1

June 2017Progress Update #9

The Fish Forever Progress Update is a regular communication to supporters and stakeholders on the key advances we are making on the ground, the challenges we are working to surmount, and the learning and adaptive management we are doing along the way.

Fish Forever – Progress Snapshot

1. TURF+Reserve (Territorial Use Rights for Fishers coupled with a Reserve) is a rights-based fisheries management approach in which communities are granted exclusive access privileges to local fishing areas based on a legal or traditional tenure system and protected areas are established inside or near these exclusive access areas.

Fish Forever Sites 0 81

Then (2013)

Communities Engaged 0 487

TURF+Reserves 0 55

Fishers Engaged 0 51,881

Rare Full-Time Equivalents <20 87

Non-Fish Forever staff leveraged 0 579

Partners 3 79

National policy changes favoring Rights-Based Management 0 4

Now (2017)

2

Forgotten Fisheries: New commitments and partnerships for sustainable small-scale fisheries

On June 7th, at the United Nations Ocean Conference, Rare committed to mobilizing $100 Million by 2021 towards implementation of UN SDG Goal 14 (Life Below Water), working with small-scale fishing communities to end overfishing, protect critical marine habitat, and provide preference to marine resources and fair markets. Small-scale fishery recovery and effective management is pivotal to meeting SDG 14 and is a key contributor to other goals, especially 1,2, 5 and 13.

Small-scale fisheries have been largely neglected in global, regional and national processes and dialogues, despite their significance, and known threats to their sustainability. In partnership with communities, local to national governments, in-country NGOs and international organizations like the FAO, Rare is working to mainstream small-scale fisheries in the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda—raising awareness of small-scale fishery contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and ensuring their integrated implementation.

Of the over 1,300 voluntary commitments made at the conference, several new commitments and/or partnerships to advance sustainable small-scale fishing in Fish Forever communities were also announced, including:

• A commitment to facilitating community-led fisheries in Raja Ampat (submitted by the Maya Clan Customary Law-based Community Organization of Raja Ampat);

• A new partnership between Rare and IUCN to support resilience of coastal communities in Mozambique (grant announcement from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) for 7 million USD); and

• A €24 million commitment by the newly launched Blue Action Fund (with an additional contribution of US5.4 million by Sweden) to fund ocean and coastal conservation by NGOs that have an integrated approach (involve communities in the sustainable management of marine biodiversity), regional focus, and are scalable and transformative. Rare, who helped to design and launch the Fund, is one of three funding recipients in the first round of grants.

These commitments create the foundation for building a more comprehensive and inclusive approach that supports Blue Communities. Implementing SDG-14 requires local-level action, and building capacity for effective local and regional governance remains necessary. To Rare, making these two-way connections—between local action and high-level commitments—is critical for catalyzing the government leadership and financing needed to ensure that small-scale fishers can continue to provide vital contributions to achieving the 2030 Agenda.

This will be a holistic approach, leaving no one behind.”

– FAO representative on FAO’s voluntary commitment to reinforce efforts made on rebuilding fisheries through Blue Communities

3

Pioneering Partnership Launched to Benefit Tropical Small-Scale Fisheries and Consumers In May 2017, Rare, The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program, the Asian Seafood Improvement Collaborative (ASIC) and seafood company Salty Girl have officially joined forces to untangle and take on one of the most intractable challenges of seafood supply chains: the ability to leverage markets-based approaches to drive sustainability in tropical small-scale fisheries.

This pioneering partnership will design and test a globally recognized fisheries improvement protocol that delivers Seafood Watch’s Good Alternative consumer ratings for fish. Over the next two years, Fish Forever will pilot this protocol in Indonesia and the Philippines, with the goal of developing pathways for sustainable small-scale fisheries to reach prime markets. This partnership opens up new value creation opportunities for small-scale fisheries as well as new investment opportunities for the Meloy Fund. The partnership’s activities are designed as a vertically integrated supply chain project, where everything from site selection and program delivery to logistics is based on the constant input from buyers, the rating agency and Rare on the ground.

While markets-based approaches have had a hand in improving the state of some fisheries, they have focused primarily on industrial whitefish fisheries in low latitudes. In contrast, small-scale, community-based, and multi-species fisheries in the developing tropics have not yet benefitted from the global trend of consumer interest in food supply sourcing and certification. In the past, eco-certifiers have mainly focused on industrial-level fisheries; as a result, existing guidelines (including MSC) are designed for high-volume and data-rich fisheries, and assessments are expensive for applicants. Recognizing that small-scale fisheries around the world could benefit greatly from the “markets pull” that eco-certifications bring, the partnership aims to identify, design and test guidelines for small-scale fisheries that are affordable, feasible and still meet the scientific bar that Seafood Watch requires.

