A science-based monitoring protocol for hydrological, chemical and biological parameters enables the detection of changes over time, thereby increasing the effectiveness of restoration actions.
Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMAs) are zones managed by coastal communities to help protect fisheries and safeguard biodiversity. Through the use of Dina – customary laws that are recognised by the Government of Madagascar –partner communities have designed effective rules that can be enforced locally to ban destructive fishing practices, protect endangered species and designate priority marine areas for protection. To ensure the long-term financial sustainability of LMMAs, a variety of mechanisms including marine ecotourism programmes, seafood supply chain incentive schemes, eco-certifications for sustainable fisheries, and payment for ecosystem services are developed. Velondriake is Madagascar’s first LMMA where elected representatives from 25 villages have put in place a management plan that includes permanent reserves, temporary octopus fishery closures, community-based aquaculture of seaweed and sea cucumbers, all regulated through a series of locally developed and enforced rules (Dina). Preliminary protected status was granted by the Government of Madagascar in 2010 and definitive protected status was successfully acquired in 2015.
Community motivation for creating LMMAs has been established throughtemporary octopus fishery closures, which boost octopus landings and fisher incomes. The legal basis for LMMAs is the use of Dina – customary laws recognised by the Government – with additional frameworks allowing LMMAs to be formally designated as community managed protected area. Effective community management is supported through Madagascar’s national LMMA network, which facilitates exchanges and forums to share experiences.
Managing fisheries and marine resources works best when responsibility is placed in the hands of local communities. This is particularly true in low-income countries where there is often limited capacity and infrastructure for fisheries management and marine conservation. Our experience in Madagascar has shown that peer-to-peer learning is a highly effective tool for building local capacity and confidence in marine conservation.
The purpose of this building block is to provide Blue Ventures’ partner community members with positive experiences of marine management, demonstrating that it can yield tangible economic benefits in reasonable timeframes. The short-term octopus fishery closure model involves periodic closures of a portion of a village’s octopus gleaning grounds. At any communally agreed time, up to a quarter of a community’s fishing area may be closed for around three months. This approach has been shown to result in dramatic increases in octopus landings and improved fisher incomes when closed areas are reopened to fishing (Oliver et al., 2015), thereby sparking and building enduring support for more ambitious marine management efforts (including the creation of permanent marine reserves within locally managed marine areas) that are led by communities, for communities. By returning meaningful economic benefits in timeframes that work for traditional fishers, these temporary octopus fishery closures inspire local leadership in marine conservation. The approach depends on and benefits from broad support from the entire seafood supply chain, with fishers and buyers now contributing to the modest costs of establishing and managing the closures.
Support from seafood collection and export companies, as they coordinate their collection schedules with the reopening of closures and pay a premium price for octopus on the opening days.
Leadership of the village president, who mobilised his community to experiment with closures. When the fishing ground reopened, the village experienced increases in both octopus landings and fisher incomes. As news of this fishery boom spread, neighbouring communities started adopting the approach.
This building block works by demonstrating that fisheries management can yield meaningful economic benefits for communities and seafood buyers, in realistic timescales. Only by making this connection can marine conservation be sustained and scaled beyond its current limited scope. We started in Andavadoaka monitoring the state of coral reefs but soon realised that we needed to address pressing community concerns about food security and livelihoods before having a conversation about marine conservation. This is why we started with a temporary octopus fishery closure in a portion of a single village’s fishing grounds and discovered that this provided an effective foot-in-the-door for marine conservation by inspiring communities to engage in more ambitious management efforts. Thus, we started with what was important for communities and saw that lead to a more sustainable and socially meaningful form of management than traditional top-down protection efforts.
Family planning and community health service delivery
Community health worker training session
Family planning client with contraceptive pills
Condom outreach in village bar
The purpose of this building block is to provide all of Blue Ventures’ partner community members with access to voluntary family planning and other basic health services. In collaboration with Population Services International we have trained and are currently supporting networks of local women to offer family planning information and short-term contraceptives (condoms, hormonal pills and injections) in their villages. We also partner with Marie Stopes Madagascar to offer long-acting reversible contraceptives (hormonal implants and intra-uterine devices) on a regular basis. Our community-based distributors of contraceptives are also trained and supported to provide antenatal and postnatal education, mosquito nets, water purifying solution, oral rehydration salts and antenatal medication.
We established this community health and family planning initiative in direct response to unmet needs articulated by local women and girls. Our strong and trusting relationships with coastal communities, built through several years of working alongside them on fisheries management and marine conservation efforts, enabled us to expand our programmes to include reproductive health with their full support. We were able to leverage our existing operational infrastructure and human resources to pilot this initiative at a very low cost.
Our experience demonstrates how collaborating with health agencies, and drawing on existing operational infrastructure and strong community relations can establish a low cost and locally responsive health programme.
Integrated community outreach combining health and environment topics: we have experimented with a variety of approaches and found small group discussions to be particularly effective. In the early days we focused more on mass mobilisation events which were good for raising awareness but less appropriate for stimulating deeper discussion and behaviour change / community ownership.
Building effective cross-sector partnerships: we have learned that open lines of communication are important for building trust. This included us (as a conservation organisation) affirming our commitment to upholding reproductive rights which is often a major concern of health partners. Cross-training allows conservation partners/staff to understand and support the health work and vice versa.
