal growth).
• Candidates will be subjected to propagation and farming tests (questions to be answered were: can the sponges be efficiently multiplied via segmentation; what are the chances of survival for a cutting; do the cuttings grow fast enough; how much maintenance is required; is the process profitable etc.)

From 1991-1994 Chumbe Island Coral Park Limited (CHICOP) successfully negotiated with the semi-autonomous government of Zanzibar, Tanzania for the western coral reef and forest of Chumbe Island to be gazetted as an MPA, with management of the MPA entrusted to CHICOP. The company was specifically established for the purpose of developing and managing the MPA financially self-sustainably, utilizing ecotourism to generate revenue for all MPA operational costs and associated conservation, research and education activities. Through this Chumbe became the first managed marine park in Tanzania, the first privately managed MPA in the world, and to date is one of the only financially self-sustainable MPAs globally. The company objectives are not-for-profit, implementing conservation and education initiatives over more than 20 years under the framework of two management plan iterations that were developed with wide stakeholder participation (1995-2005 and 2006-2016). Ecotourism business operations follow commercial principles for maximizing revenue and promoting cost-effectiveness to ensure a sustainable revenue stream for MPA activities, exemplifying a successful business-oriented approach to sustainable and effective MPA management.

The conservation and management programme formalizes jointly agreed regulations. It contains various sub-programmes with defined objectives, actions and guidelines to improve the state of conservation and management.

To receive federal government funding from the National Commission on Protected Areas and other supporters, the enterprise must demonstrate its environmental and social benefits (as detailed in the business plan) alongside the ability to be self-sustaining within a given period of time. The grant is used to purchase necessary equipment and train staff.

By interviewing stakeholders who are depending on the ecosystem in question for their income (e.g. dive shop owners, fishers, tourists and other tourism industry) and the use of complementary data, a compelling picture of the importance of healthy marine ecosystems for the economy can be painted, e.g. through displaying the expected annual revenues in the different commercial sectors related to the coral reef. This valuation method is based on an approach developed by the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) and the World Resource Institute’s (WRI) Coastal Capital Project. Moreover, the use of questionnaires supports awareness building among the various stakeholders being interviewed and initiates a dialogue about the importance of conservation and sustainable management.