Stay tuned for updates as the partnership develops.

Seafood Watch (SFW) provides recommendations to consumers regarding seafood categorized into “Best Choices”, “Good Alternatives” and “Avoid”, based on criteria such as fisheries management, impact on habitat and stock health. Of all consumer guidelines and eco-certifications, SFW is the scientifically most robust and has been “benchmarking” 10 eco-certifiers against their own guidelines. So far, only the Marine Stewardship Council meets their standards.

Our work with Rare, ASIC and Salty Girl can drive improvements in small-scale tropical fisheries by leveraging the purchasing power of markets interested in environmentally and socially responsible sourcing. But the true value of this work is in building sustainable fisheries that support local fishing communities and contribute to domestic market access, food security and livelihoods.”

– Jennifer Dianto Kemmerly, Director of Global Fisheries and Aquaculture at the Monterey Bay Aquarium

4

Fish Forever Brazil: Building on the Past, One Hectare at a Time

The last few months of Fish Forever in Brazil have been a whirlwind of activity. Since March 2017, Fish Forever Brazil has achieved multiple steps in building the program’s pathway to scale:

• 18 community-driven and government-supported reserves proposed;

• Preliminary data analysis: positive changes in fishing-related behaviors of over 2,000 small-scale fishers;

• The first meeting of Rare Brazil’s new 6-member Advisory Board;

• The third and final university-level training for Rare’s Pride Campaign Managers; and

• 7 new Fish Forever sites in the states of Pará and Pernambuco.

Brazil’s marine extractive reserve (RESEX) network, established almost 30 years ago, legalized user participation in natural resource co-management—considered a groundbreaking win for customary territorial rights for traditional communities. While the RESEX network delineated large areas of coastal habitats for local management, limited local governance capacity has been a barrier to operationalizing community-led management. Fish Forever Brazil builds on the RESEX model, engaging communities in and around specific RESEX areas to actively develop co-management capacity and effective management plans, including reserve creation and designation.

Communities have now designed and proposed 18 Reserves in four Fish Forever sites – Pirajubaé, Cururupu, Canavieiras and Delta do Parnaíba – which includes 1,500 hectares (ha) of reserves in 300,000 ha of RESEX. While the total reserve area is currently small, this advancement is a major turning point for traditional community participation in RESEX Council decision-making: not only does it put communities in the decision-making driver’s seat, it sets a precedent and creates a process for other coastal communities to establish their own reserve areas.

Meanwhile, the next phase of Fish Forever Brazil kicked off in March 2017 with the launch of seven new sites. Rare will advance a state-level movement with the State of Pará, which has Brazil’s highest population dependent on small-scale fisheries. We will also work in two sites in Pernambuco to test the use of fisheries agreements (legal frameworks to secure exclusive access rights for community-managed fisheries) for strengthening mud crab, shrimp, mollusks, and finfish management within multiple use protected areas (APAs). In Brazil, the long-term goal is to reach national adoption of Fish Forever—and a state-level strategy will bring the benefits of improved management to a significant percentage of small-scale fishers nationally.

6 sites

7 sites

6

7

13

11

40

51

9,800

22,000

31,800

2,148

5,500

7,648

357,096 ha

630,000 ha

987,096 ha

2014

2017

Total

Year Sites Communities FishersCommunitymembers

RESEX under improved fisheries

management

5

Behavior Change is Hard but Important – Let’s Make It CountIn May, Rare staff from the U.S., Brazil, Philippines, and Mexico joined hundreds of social marketers and behavior change strategists at the biannual World Social Marketing Conference in Washington, DC. to share best practices in social marketing for behavior adoption. In addition to serving as event co-sponsors and chairing the “Environment and Sustainability” conference track, Rare was honored to celebrate the work of our own Fel Cadiz, Rare Philippines Program Implementation Director, who received an award for ‘the best developmental/experiential submission’ presented at the conference.

Fel’s presentation, “Making it count: Getting small-scale fishers in the Philippines to Voluntarily Practice Fish Catch Monitoring,” shared a few insights on what we are learning in helping Philippine fishers adopt a new behavior:

#1 Fish catch reporting is adopted more easily if positioned as complementary to other pre-existing behaviors

#2 Behavior change implementation can be sequenced—but how the target audience will adopt changes cannot

#3 Simple behavior changes are not necessarily adopted as quickly as seemingly more complex ones

#4 Clear alignment is needed between technical design/scientific rigor and the behavior adoption strategy proposed

As Fel explained, applying such insights not only helps change individual behaviors, but fosters the collective behavior adoption and action needed to deliver wide-ranging social and environmental impacts. His presentation comes on the heels of an April 2017 article in Science magazine on the importance of behavior change for conservation. In Beyond the roots of human inaction: Fostering collective effort toward ecosystem conservation, authors Amel, Manning, Scott, and Koger explain why humans have so far failed to behave sustainably, and suggest that moving from individual to collective action is necessary. “Change is hard. Human beings are reticent to change their behavior even under the most compelling of circumstances, and environmental dangers do not tend to arouse the kind of urgency that motivates individuals to act…Psychological research suggests that humans can move toward a sustainable society by creating conditions that motivate environmentally responsible collective action.”

