The Vulnerability Assessment and Stakeholder Involvement plan is a prerequisite for action. It uses data and policies from the Seychelles National Adaptation Plan of Action (NAPA) and other country reports, as well as recently published scientific papers. Stakeholder survey and analysis was undertaken to identify, choose and engage the right stakeholders in the project.

Shifting the thinking of individual fishers from solo owner-operators to being part of commercial sector with shared obligations, responsibilities and social license and a common desire to promote better fishing practices to ensure the sustainability and growth of the snapper biomass. All independent commercial fishers, fishing vessel owners, SNA1 quota owners, Licensed Fish Receivers of snapper and snapper processing plants were identified and invited to attend the same meeting. Over a period of five months three meetings were held, repeated in four locations based on the commercial fishers ‘local port’. The first meeting identified the issues fishers felt they were being criticised about; the second meeting set out possible solutions and called for discussion before being voted on. At the third meeting the agreed solutions were framed as a Voluntary Agreement with six rules, debated and voted on before being given to government officials, who then worked with commercial fishers on the logistics of recording and reporting on success.

- Local community engagement in the park’s decision-making and management has been revitalized, based on experiences from Madagascar, which permit ongoing and active participation of community members in implementation, with involvement and buy-in to projects developed to support management activities. The regular dialogue between protected area and village representatives provides information on the activities of the protected area; allows for presentations of results from research; and raises issues and challenges that need a management response. In parallel, the park acts as an intermediary with donors to facilitate the financing of activities and amenities in the villages.

- Institutional support to producers in organizing themselves, to better engage with the local and regional markets and implement a more uniform plan and approach; reduce market competition and provide more inclusive access to production activities. - Promotion of more sustainable agricultural potential products, such as Ylang-Ylang used for perfume production, using more efficient, sustainable and resource-efficient technologies. For example, using copper stills and providing better distillation techniques that allow growers to also enter the production chain and command a better price for a better quality product. Agro-forestry techniques reduce the amount of primary fuelwood needed for the stills, and reduce impacts on the watersheds for the island. - Developing market-gardens and vegetable production to supply tourist facilities, such as hotels, restaurants, yachts within Comoros.

Chico Mendes Biodiversity Conservation Institute (ICMBio) is the governmental institution responsible for the federal protected areas in Brazil. Besides the federal legislation concerning to volunteer work, ICMBio has a regulation for volunteering at the institution, which is public and official. Sending uniform to the volunteers is essential for society to identify and values the volunteers, who will have more pride to do his/her activities. The formalization process of the voluntary staff is simple so no one feels discouraged with unnecessary bureaucracy.

At the national level, the results from the Blue Carbon component, such as carbon budget for the mangroves of the gulf of Nicoya and an updated deforestation estimation, were presented to decision makers as a way to inform policy making on broader climate change mitigation strategies that target multiple ecosystem services.

The terms and conditions set forth by the Sanctuary Advisory Council Charter are agreed upon and signed off on by each stakeholder representative prior to engagement with advisory councils. Then, functionally the council may serve as a forum for consultation and deliberation among its members and as a source of advice and recommendations to the sanctuary manager. Such advice shall fairly represent the collective and individual views of the council members. In formulating such advice, council members shall recall the primary objective of the sanctuary is resource protection.

During the first year of the project, we developed a partnership with a range of groups and individuals interested in economic valuation and marine conservation in Belize. Our core partners were WWF-Central America and World Conservation Society, but we also worked with more than 10 Belizean NGOs, MPA co-managing organizations, and government departments, as well as faculty at Belize’s universities. We held a workshop in Belize in 2007 to introduce economic valuation and held several follow-up workshops in the following year, focusing separately on shoreline protection, fisheries, and tourism in greater depth. The project partnership represented the views and expertise of a wide range of primary, secondary, and external stakeholders. The partnership was instrumental in helping design the valuation study, identify potential policy applications and outreach opportunities, collect data, and communicate results to decision makers.

Working with partners, we gathered data on reef- and mangrove-associated tourism, fisheries, and shoreline protection from a variety of sources (mostly sources in Belize): - Tourism: data on accommodation from the Belize Tourism Board, scaled by the percentage of tourists who are reef- or mangrove-associated (determined via expert opinion in each district), data on reef and mangrove recreation and cruise tourism from the Belize Tourism Board - Fisheries: data on catch from Fishermen’s Cooperatives, divided into (1) exports through cooperatives, (2) local sales through cooperatives, (3) all other local sales - Shoreline protection: a variety of spatial data sets were collected, including data on coastline (SERVIR), elevation (NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission 90m DEM), coral reefs (Belize Tropical Forest Studies Ecosystem Map, Wildlife Conservation Society, Belize Coastal Zone Management Authority and Institute), mangroves (Belize Forestry Department, LANDSAT), coastal geology, coral characteristics, storm regime, and coastal property values (internet search).

Our economic valuation method can be repeated at relatively low cost, using largely existing data. We only valued a portion of the many services provided by coral reefs and mangroves, focusing on components that are relatively easy to measure using published information and especially important to local economies. Tourism: We used financial analysis to estimate that in 2007, reef- and mangrove-associated tourists spent US$150–$196 million on accommodation, reef recreation, and other expenses. Fisheries: We used financial analysis to estimate that economic benefits (sales plus value added from cleaning and processing) from reef- and mangrove-dependent fisheries were US$14–$16 million in 2007. Shoreline Protection: We evaluated shoreline protection services in a geographic information system (GIS). We used an avoided damages approach to estimate that coral reefs provided US$120–$180 million in avoided damages in 2007, with an additional US$111–$167 million from mangroves. In total, we estimated the value of these three coastal ecosystem services in Belize to be US$395–$559 million in 2007. As a reference point, Belize’s GDP was US$1.3 billion in 2007.