1. An initial online application that ensures there are no fundamental prohibitive issues.
2. A candidacy review of the initial application is carried out by impartial representatives.
3. Technical advice to discuss and advise on areas for improvement and on how to submit an application with the greatest chance of success.
4. Final application including supporting evidence, a justification for the geographical delineation of the site and a detailed explanation of how the site achieves each of the criteria.
5. If successful, Whale Heritage Site (WHS) designation. It must then prepare and submit annual reports explaining how criteria are met.
By going through the accreditation process, The Bluff had to show that they could ensure responsible, sustainable practices and livelihoods would be continually improved thus ensuring the health and welfare of whales, dolphins and porpoises and their ocean habitats.
They were assessed against conditions including supportive legislation, culture, as well as environmental, social and economic sustainability.
They had to provide supporting evidence including statistics relevant to livelihoods, cultural activities, tourists visiting the area, whale-watch tour operators, protected areas, etc.
The Bluff was also obliged to show that community-based research, education, and awareness activities were being conducted.
Having a clear goal with a clear path towards it, is essential. For a program such as the Whale Heritage site accreditation, there are high standards that must be achieved but there must be a supportive process to help a community navigate their way through it and ultimately achieve that status.
Local stakeholder steering group and community empowerment
The building block is built on the principle that a community based initiative to protect cetaceans and their habitats is best done when owned by the local communities itself. It incentivizes, empowers and engages a community and its businesses so that they benefit directly from a healthy and thriving ocean.
To coordinate and facilitate the development of a WHS initiative, a steering committee is formed by local stakeholders. These are enthusiastic, creative and passionate individuals who steer the process and help launch, maintain, and sustain the application process.
An effective WHS steering committee should be fully diverse and inclusive and representative of the community and include staff, volunteers, and community members. Its purpose is to serve as a mobilizing force, not a bureaucracy. Making the process meaningful and purposeful for everyone involved. Within the process there is guidance on establishing sub-committees or workgroups to focus on specific goals and activities.
As well as leading and manageing the process of application, the steering committee must show continual improvement across the community with its various initiatives, through annual reporting as a measure of WHS's excellence.
It took 2 years and the collaborative efforts of a local steering committee, made up of dedicated and passionate local stakeholder partners (individuals and local organisations), for The Bluff to achieve Whale Heritage Site status. Committee members now work together for positive change. Meeting on a regular basis and continually striving toward the ultimate goal of putting The Bluff front and centre for the conservation and preservation of cetaceans and all the benefits that this provides for the community.
Enabling and empowering a community to work together requires a clear direction, benefits, and a core team of dedicated stakeholders to drive the project forward locally. It must be community owned at every stage of the process and be fully representative of the community, its needs, its vision and its priorities.
Local stakeholder steering group and community empowerment
Accreditation process
Livelihood strategies
The work of the Sanghatan is merely to empower the Van Gujjars within the Chaur by propagating techniques of breed conservation but are not directly involved with the day-to-day milk trade and profit. Nonetheless, the Sanghatan keeps a tab on the number of bulls, young calves, pregnant buffaloes, and those which produce milk on a monthly basis. Out of the 1528 buffaloes raised within the Chaur, around 475 buffaloes at present produce milk during this season. On a daily basis, a total of 700-800 litres of milk is collected in this season but this number rises to 1100-1200 litres in winters as it is the season when buffaloes give birth to young calves.
The Sanghatan has demarcated the grassland into three areas namely Miya Bazaar, Nahar ke peeche compartment and Majhada (Islands on the floodplains of Ganges). All these three areas are utilized as per seasonal variation to ensure there is timely regeneration of grass and other vegetation.
The Sanghatan is keen to promote the natural growth of forests in the region to ensure the indigenous Gojri breed need not have to rely upon purchased fodder from the market. With the use of such natural fodder, the Van Gujjars are able to maintain the nutritious value of their milk. The Sanghatan believes by adopting such sustainable processes for ensuring high quality of milk is enhancing the identity of their produce which has benefited several members to procure a reasonable and equitable market price for their commodity. The Sanghatan is keen to build on the goodwill of producing unadulterated and nutritious milk, unlike commercial dairy, which has additional health benefits for the populace consuming them.
The Van Gujjar Tribal Yuva Sanghatan has initiated several initiatives for the youth amongst them to turn towards education, both from schools as well as self—study groups which also initiate them towards traditional knowledge protection, bird watching, nature guiding, outdoor education through trails and games, handicrafts and cultural orientation of the community, to preserve their forest identities. The tribal identity is further promulgated in their sincere efforts to file for individual and community claims through the Forest Rights Act, 2006 as well as initiate community restoration drives, practices of herd mobility by empowering pastoral opportunities, prepare forest fire prevention squads and protect forests from poachers and cattle smugglers. They have currently undertaken a project to document the traditional knowledge and ecosystem benefits of 20 species of flora, which have food, medicinal, household or cultural uses for the community.