Rare partners with communities and government authorities at all levels to create the conditions for collective behavior adoption. We continue to leverage new insights on human motivation and decision-making from behavioral economics and social psychology. While change may be hard, Rare, with partners such as Harvard University, Stanford University, the Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm Resilience Center, and IASS Potsdam (Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies e.V.), is committed to advancing conservation and development by applying and sharing best practices for behavioral design.

Changing the behavior of millions of poor coastal fishermen isn’t easy. But Rare’s Fish Forever program has already found some success.

Read the Wall Street Journal artcle here.

6

Customizing Routes to Managed Access in IndonesiaThe 2014 amendment to Indonesian local government law 23/2014, which transitioned marine and coastal resource management from the district to the provincial (i.e., regional) level, strengthened the authority of governors to develop regional marine spatial plans. Despite this new opportunity to advance Indonesia’s small-scale fisheries management, local authorities are still at different stages of implementation. For Fish Forever, this has created parallel paths to advancing community-led fisheries management.

In West Nusa Tenggara Province, the Bumbang Bay Village (a.k.a. Teluk Bumbang), for example, is finalizing a proposal for village-level regulation and endorsement of the community-led TURF+Reserve plan and management body. Once submitted, the village government must present the proposed plan to the District Office for Marine Affairs and Fisheries for review, who, upon approval, must seek ordainment from the provincial government. In Teluk Kolono, by contrast, the model is reversed: The Southeast Sulawesi provincial government is developing a provincial marine spatial plan through which coastal provincial waters will be zoned into categories that include general fisheries, transportation, and no-take areas, among others. Working with Fish Forever, the provincial government has agreed to designate Teluk Kolono’s fishing area as a traditional fisheries sub-zone. A decree by the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries to finalize the provincial spatial plan (expected 2018) will then legalize the village’s TURF+Reserve.

Despite these different stages of implementation, a critical commonality underscores parallel journeys: both are changing the way that small-scale fisheries are managed in Indonesia. Going forward, Fish Forever is building on these parallel experiences to transform the way an entire province, and ultimately, networks of provinces, manage their nearshore fisheries. Fish Forever Indonesia recognizes that provinces will ultimately provide priority, preference and legal rights to Indonesia’s small-scale fishers. Our strategy is thus evolving alongside those of more progressive provincial government partners, such as Southeast Sulawesi, that have invited us to help them develop their near-shore marine spatial plans and management strategies and build provincial government capacity to support rights-based fisheries management (RBFM). Meanwhile, Rare Indonesia continues to partner with national ministries to ensure that the 2014 Amendment will provide a strong foundation for legalizing and operationalizing TURF+Reserves across the country.

Small-scale fishers are innately positioned to work hand in hand with nature, rather than against.”

– Dr. Suseno Sukoyono (Senior Advisor to the Minister of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, Indonesia) at the UN Ocean Conference, on fisheries conservation in Indonesia

7

Gaining Momentum for Managed Access + Sanctuaries in the Philippines

New Research Informs Reserve DesignKrueck N.C., G. N. Ahmadia, H. P. Possingham, C. Riginos, E. A. Treml, P. J. Mumby.2017. Marine Reserve Targets to Sustain and Rebuild Unregulated Fisheries. PLoS Biol 15(1): e2000537. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.2000537

This recent study by N.C. Krueck, et al. concludes, using advanced ecological models and new data sets to calculate appropriate levels of protection, that reserve networks which protect 10%–30% of fished habitats are effective at sustaining the long-term productivity of almost any complex fishery (with reserves sized around 1–20 km wide). The authors suggest an applicable “rule of thumb” for reserve designers: individual reserves should export at least 30% of locally produced larvae to adjacent fishing grounds.

These types of design specifications, where the best available science leads to clear recommendations, help underpin the Fish Forever strategy. To protect marine biodiversity while sustaining fish catches, Fish Forever must explicitly balance these twin objectives in reserve design. Protect too much area from fishing and catches will fall; restrict too little area and conservation objectives may not be met. Meeting both objectives is particularly difficult in diverse ecosystems that support complicated, multispecies fisheries, such as coral reefs. Nonetheless, balancing conservation and fisheries goals remains a central tenet of the program, and our work continues to translate science to on-the-ground management and implementation of managed access and reserves.

