2011 FINALIST Blue Ventures

“Blue Ventures works with local communities to conserve threatened marine environments. Our integrated approach empowers some of the world’s poorest coastal communities to develop conservation and alternative income initiatives to protect biodiversity and coastal livelihoods. The results of our work help us propose new ideas to benefit coastal communities everywhere.”

Assessment Summary from the BFI Review Team

Blue Ventures (BV), led by Ashoka Fellow Alisdair Harris Ph.D, has developed a high-leverage scalable model that enables impoverished tropical fishing communities in Andavadoaka, Madagascar to quickly and dramatically raise their incomes while protecting the biodiversity of their coastal waters through the creation of community-run Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). The approach integrates advanced marine conservation science with capacity-building and sound local economics in order to provide the necessary skills, incentives, and partnerships that can effect lasting change. The core of the concept involves determining the recovery period for a fishery that is headed toward collapse, and convincing the fishers to stop fishing periodically to allow the fish population to rebound, so that they can benefit from greatly increased fish catches on a sustainable basis. This translates to significantly higher income along the entire supply chain and the preservation of traditional coastal livelihoods as well as marine biodiversity. The recovery method has been scientifically verified and has been met with great local enthusiasm. Within 4 years the strategy has spread to 25 independent fishing villages along 200Kms of Madagascar’s coastline. This has resulted in the largest community-managed MPA in the Indian Ocean. BV is imbued with an entrepreneurial community-led spirit that distinguishes it from most other conservation NGOs, once established these MPAs stand on their economic merits rather than requiring continuous support from outside NGOs. Most of BV’s scientific research is funded by award-winning eco-tourism expeditions and supported by teams of volunteer researchers. As distinct from conventional ‘top down’ outsider approaches to conservation, community engagement and empowerment is the centerpiece of the BV strategy. This has resulted in local citizens taking control of the decisions that affect them and leading grassroots educational efforts that then help other villages replicate the model. BV is also supporting a full range of community-based economic development initiatives. These include providing educational scholarships for illiterate children, building a reproductive health and family planning clinic, helping develop alternative sources of income for women (such as sea-cucumber farming) and developing a community-owned eco-tourism enterprise. These efforts extend beyond the typical confines of science-based marine conservation but are critical to ensuring the long-term success of BV’s MPA strategy. BV’s comprehensive systems approach to conservation assumes that the survival of a natural habitat and the people whose lives depend on it are inseparable. It is showing significant potential to improve the lives of millions of people throughout the coastal tropics who rely on threatened marine resources for their daily subsistence.

WEBSITE: http://blueventures.org/ VIDEO: http://vimeo.com/channels/blueventures SOURCES: All Sources are either on the CD provided or can be retrieved online when clicking the link. Source Number 1: http://www.blueventures.org/newsroom/press-releases/725-un-population-fund-sponsors-hugely-symbolic-madagascar-conservation-project.html Source Number 2: http://www.ashoka.org/aharris Source Number 3: http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/articles/501930 Source Number 4: http://www.blueventures.org/newsroom/press-releases/711-blue-ventures-announced-as-finalist-for-bbc-world-challenge-2010.html Source Number 5: Link to Interactive map that explains much of the organisations work at the level of individual and community interaction. http://livewiththesea.org/ess/ecosystem-services_lwts.htm

