The project core team approached two municipal governments, the regional hotel associations, almost 40 hotel owners and managers, technical institute faculty and architects, and engineers’ associations to assess their interests in participating in the project. Partners organized panels and meetings to present the project, its importance and forms of participation. This phase was critical to fully involve interest groups - not only to provide information, but more importantly, to increase their willingness to use the results. Stakeholders participated in the kick off process, provided information, reviewed results, revised each identified practice, and are currently involved in catalog dissemination.

Development of the best practices catalog was facilitated by a core team of experienced partners, each one with a distinct role and niche. A team charter details each partner’s role and responsibilities. The core partners were: The state environmental agency, which aims to reduce risks to coastal communities and the tourism industry. The agency was key to align partners’ interests but did not participate in the core team. A regional tourism initiative, which has worked for 10 years in the area to reduce tourism impacts on the environment. The initiative has developed catalogs of best practices, provided training and technical assistance, and serves on technical committees to review municipal land use zoning. The local architecture school trains both students and professionals, and works with municipalities to improve urban conditions, land use zoning and building codes. The school involved faculty and students from ocean management, biology, and engineering sectors, and provided faculty time and facilities. A global NGO partner developed tools to assess coastal climate change risks and to promote the use of natural defenses. The organization helped form alliances and partnerships, and provided funding to conduct the process.

A pluralistic governance board is typically composed of representatives from local authorities, government departments and agencies, local communities and sometimes business organisations and is established during a negotiation process. The board is responsible for making joint decisions about issues raised regarding natural resource conservation. Its role is steering the implementation of the co-management agreement and review of the co-management results and impacts based on monitoring. The pluralistic governance board is an essential element to turn the idea of "sharing power" from theory into practice. This distinguishes it from centralized or private management where only one partner assumes the responsibility for making decisions.

The co-management agreement is a document consisting of everything agreed to during the negotiation process including management and governance elements. It can be seen as written evidence of the partnership among local actors. The management part specifies the six ‘W’: who can do what, where, when, how and how much. It provides general conditions; specifies natural resource management rules and regulations in each zone, rewards, penalties, the reporting schedule and implementation terms and monitoring. The governance part specifies key actors for decision making and their responsibilities.

The negotiation process consists of three key aspects:

• Organizing for partnership: this starts with consultation with all stakeholders about the co-management concept. When they understand and see the need to create the co-management partnership among actors, they should be organised to be ready for the negotiation of the agreement. The organisation aspect is essential to turn passive individuals in the community into an organised group with a common vision and to ensure high level of participation.
• Negotiating the co-management agreement and shared governance institution: This is the practice of power sharing among actors. Through negotiation, different actors express their concerns and contribute their ideas on how natural resources should be managed and conserved. Governance issues such as who can make decisions and what responsibilities and accountabilities are for each actors are also negotiated.
• Learning by doing: the negotiation process is not a linear process but spiral loops of implementing the agreement, sustaining the functioning of the shared governance institution, continuing the monitoring and reviewing of their results and impacts through time and providing inputs for renewal of the agreement.

The MAR Leadership programme seeks to incubate new project ideas into projects with the potential for replication (scaling-up) along the Mesoamerican Reef Ecoregion. These projects are developed to show clear and measurable conservation impacts within a 3 - 5 year time horizon. Each cohort has a thematic focus linked to the conservation needs of the region. For example, in 2010 the fellows´ projects focused on coastal development and tourism; in 2011 on sustainable fisheries and establishment of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs); in 2012 on the establishment of a network of multifunctional marine reserves; in 2014 on integrated solid waste management and 2015 on conservation and economical valuation of mangrove ecosystem services.

The existence of robust policy frameworks facilitates the design and implementation of local and national blue carbon initiatives. These policies promote official government support and the foundation for institutional roles, and offer links with other national and international policies, mechanisms and strategies (such as NDCs, REDD+ and NAMAs). The policy building process starts with informal consultations with national authorities to map actors, gauge their interest and obtain their support. As these are national-scale constructs, strategic advice and facilitation of the process is important.

Quantifying the value of ecosystem services provided by mangroves to the local communities is a required component of blue carbon projects. This informs the design of Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes. As a full valuation is challenging and costly, priority services are chosen through a participatory consultation process with local communities. Raw data are collected locally and mined through bibliographic searches and interviews. Results emphasize the importance of coastal-marine ecosystems with decision makers, as mangrove losses can be explained as capital losses.