¿Cómo promover la cooperación transfronteriza entre Estados miembros con diferentes prioridades de planificación, problemas de gestión y marcos de gobernanza distintos?

En este primer paso se realizó un diagnóstico integrado, desde el enfoque de los servicios ecosistémicos, centrado en el análisis de las interrelaciones entre los tres archipiélagos. Este análisis permitió identificar los asuntos de interés común y priorizar los de más fácil resolución como punto de partida para guiar los esfuerzos de cooperación. Además, se estudiaron los distintos marcos de gobernanza, nacionales entre España-Portugal pero también a nivel regional entre Azores-Madeira-Canarias, lo que permitió determinar las principales dificultades y limitaciones asociadas, que suponían un hándicap para la cooperación transfronteriza, al igual que las oportunidades y mecanismos existentes que pudieran facilitarla.

De forma paralela al trabajo técnico, resultó muy útil realizar un proceso participativo para incorporar la información de los actores sociales, económicos e institucionales de los diferentes archipiélagos. Lo anterior fue apoyado por un Atlas cartográfico con más de 200 mapas y su correspondiente visor en línea para visibilizar los distintos asuntos de cooperación, facilitando el resto de dinámicas de trabajo.

The Van Long Management Board, has the mandate to make decisions in VLNR. It is a multi-stakeholder Management Board and was established in 2001.

The principles and ethics of applying a cross-cultural approach were established at the outset. It was important that this was an Arakwal led process and they had a strong voice in setting up the collaboration framework. This included who the knowledge holders were, how information could be shared within the Arakwal community, within the joint management team and with the wider non-Aboriginal community, who had a say in prioritising values, how to engage the Arakwal and broader Byron Bay communities and the time frame that suited all participants. Arakwal rangers, Arakwal community, researchers and NPWS managers collaborated to identify a vision and shared purpose through a series of workshops. Together they developed the vision for the orchid and surrounding habitat, "this species and place is in healthy condition into the future, and that the areas and its values are cared for, learned about and used by the Arakwal people”.

CEJAD realized the value of engagement is very critical in getting various stakeholders with different needs to realign consequently unlocking resources as well as forge alliances for meaningful participatory development.

Forums were held in the community to ensure that public participation is at the heart of the marine plastic waste as well as getting community groups to own the problem and take charge.

This strand, the first to be developed, proposes to prepare a planning work that takes into account both production needs (current and future) and the context in which they are carried out. It requires visualization, through field and cabinet work (development of a GIS), of the characteristics of the landscape where the production is developed :environmental units, water basins, sectors under production, actual or planned infrastructure, critical or interesting habitats for nature conservation, topography, environmental and social environment of the property, local demographic pressures, connection of the territory with the categories of the Land-use Planning of Native Forests of the Province (OTBN for Argentina), other land-use regulations, etc.

To prevent mismanagement of plastics waste from reaching beaches and the marine environment, the investment of litter booms, traps, and other technological solutions is and still a priority.

The Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute (GCFI) supported technical assistance for stakeholder meetings to discuss sustainable finance strategies for marine protected areas in TCI in 2015. 

Possible strategies were formulated in consultation with stakeholders by using the Wolfs Company's Eco2Fin framework, an approach to assess current and potential financing streams based on context-specific conditions. This assessment revealed the diversity of fees and taxes charged to tourists, as well as the lack of earmarked government revenue for protected area management. It also concluded that tourism-related revenue offered untapped opportunities to finance marine protected areas, given that these contain key tourism assets such as coral reefs.

A subsequent analysis of TCI's legal framework provided recommendations on feasible mechanisms to increase budgetary allocations and earmark conservation funds for marine protected areas managers such as DECR. Strategic steps formulated to achieve the succesful implementation of these mechanisms included the development of a business case for increased funding of protected areas and key ecosystems such as coral reefs.

DECR is one of the main protected area managers in TCI. As a government department, DECR depends on funding allocated through a regular budget cycle. Although the government collects a number of fees and taxes that are linked to nature-dependent sectors such as tourism, none of these payments is earmarked to protected area management. Instead, these funds flow to the consolidated fund, from which they are redistributed across public entities.

Building a strong case for protected area management was fundamental for DECR to promote: 1. increasing funding through the regular budget cycle, and 2. earmarking of a portion of nature-related revenues.

To support DECR in this task, GCFI funded technical assistance for the estimation of budget needs and gaps for basic and optimal protected area management. In addition, an assessment of the tourism value of nature was conducted based on existing studies. By comparing these figures, DECR could show authorities that increasing funding was financially reasonable, given that its operating budget in the year under analysis (2015/2016) was 25 times smaller than the added value of nature for tourism and 30 times smaller than the nature-related tourism revenue for the government.

Creating dynamic plastic waste value chains through collaboration between local community groups (youth, women) and the hotel industry. Where community groups collect and sort the waste. The value of partnership is very critical in ensuring streamlining circularity as well as ensuring synergies are pulled concertedly.

Partnerships have been very key in getting stakeholder buy-in as well as ownership on the project. The proposition in the partnerships aimed to decentralize the ownership of the eco-points, spur collections rates and develop a seamless sustainable plastic waste value chain. 

During the last 12 months, 3R established various partnerships with different stakeholders. One of the partnerships was with an NGO, ParCo, whereby they established two eco-points, to receive and buy plastic waste from the local community waste pickers.