Small scale fishing communities were heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Reduced demand for seafood due to the disruption in distribution and decline in tourism led to reduced seafood prices, resulting in a significant drop in household income. Having access to alternative livelihoods and/or access to savings helped to mitigate this loss in income. 

Alternative livelihood programmes can increase local resilience to economic shocks. Alternatives accessed during the COVID-19 crisis included seaweed and sea cucumber farming, drying or smoking fish to preserve and store it until markets recover and collectors return.

Community-led savings and loans groups have provided a critical buffer against financial difficulties as they enable people to save money and access credit in remote areas where this would otherwise not be possible. These locally led community groups pool together their savings in order to address financial hardship and provide loans to those most in need within their group. 

In order to enable communities to engage in the complex, long term work of the sustainable management of marine resources, their basic needs must be addressed. Working across sectors to enable communities to meet their basic needs creates an enabling environment within which they are able to work towards longer term goals.

The need for a livelihood is addressed through Blue Ventures’ work to rebuild fisheries, and through livelihood diversification initiatives where appropriate. The unmet need for health care is addressed through supporting and strengthening local health systems, and through partnerships with health care providers.

Working in a multisectoral way creates efficiencies through the sharing of resources and opportunities across programmes. It provides opportunities to broaden community engagement and build trust, and experience has shown that it enables communities to better respond to shocks and stressors.

Our strong local presence, and emphasis on working in partnership with communities and local stakeholders to rebuild fisheries, has meant that much of the work has been able to continue in spite of travel restrictions and other disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Empowering communities to sustainably manage their own resources and health services has proven to be a more resilient approach to conservation in the context of this major shock. 

Communities have the most to gain from the effective management of natural resources (and good community health services), and the pandemic has served as a powerful reminder of the value of locally led approaches to marine conservation. 

This Building Block aimed to develop a multilingual storytelling tool to showcase both existing conditions and scenarios for the pilot in the Gulf of Guayaquil. The objective was to present the data and information in a simplified and interactive way, and as such to turn complex concepts into notions easily understood by all stakeholders.

This Building Block aimed to analyze potential future conditions of the Gulf of Guayaquil in order to build three scenarios by 2030: trend scenario; conservationist scenario; and integrated scenario. The developed scenarios DO NOT represent official proposals for the area; instead, they are a starting point for a multi-sectoral and cross-border dialogue about the desired future. A technical report was developed and made publicly available.

This Building Block aimed to analyze the current conditions of the Gulf of Guayaquil (historical bay shared by Ecuador and Peru) as an example that could be replicated in other cross-border areas. Policies, data and information on the marine environmental and main maritime uses were analyzed to identify use-use and use-nature conflicts and compatibilities, resulting in the development of a technical report publicly available.

Spatial data was compiled with the support of the National Focal Point of each country, who contacted and requested the data to the competent governmental authorities. A geodatabase with metadata was built and maps developed. Consultation activities (local and binational) were organized with stakeholders in order to review the maps and provide further information about conservation and sectoral issues. 

This BB aimed to structure the tasks related to stakeholder engagement and communication through the development of:

I) A Strategy for Public Participation based on:

• Three pillars: identification of stakeholders; engagement activities; and monitoring and evaluation of participation
• A two-way participatory approach: balance between top-down and bottom-up

II) A Communication and Dissemination Plan to set a unified tone and direction so that all activities, tools and materials work in harmony to create a shared vision to raise awareness of the initiative and its results. It also included monitoring of a number of metrics – through various channels and means – to evaluate the overall impact and success of communication and dissemination actions.

Standalone communication and dissemination plans, as well as engagement plans and reports were developed to guide and evaluate each activity implemented. The key messages from these reports were used as web news in order to communicate and report back to the stakeholders.

In the Southeast Pacific pilot, the following engagement activities were implemented:

• Stakeholder meetings, especially for the mapping exercise in the Gulf of Guayaquil
• Institutional workshops at national and regional levels
• Training courses for governmental authorities and sectoral stakeholders