A Public-Private Partnership (PPP) is critical to the success of blended finance mechanisms such as the debt-swap and the sovereign blue bond. The SeyCCAT Board includes representatives from government, private sector and civil society.

Private engagement in such a partnership is mandatory for attracting private capital investors, who will not be able to fund solely public institutions, due to internal donor policies. 

In the past, sea-turtle used to use many different beaches in Con Dao islands for breeding. However, due to the pressure from economic development, they had to retreat to few beaches inside the national park. When Con Dao Resort Co., Ltd. (Six Senses) started it business, Dat Doc was one of the left-over beaches. With new business model, the beach is well protected and regularly cleaned by the company's employees. After few years, in early 2018, sea-turtle started comeback Dat Doc for laying eggs. Fully aware the importance of sea-turtle conservation, the directors approached park managers, and with an agreement from Ba Ria-Vung Tau PPC, a collaborative project was initiated which aims to restore and conserve sea-turtle breeding grounds in Dat Doc beach.

After 3 years of implementation, the company has have invested c. USD 38,000 in following activities: an awareness programme, improve breeding sea turtle breeding habitats, setup a hatching pond 50m² with fence and CCTV system, and regular joined patrols by park rangers and company staff (1,044 working days, relocating 10 nests, 678 eggs, and releasing 464 baby turtles). The company continues to commit c. USD 70,000 for this programme in next 5 years.

Since 2014, IUCN has initiated the sea turtle conservation volunteer programme in partnership with Con Dao National Park, Hon Cau Marine Protected Area and Nui Chua National Park. 

The programme has been gathering lots of interest from people who come from all fields of work. For 7 years, IUCN has received almost 10,000 applicants and only be able to select less than 5% of these due to the special requirements of the selected sites and specific field activities. The programme received positive results and feedback from volunteers.

To date, 24 courses were organized in Con Dao that participated by 314 volunteers. The volunteers had contributed more than 3,000 person-days to support translocating almost 2,300 nests of 300,000 turtle eggs, released more than 110,000 baby turtles to the sea. They also work with park rangers to prepare breeding grounds, repaired hatcheries, patrolling and clean the beaches.

Not only supplementing the human resource for conservation action, the volunteers programme has help raising public awareness on sea turtle as well as marine life conservation as a whole. There were hundred media stories prepared by the volunteers in last 6 years that help changing public attitude on sea-turtle conservation.

The sea-turtle conservation programme was started in Con Dao since mid-1980s. In more than 30 years of implementation, Con Dao national park now has a comprehensive programme of different activities that includes:

• Breeding ground surveys and monitoring
• Law enforcement: protection/patrolling
• Support breeding activities: remove eggs to the hatcheries (support incubation), releasing baby turtles to the sea
• Communication and education programme for different target groups, including local schools and fishermen, and visitors

By 2020, outcomes of this programme include:

• Identify and protect 17 breading grounds (beaches) in the islands
• In 2020, c. 750 mother turtles were recorded breeding from January to November (mostly from May to October).
• 2,395 hatches (227,858 eggs) were removed to the hatcheries, 2,195 hatches were hatched, 171,949 baby turtles were released to the sea. (197 hatches with 17,139 eggs are still incubation at the time of documentation).
• Communication campaigns were organized with army, police, district offices, schools, fisher communities, and visitors.
• Collaborate with private sector (Six Senses) to establish a new breeding ground and hatchery in Dat Doc beach.
• Collaborate with IUCN to conduct 4 courses for volunteers to support sea-turtle conservation in Con Dao.

The reproductive platforms include programmed natural mating plans, Artificial Inseminations, services for pregnancy diagnosis to improve management, estrus synchronization and sires’ certification and the supporting CapDev activities targeting technical staff and farmers, members of the Community Based Breeding Programs’. 

Crop modelling to simulate yield gain of lentil has further helped to manipulate planting date and lentil phenology in the target region.

By trainings the 9202 farmers covering 3253 ha area in 460 villages, they learnt how to cultivate biofortified lentils and improved practices compared to local cultivar and technologies. To accelerate large-scale adoption of the new lentil varieties, and adaptation to successful new approaches, ICARDA 's participatory research for development was carried out with inclusion of farmer organizations.

We recognized the need to build leadership for effective MPA management from within, and ownership and leadership of the approaches co-developed.

We convened a group of 18 regional and global experts to train the most engaged MPA practitioners across 3 nations as peer trainers in evidence-based (adaptive) management. The expert team first broke down adaptive management into 3 core components: marine monitoring, data summarization and management, and strategic decision making. We then invited applications from MPA staff and engaged community members in 3 national MPA systems (Kenya, Tanzania, and Seychelles) to become peer trainers in one of the areas, as we recognized that no one staff could likely train in all three.

We received 60 applications and invited 30 MPA members to participate in the peer trainer training in Seychelles in August 2019.  We developed a 5-day training course. We did 2-days of joint sessions, then each group had 3-days in their individual core areas. The final day was testing in the core concepts.  Of the 30 practitioners who participated, 11 passed as peer trainers or assistant peer trainers.

These peer trainers are now working in their respective nations to continue improving MPA management.

The core differentiator of MEET ecotourism products is that they are based in and feature Mediterranean protected areas. This is integrated with local communities and local service providers, thereby creating a unique niche-market product in the Mediterranean that supports conservation. Building off what differentiates its products to others on the market, MEET is building a strong brand with embedded market value  for both inbound and outbound tour operators, as well as, destination management organisations.

MAREA (MArine Reserve Evaluation App) is an innovative open source web-based technology tool that automates analyses to evaluate the effectiveness of marine reserves, which must be evaluated over time. This tool uses as reference a framework with biophysical, socioeconomic and governance indicators. It also selects some indicators by default according to the objectives set during the establishment of the marine reserve or protected area, but the user can also customize the list of indicators that are of interest. For the analysis, the user must provide 1) biological, 2) socioeconomic and 3) governance data, as well as select the community, reserve and target species within the MAREA database. This will yield an overall evaluation of the reserve and an overall assessment for each of the indicators. The results will provide useful information to know the status of the marine reserves and contribute to decision making.