Entry Application Blue Ventures Team: Al Harris – Founder and Research Director Richard Nimmo – Managing Director Frances Humber – Research Manager Kathleen Edie – Expeditions & Volunteer Coordinator Ben Metz - Senior Associate In addition Blue Ventures employs circa 50 other staff across its London office, Madagascar, Belize and Malaysia sites. Summarize your proposal in 50 words or less. Blue Ventures works with local communities to conserve threatened marine environments. Our integrated approach empowers some of the world’s poorest coastal communities to develop conservation and alternative income initiatives to protect biodiversity and coastal livelihoods. The results of our work help us propose new ideas to benefit coastal communities everywhere. Describe the critical need your solution addresses. Globally, tropical coastal ecosystems are critical to livelihoods, cultures and food security of hundreds of millions of people, but are in unabated decline due to overexploitation and climate change. Throughout the developing world a paucity of marine resource governance exists with only a fraction of marine ecosystems under effective protection. Explain your initiative in more depth and its stage of development. Please include the inspiration, and/or underlying principles informing your initiative. Inspired by a paucity of marine resource governance globally Blue Ventures works alongside partner communities at remote field research sites. Data collected on the status of marine environments, analysed in partnership with community leaders, are widely disseminated so that communities begin to understand the ecological condition of their marine environment as well as the biological and economic case for conservation management as a tool for restocking depleted fisheries and safeguarding ecosystem resilience. Blue Ventures works to develop community owned marine conservation solutions through a portfolio encompassing marine and fisheries research, sustainable aquaculture, family planning, environmental education, fisheries management and protected area development. Integrating such a broad range of initiatives and delivering them in a specific geographic area (Velondriake – established by Blue Ventures and the largest community-managed marine reserve in the Indian Ocean) represents a unique approach to the development of sustainable and holistic community led marine and coastal conservation in developing world countries. The approach Blue Ventures has pioneered to tropical coastal management is unique globally:

•Blue Ventures’ work is grounded in uncompromising science. From biodiversity research to bioeconomic modelling of marine reserves, all conservation programmes are guided by rigorous scientific analysis. •Blue Ventures’ conservation programmes are developed, designed, managed and policed by local coastal communities, creating a management solution that is owned and led by communities. •Blue Ventures focuses on demonstrating the lasting economic benefits of marine conservation, creating a powerful market based incentive to protect marine biodiversity. •At its core Blue Ventures is a biodiversity social enterprise, constantly innovating new approaches to financing marine conservation and coastal poverty alleviation, and generating almost all of its own conservation funding independently. Existing social enterprise activities include award-winning ecotourism, carbon finance and conservation incentive programmes, as well as community-based sustainable aquaculture businesses. How does your strategy and approach respond creatively and comprehensively to key social, cultural, economic, ecological, and technological issues, which shape the condition you are seeking to transform? Why is your strategy a breakthrough and what makes it a preferred state model? Blue Ventures’ approach integrates social, cultural, economic and ecological interventions that have each been identified as important factors to improving marine sustainability: •  Provision   of   sexual   and   reproductive   health   programmes   in   communities   with   no   access   to  services.  These  family  planning  programmes  have  realised  marked  reductions  in  contraceptive  prevalence  rates  and  birth-­‐rates.  

•  Development   of   marine-­‐based   alternative   livelihoods   including   sea   cucumber   and   seaweed  farming.   These   sustainable   aquaculture   programmes   have   been   scaled   from   pilot-­‐projects   to  commercial-­‐scale  farming  initiatives.  

•  Provision   of   school   and   university-­‐level   educational   scholarships   and   services   to   local  communities.  Blue  Ventures  provides  over  200   full  educational  scholarships   to  children  of  all  ages  each  year.  

•  Creation   of   women's   associations   to   empower   women,   reducing   gender   inequity   and  stimulating  local  entrepreneurship.  

•  Innovative   environmental   education   programmes   to   change   the   way   people   view   their  relationship  with   the   sea.   Through   grassroots   social  marketing,   Blue   Ventures   is   working   to  change  people’s  attitudes  and  behaviour  in  favour  of  a  more  sustainable  future.  

•  Supporting  communities  to  add  value  through  conservation  and  eco-­‐certification,  to  change  the  way  fishers  and  seafood  buyers  see  conservation.  

In the last two years this approach has shown itself to be effective in promoting viral replication at astonishing rates. First trialled with one village in southern Madagascar in 2005, it has grown into the largest community-managed Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the Indian Ocean, encompassing over 800km2 of coastal waters and is now in the process of being independently replicated across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. This approach, which sees communities developing, designing, managing and policing their own marine environments is itself unique, transformational and viral. Wide-spread acceptance of this approach will transform tropical coastal communities in the developing world by unleashing a new set of incentives that are both sustainable, beneficial, and thus preferred by local communities above the current exploitative paradigm.