The Van Gujjar Tribal Yuva Sanghatan has ensured members of the community do not engage in intermixing of breeds and promote the security and preservation of the indigenous Gojri breed within this landscape. The community is keen to safeguard its traditional knowledge, customary practices and cultural values. The Van Gujjars are also cultivating new ways to undertake conservation drives through initiatives like Saila Parv that ensure trees beneficial to the livestock are planted.
It is hopeful that this activity of the Sanghatan will be incentivized by the Forest Department to ensure better management of the common pastures. The Sanghatan is willing to cooperate with all government and non-government institutions that are keen to propagate sustainable protection of the grassland through participative means to further its efforts in breed conservation and pasture management. It is also hopeful that the Sanghatan will soon form a cooperative of its own to ensure the breed finds viable means to develop and cherish with a complete agency of the Van Gujjars. Pastoralism as a livelihood needs a fillip through identifying such conservation strategies amidst humans, their livestock and other coexisting wild animals within the grassland. Several activities of the Sanghatan have ensured that coupled with the breed, several other species of fauna find utilization of the common property resource within which the Van Gujjars reside.
Restoration of Chilghoza forest ecosystem in Suleman range, Balochistan province, Pakistan
Rehabilitation of the irrigation system to mobilise alternative sources of income
The district's damaged irrigation canal had led to a loss of income from agricultural activities. The community could not afford maintenance. With the support of the programme, the irrigation system was put back into operation and the residents were able to successfully resume the cultivation of maize, barley and vegetables the following year. The financing of the 1.5km long canal provided a sustainable alternative source of income.
Technical and financial support to meet genuine needs.
Support to meet genuine needs helps mobilize local communities.
Restoration of Chilghoza forest ecosystem in Suleman range, Balochistan province, Pakistan
Participative dispute management
Out of several other potential solutions, the one that really worked was embedded deep in the community norms and culture. In order to solve longstanding communal conflicts that hindered the restoration of land and protection of the Chilgoza forest ecosystem, the programme seek consultation and advice from representatives and heads of the involved communities. Starting with a smaller group of forest owner families in conflict over an abandoned piece of communal agricultural land, the programme was able to set an successful example for a dispute settlement approach in the region that enabled further landscape restoration activities.
Trust of local community, participation of community leaders and government support.
The programmes facilitation to use local knowledge for identification of a solution supporting their culture and norms was crucial.
Figure 3: Results of protection reef efficiency, before (left) and after (right) reef deployment in the Côte Bleue Marine Park. around the vicinity of Couronne no-takes reserve (red lines corresponds to illegal trawling roads within the 5.5 km area; black
PMCB
Main marine habitat of Marine Park: coralligenous reefs
J.G. Harmelin/PMCB
Apart from creation of 2 no-takes reserves, the originality of PMCB is the use of artificial reefs, with the deployment of 4.884 m3, both for production and protection against illegal trawling. The success of protection reefs is showed on Figure 3, with the road of illegal trawling plotted before (1995) and after reef deployment and creation of the no-take reserve in Couronne (1997). The results are the decreasing of fishing pressure on the coastal band, by removal illegal trawling activities, witch are not selective (a lot of juveniles are caught) and mortality by fishing juveniles is the principal factor of the falling of catches. The efficiency of anti-trawling reefs allowed a better sharing of space and resources between local fishermen. It help traditional small scale fisheries (gillnet, trammel net, hook on line) who have selective techniques (catch only adults and thus facilitating conservation of fishing resources) The other essential effect of protection reefs is to preserve the most productive and fragile natural habitats (Posidonia meadows and coralligenous reefs) from mechanical destruction by trawlers. These damages have important ecological and economic repercussions, because these habitats serving for spawning, nurseries, recruitment and feeding areas for the most part of the exploited resources.
The willingness of local artisanal small-scale fishers to avoid illegal trawling into the 3 NM, in particular on sensitive habitats. Fishers decided themselves to create a second no-take reserve in PMCB in 1996: Couronne (210 ha), who is in vicinity of a Cape, with high biodiversity and rich exploited resources, particularly a famous spawning area for seabass during winter. Fishers wanted to protect the no-take reserve with a complementary deployment of anti-trawling reefs around and inside the reserve.
An adaptive management is necessary and the PMCB was built on the strengths and weaknesses of local context: artificial reefs have played a role in resolving the antagonisms and conflicts between small-scale fisheries and illegal trawling fisheries.
In the Côte Bleue Marine Park, the two categories of artificial reefs (production and protection reefs) are not dissociable of the two no-takes reserves. These management tools worked in an additional way and contributed to the preservation of the traditional small scale fisheries on the Côte Bleue territory, while these fishing activities are decreasing in the nearby zones.
Artificial reefs worked well and protection reefs played a police role 24h/24 and the deployment of 326 heavy modules creating 17.5 km of barriers allows to reduce illegal fishing, protect natural sensitive habitats and permits a better sharing of space and resources between fisheries.