By the end of 2017,Fish Forever- Philippines will have established one managed access area (MAA) per municipality in most municipalities (meeting the original target) and a network of MAAs in four municipalities (exceeding the original target).

8 municipal management bodies have been established for MAA+Sanctuary2 decision-making and an additional 12 will be formalized by the end of 2017.

These management bodies gather data (through fisheries monitoring, control, surveillance, etc.) to guide collective local resource management decisions. By enabling community participation in management decision-making, Fish Forever is helping to guarantee effective and sustainable community-based fisheries management.

2. MAA+Sanctuaries is another name for TURF+Reserves

116,000 HA of MAA (includes 5,000 HA of Sanctuary)

Original target To-date By end of 2017

0 MAA 17 20 27

147,000 HA of MAA (includes 7,000 HA of Sanctuary)

governmentleaders

religiousleaders

teachers

women’sgroup

youthclubleaders

fishers

MAA+Sanctuary Management Bodies

8

The Science of Fish Forever

Chollett, I., Garavelli, L., Holstein, D., Cherubin, L., Fulton, S., Box, S. J. 2017. A case for redefining the boundaries of the Mesoamerican Reef Ecoregion. Coral Reefs. doi:10.1007/s00338-017-1595-4

Cox, C., A. Valdivia, M. McField, K. Castillo, and J. F. Bruno, 2017. Establishment of marine protected areas alone does not restore coral reef communities in Belize. Mar Ecol Prog Ser, Vol. 563: 65–79, 2017. doi: 10.3354/meps11984.

Gill, D. A., M. B. Mascia, G. N. Ahmadia, et al. 2017. Capacity shortfalls hinder the performance of marine protected areas globally. Nature. doi:10.1038/nature21708.

Hughes, T. P., J. T. Kerry, M. Álvarez-Noriega, et al. 2017. Global warming and recurrent mass bleaching of corals. Nature. doi:10.1038/nature21707

McClanahan, T. R., and N. A. Muthiga. 2017. Environmental variability indicates a climate-adaptive center under threat in northern Mozambique coral reefs. Ecosphere 8(5): e01812. 10.1002/ecs2.1812. ***Highlights the ecological importance of Fish Forever Mozambique site Quirimbas National Park.

Pinello, D., Gee, J. & Dimech, M. 2017. Handbook for fisheries socio-economic sample survey – principles and practice. FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Technical Paper No. 613. Rome, FAO.

Pomeroy, R., A. J. Ferrer, and J. Pedrajas. 2017. An analysis of livelihood projects and programs for fishing communities in the Philippines. Marine Policy 81 (2017) 250–255. ***This article surveys past coastal livelihoods projects in the Philippines and reflects lessons learned in numerous fishing communities. It has helped to develop in-country initiatives, such as Savings Clubs, and was supported by RARE-Philippines through funding from the Bloomberg Philanthropies Vibrant Oceans Initiative.

Roberts, C. M., et al. 2017. Marine reserves can mitigate and promote adaptation to climate change. PNAS, vol. 114 (24): 6167-6175. doi:10.1073/pnas.1701262114.

Weeks, R., A. L. Green, E. Joseph, N. Peterson, and E. Terk. 2017. Using reef fish movement to inform marine reserve design. Journal of Applied Ecology 2017, 54, 145–152 doi: 10.1111/1365-2664.12736. ***Principles in this publication are useful for Fish Forever social change monitoring and evaluation design, particularly around household surveys.

World Forum of Fisher People (WFFP). 2017. Human Rights vs. Property Rights: Implementation and Interpretation of the SSF Guidelines. ***The document contextualizes and historicizes the contemporary discussions around RBF and HRBA and clarifies how RBF differs fundamentally from the HRBA. May be helpful for understanding and enabling debate around the meaning and context of Rights-Based Fishing (RBF) and the Human Rights Based Approach (HRBA) of FAO’s Small-Scale Fisheries Guidelines.

Worm, B. 2017. How to heal an ocean. Nature. News & Views doi:10.1038/nature21895.

Fish Forever: A solution to inspire and accelerate community, and then national, adoption of spatial, rights-based management systems, combined with marine reserves, by leveraging Pride - Rare’s proprietary, proven behavior change methodology.

Goals: To demonstrate productive, sustainable and profitable small-scale fisheries by 2024 where:

• 20% of the *relevant sites in each country have adopted community-led spatial, rights-based fisheries management systems (*relevant=sites where small-scale fisheries recovery is possible)

• 20% of this rights-based fisheries management system is fully protected as a reserve

Fish Forever Countries: Philippines, Indonesia, Mozambique, Brazil and Belize

Number of Fish Forever sites: 81

rare.org/fish-forever-progress-update