Compare and contrast your initiative with at least two leading initiatives addressing the same critical need. In comparison to these initiatives why is your proposal more likely to effect change and make a distinguishing impact? 1. Velondriake is the first community managed marine reserve network in the entire Indian Ocean. Others have tried before and all have failed. Community management hasn't been achieved in other contexts because NGOs haven't given adequate consideration to capacity building and skills development of community associations, therefore local empowerment has failed. In Velondriake Blue Ventures’ approach has proven so successful that it's inspired other communities to adopt similar models even without NGO support, with projects evolving at their own tempo, not on some predefined project timeline fitting to funders agendas. 2. Madagascar attracts more international environmental finance and aid than any other country per unit area. Yet, despite a bewildering number of conservation NGOs operating in the country, all are financed entirely from donor income: none are themselves financially sustainable. As a result of the recent military coup and political crisis in Madagascar, a number of NGOs have had to withdraw their conservation programmes, cutting projects and funding. This has been exacerbated by the financial crisis, which has weakened endowments and US-based philanthropy. But BV's business model has enabled the organisation to endure this period of financial and civil unrest, with the organisation expanding rather than contracting during this time. Describe your implementation plan. What are the priority milestones you intend to achieve in years one (1) through three (3)? Blue Ventures is currently finalising a bio-economic assessment of its conservation model that will prove the net economic benefit of community managed marine reserves. This will allow for replacement of its current source of revenue, through eco-tourism, with financing from the fisheries supply chain. By making this change the approach pioneered by Blue Ventures will be ready to scale – from the 15,000 fisher people we are currently working with to a significant proportion of the estimated 200,000 – 250,000 coastal subsistence communities in the developing world. In order to achieve this we need to undertake a three-part development: •Grow current activity thereby creating a beacon of exemplary integrated conservation and development practice (milestones = services delivered to communities, marine conservation progress made, funding in place); •Develop a global network of marine conservation organisations to support grassroots community level marine conservation (milestones = number of organisations active in network, best practice exchanged); and, •Once the network is in place, raise a substantial level of grant and investment finance to replicate the Blue Ventures model globally (milestones = best practice replicated, new communities engaged, new marine management arrangements introduced). Please provide details regarding the team and/or partners you have assembled, the team’s experience and qualifications, and your ability to execute your implementation plan. If applicable, include details about external validation and/or support your strategy has received to date. Dr. Al Harris - Founder and Research Director. Al spent much of the past decade working on marine conservation issues in the Indian Ocean. He is a recipient of the 2010 IUCN World Conservation Union's Young Conservationist Award, winner of the 2009 Condé Nast Environment Award and an Ashoka Fellow.

Richard Nimmo - Managing Director. Richard joined Blue Ventures in 2004 from a career in media. After working for a year in Andavadoaka, Richard moved to Blue Ventures' London headquarters as Managing Director. In that position, he oversees all business operations. Frances Humber. Research Manager. Fran has degrees in zoology and marine ecology and prior to joining the BV team worked as a marine scientist in the Philippines. She currently also studies for a part-time PhD on the shark and turtle fisheries with the University of Exeter. Ben Metz - 2009 - current. Senior Associate. Ben has 18 years experience in leadership positions across the third sector and is an experienced and effective fundraiser and prolific entrepreneur, adept in managing rapid growth. His role at Blue Ventures is to assist with overall organisational development. What are the primary obstacles that might prevent your initiative from being realized? How do you plan to overcome them? Obstacles have been systematically identified by Blue Ventures and are being addressed as key components of its integrated approach. Population growth, placing increased pressure on the marine environment, is being addressed through family planning. Low levels of education, preventing communities developing diverse, sustainable livelihoods, are being addressed through the education component. Gender inequality, stifling community leadership and opportunity, is being addressed through the creation of women’s associations. Low levels of environmental awareness, which undermines the entire relationship between communities and their environments, are being addressed through innovative environmental education programmes. An additional obstacle as Blue Ventures scales, foreseen but yet to be encountered, is complacency or resistance to a new way of working from inside the marine conservation sector globally. This is easily overcome as development and management of the approach is community led and can bypass national and international organisations relatively easily. What range of funding is needed to bring your project to fruition and from where do you anticipate funding will come? What is the total annual budget and explain how your initiative will financially sustain itself? Blue Ventures’ current budget is US$800,000. Historically 100% has come from income earned through eco-tourism. As the organisation evolves we are seeing increasing levels of grant funding, acknowledging the success of Blue Ventures’ model. Last financial year 61% of funding was earned income. To: •Grow current activity we require circa US$4 million, of which almost $2 million is already secured from international donors. •Develop a global network we require US$465,000. Applications to a variety of international donors are being prepared and submitted over the next six months. •Replicate the Blue Ventures model globally funding will be required in the tens of millions of dollars. We plan to build the case for investment through the above explained bioeconomic assessment and raise a combination of investment from key players in fisheries supply chains and major US based foundations that fund marine work and whom with we are developing relationships.

The local community association is responsible for all aspects of the areas marine management

Working with Blue Ventures local communities learn to manage fish stocks sustainably

. High birth rates and overfishing combine to put pressure on the local marine environment

   Volunteers work with the local community, teaching primary and secondary education and marine conservation management

Interview with Alasdair Harris and Ben Metz of Blue Ventures __________________________

Blue Ventures works with local communities to conserve threatened marine environments. Our integrated approach empowers some of the world’s poorest coastal communities to develop conservation and alternative income initiatives to protect biodiversity and coastal livelihoods. The results of our work help us propose new ideas to benefit coastal communities everywhere. Have there been any noteworthy achievements since your application was submitted?

Ben: Yes, there’s a huge amount of activity going on. We’ve received grants from the McArthur Foundation and NorgesVel, a delivery agency for Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), finalize almost a million GBP for family planning, organizational health and environment over three years, so that’s very exciting and getting ready to take off. Our work is really just about to take off, overall. We’re about two million into our four million GBP fundraising drive, which will consolidate the Blue Venures model and position us ready for further expansion. There is another significant piece of work, which is about to go public: We’ve been undertaking a biological assessment of octopus fisheries over two years. We’ve number crunched about a million pieces of data across 18 reserves that have been subject to this study, this is one of the first pieces of work we’ve done that was funded by ecotourism income. As mentioned in the application, the study identified a very significant increase in octopus caught as a result of the temporary closure and a directly associated increase in income to local communities as a result. This assessment proves the potential for fisheries reserves to provide significant economic benefit to the local communities who are in charge of developing and managing them. Al: For the first time in marine science, we’ve demonstrated the lasting economic benefits of short-term closures of fisheries. People have hypothesized for some time that short-term closures of fisheries can have a biological and conservation benefit and that would ultimately have a benefit to the supply chain, and we proved it empirically and very powerfully. Is this done in actual modeling software? Is this a dynamic model?

“For the first time in marine science, we’ve demonstrated the lasting economic benefits of short-term closures of fisheries. People have hypothesized for some time that short-term closures of fisheries can have a biological and conservation benefit and that would ultimately have a benefit to the supply chain, and we proved it empirically and very powerfully.”

Al: Absolutely. It works with single-species fisheries, so it could be applied to just about any invertebrate fishery, and some fish. This is one example of innovative projects that we’re pushing forward at the moment that are geared around raising sustainable financing conservation. We are a conservation organization that will recover its costs and that can be taken to scale. In our agquaculture programs, our bio-economic analysis of the economic impacts of marine reserves, and in our ecotourism work we’re always looking for business-based solutions to every environmental problem, like the conservation crisis. And that’s where the scalability and the innovation of our work really lie. Ben: When this work breaks out of the scientific community and into the fisheries supply chain, it effectively will be decoupling community based marine conservation, tropical and subtropical, from the normal roots of funding, i.e. grant funding or ecotourism. It will open up the ability to scale at an enormous level. We’re not talking about hundreds but potentially tens of thousands of locations replicating it. There are more than 400 million people living in coastal communities in developing countries who rely on the coast in some way, and they are often subsistence fishermen in an emerging economic market who could benefit from this kind of model. Right now, this is a critical juncture in communicating conservation in developing countries around the world. Al: Following up on what Ben said, just on this one demonstration project, the economic impact of conservation; we’ve seen a scaling up on this model. Its been replicated over 100 times in the west Indian Ocean alone by communities themselves, so we’ve got proof of the viral replicability of it, and the potential growth is enormous. How does the Blue Ventures strategy help overcome the destructive impacts of commercial fishing and conventional tourist driven development? Al: This work that we’re doing on the community level is done very much in partnership with the private sector, it’s incredibly important that when we’re empowering communities to manage the fisheries we don’t alienate the people that are buying the fish from these communities and supporting the economies of the whole region. What we do is engage these stakeholders, these exporters, these buyers, and these monopolies with our data. For the last ten years we’ve been working on getting them around the table and showing them how what they’re depending on for their product is collapsing, and proposing our management solution. By following our model, we can guarantee arrested decline of their fisheries. We get them on board by demonstrating that the only sustainable future for their business is to buy into sustainable management. Community-based conservation is the only management model that can work in countries that have

“There are more than 400 million people living in coastal communities in developing countries who rely on the coast in some way, and they are often subsistence fishermen in an emerging economic market who could benefit from this kind of model. Right now, this is a critical juncture in communicating conservation in developing countries around the world.”

no form of good governance, no communications infrastructure and that are desperately poor. You’re educating the commercial large-scale fishers, and then you have the impoverished local communities, so you’re working toward the same end with both groups? Ben: We don’t see them as separate groups because it’s the same supply chain. Your indigenous fisherman living on one dollar a day is catching fish and the dollar a day is coming from a foreign fishery buyer or middleman, selling to an exporter selling to the larger market, that’s the supply chain. Al: To the second part, we’re very well aware of the extreme impact of sustainable tourism, and we’re a responsible tourism organization, we’ve won the International Responsible Tourism award for the last seven years and that’s a testament to rigor of how we approach our tourism operation. We’re blessed in that we work in countries that only seem to attract eco-tourists that want to go the extra mile, they’re coming to see biodiversity and nature, they’re very much in touch with the local ecology and very respectful of the communities we’re working with. We don’t have the problem of massive amounts of tourism that you might see in other parts of Africa, SE Asia or parts of the Caribbean.

What about the companies that are going through the water with these large fishing nets and scooping up everything in sight and destroying these marine ecosystems?

Ben: Well, at that level, the foreign owned, subsidized, offshore fleets, we don’t engage at all, because they’re not coming in-shore. We are purely a coastal conservation organization; those causing massive extinctions are not manageable on this level. The coastal area is within twenty miles of the coast, all along the continental shelf where there are coral reefs; we work in fisheries dependent on reefs. Al: Can I add as well the bio-economical investment, the reality of that work is to provide empirical data that proves that our program is the way to go, community based conservation is the only way they are going to keep fishing and increasing their stock. This is important in terms of incentivizing the private sector. Ben: The work that we’ve done has also brought about national policy for closing fisheries at a certain part of their reproductive cycles. We’re not just talking about work in corrupt regimes like Madagascar, there is a demonstrable bottom up impact in our work and we’re continuing to influence national and international policy around the Indian Ocean. Our conservation models can be applied to almost any tropical location. Just tonight we had five fishermen flying into Madagascar from the Republic of Comoros to come see our model, so increasingly our work is being seen as a shining example of best practices in coastal government in this part of the world. Are you conceptualizing or thinking about urban development along the coastal areas or impact of coastal conservation on development along the coast?

Ben: We’re working in regions that are still at least a decade away from having metal roofs on their homes, let alone having roads or anything that could facilitate any kind of real development. In the very few urban areas and towns that there are in the west coast of Madagascar or in the Mozambique Channel the ecology of those areas are so badly degraded that conservation can no longer have a chance. So, I guess the reason that we’re working in remote regions is because there is still a hope, a chance of reversing ecological trends, it will be a long way off before communities start having issues to deal with coastal development before other nations start meddling in Madagascar with development, and we’re working purely with rural communities at this point. Are all the Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) community managed? Ben: Yeah, they are all community based, created and managed exclusively by communities. But we use systems that are within the regional legal code, we use that to try to shore up support from the international community but it’s a long bureaucratic process, just today the government of Madagascar announced that the marine reserve that we created which is the largest marine reserve in the whole Indian Ocean now has permanent protection by the government. So, the reserves are governed, as it is in local areas, by traditional codes and ancestral laws that are enforced by the government and created with the blessing and consent of the community leaders. We then use the Madagascar legal code to back them up with statutory protection. We have developed marine protected areas targeting all kinds of models depending on the community, the geography, the fishery, but using the model that we’ve found to be most successful, we’ve created ourselves over 50 specific reserves, and partner organizations we supported and trained in our models for conservation have replicated them. There are 118 individual MPAs, just around half of those are by Wildlife Conservation Society, World Wildlife Federation and Conservation International. This is a pivotal point for Blue Ventures. We’re a small NGO working mainly in Madagascar, but we have a chance to scale in a linear way and grow as an organization in terms of reach and an on the ground footprint, but the reality is that I’m pushing for us to leapfrog this linear approach, for us to effectively become the knowledge center for those organizations; the three largest international conservation organizations in the world, to roll this out internationally. Al: We train other organizations in the replication of our model, it’s great to see them effectively rolling out our work, using the creative commons license if you like. We don’t like to judge our work based on hectares or numbers. I’ve worked with one community for ten years working to close a coral reef, and we’re no closer today than we were ten

“To me it’s a much greater challenge to overcome the barriers in remote areas. We’re very lucky that we’re working in a remote region where we’re often the only contact people have with any form of development, we’re the first NGO to arrive on the ground. It’s very much in this spirit that we actually diversify to take on the social challenges we face within these communities including things like public health.”

years ago, whereas other communities we walk into and they very quickly understand the benefits. To me it’s a much greater challenge to overcome the barriers in these remote areas. We’re very lucky that we’re working in a remote region where we’re often the only contact people have with any form of development, we’re the first NGO to arrive on the ground. It’s very much in this spirit that we actually diversify to take on the social challenges we face within these communities including things like public health. Because of the almost non-existence of the Madagascar government are you actually able to have a larger impact on the development of policy? Al: Yes, because the government recognizes our value. Top down control is a goal that will not be realized for the next twenty years, so they’re very willing to allow us to work as coastal management practitioners and develop and push the legislation. Were we working in a middle-income economy, we wouldn’t be having the same success; there are laws already in place that we would have to work around, whereas the statute that we have here is virtually meaningless. There is coastal management authority so it allows us to work very effectively. That’s not to say that growth of our model is constrained because it can only work in these countries, there are many coastal countries in the tropics that we can work with in using this model, from Somalia to Mozambique and across the Indian Ocean into the Pacific, and we’re overwhelmed by the calls we get from other NGOs and even governments throughout the world who are looking to work with us, and training other partners to work with us. The way we can approach that is simply through dialogue, which is a very powerful way to grow quickly, rather than taking on the world completely by ourselves. What do you think is key in achieving a viral replicable model across the Pacific and Indian Oceans? Al: Well I think the strength is in demonstrating the empirical, scientific, irrefutability of the economic impact of what we’re doing for those who depend on coral reefs for their survival. They have the same value system when it comes to those for whom fishing is everything. You have to really start talking their language, which for us meant coming up with an economic argument and creating that economic case which took a lot of science, thinking and investment. It took us years and only when we could really come up with a compelling case for both community members and the exporters did we really know that our model was watertight, that we could take it to anyone be it a government or community member and they would be convinced. If we were to talk just about biodiversity benefits, which we all knew beforehand and we can also prove, that wouldn’t be so compelling. Last year I traveled to Fiji with a local

“We’re training local capacity so we can have compelling local ambassadors that are not biodiversity scientist but subsistent fisherman get our message across. If I’m a Fijian fisherman and I want to talk about conservation and fishing I don’t want to talk about it with a biologist from London, I want to talk about it with another fisherman from Madagascar.”

fisherman who was the first Malagasy to ever travel to Fiji and the day we got there was on the front page of the Fiji Times. We’re training that local capacity so we can have compelling local ambassadors that are not biodiversity scientists but subsistent fishermen to get our message across. If I’m a Fijian fisherman and I want to talk about conservation and fishing I don’t want to talk about it with a biologist from London, I want to talk about it with another fisherman from Madagascar. So those two things; rigorous science and building local capacity are key to replicating the model. But all of that has taken time to build. The business has been to create that evidence base to make the organization sustainable in the long term, allowing us to pay salaries and all that. Can you explain your investment strategy? How does this play out? Ben: The level of investment is dependent on the amount of infrastructure already in place. They will invest into the NGO, or Blue Ventures or Conservation International or WWF, who is already present in the region. The amount will vary according to the scale of activity and the level of structures that are already present. In the context of the Velondriake area that is very remote, that covers a 50-mile stretch of coast with 25 villages; we are looking at 200-300,000 euros over a five-year period. To flesh that out a little bit more; are you familiar with the concept of net present value? I’ll just cover it very quickly; it’s the economic value of activity in the future now, essentially. Our findings are that octopus fishing yield is increasing five fold through our approach. We have the evidence that shows that the net present value across 25 villages may be between 5 and 7 million euros over five years. The development cost of octopus fishery closures is somewhere in the region of 200,000 euros over five years. So, you immediately get the scale of the potential. Now let’s flip that right down to the individual fisher and what that means to them. Each of these closures create about a 60 percent increase in fishery yield. Practically what this means for each fisher is that they get a 60 percent increase in their income, that’s on a two dollar a day typical income, or less than two dollars a day. This represents a very significant change in their income and their quality of life. The GDP in the area we’re working in is about 360 dollars a day, so this is dollar a day land, ok? When we are increasing by 60 cents a day we are fundamentally changing everything about peoples lives. The GDP for the whole of Madagascar is about 1000 dollars, but we’re working in a poorer, more rural area, which is a ten-hour drive from the nearest city where it’s significantly lower. And even in that city there are no two-story buildings, and generators drive electricity. If you close an area to fishing in order to increase it’s population, is there bridge financing that is provided to hold these people over until the population rebounds and they can capture this fivefold increase and the 60 cents per day increase? Ben: The reality on the ground is that these communities have multiple sources of income, lots of them are marine-based, and many of them are land based. So, during that six months closure, essentially up until now the communities have used other sources of income. The bio-economic assessment that we have undertaken has taken a very conservative position so the income increase for each family or each individual doesn’t take into account any earned income during the closure. Bridge financing is

something that could be factored into the forward financing activity by the fishery supply chain. Al: The cost of closure is very low because led by the local community. The community can better design, take advantage of, and police those areas themselves. The 200,000 euro cost relates to the costs associated with the closure period to collect data and gain approval about what’s happening in the community around the depleting fish stocks. We’ve been collecting the data and then community workers do the process of animating the data into the community. We fund those community workers, they animate the data and help the community understand the significance of this, over the five-year period. So you have local capacity building around all of this? Al: Exactly. So, the actual policing and management of that is effectively a cost that is borne by the community. The first benefits come back within six months of the first closure so they see an almost immediate benefit. They take that on, they create local laws around policing and develop management regimes. Can you talk a little about communications efforts? Ben: The role that we have in Madagascar is recognized, but the majority of communication is at the local community level or the regional fishery level or the national government level. Al is a powerful spokesman and incredibly eloquent champion of this type of conservation. He undertakes lots of international outreach. He uses the awards he wins and other speaking opportunities as a way to spread the ideas that are based in the work we’re doing in Madagascar. Should you win, what impact would that have on Blue Ventures?

Ben: A tremendous one. Of course, everyone knows the work of Buckminster Fuller, you can hardly ignore it. The impact would be quite profound because we’re going through a step change at the moment, what we have is two million of our four million of grant funding that we’re aiming at, but it’s project funding, it’s not core funding. But for our development, and the ability to leapfrog the core funding systems to effectively be able to take our knowledge and work with other international NGOs we need core funding. So the impact and how are the same question, we would use the money to build better core systems to allow us into that knowledge and we would become smaller and better informed.