Blue Ventures Skoll Awardee Profile Organization Overview Key Info Social Entrepreneur Alasdair Harris Year Awarded 2015 Issue Area Addressed Economic Opportunity, Environmental Sustainability, Health Sub Issue Area Addressed Arresting Deforestation, Health Delivery, Livelihoods, Ocean Ecosystems, Responsible Supply Chains Countries Served Belize, Comoros, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Tanzania, United Kingdom Website http://www.blueventures.org Twitter handle BlueVentures Facebook https://www.facebook.com/blueventures Youtube https://www.youtube.com/user/blueventures About the Organization Blue Ventures rebuilds tropical fisheries with coastal communities. They work alongside fishing communities throughout the tropics to design and implement practical measures to protect oceans for future generations. Throughout the tropics, the food security, livelihoods and cultural identity of hundreds of millions of people depend on what the ocean provides. Our tropical oceans are under unprecedented pressure from overfishing and habitat destruction, often to supply distant markets. Climate breakdown is exacerbating these threats, jeopardising the futures of coastal communities. Marine conservation initiatives designed from the top down often alienate local people and are costly to implement. Low cost, locally-led approaches that respond to the needs of coastal people show the greatest promise to expand marine conservation to the scale urgently required. Over the last decade Blue Ventures models have guided national fisheries policy and been replicated by communities, NGOs, businesses, donors, and government agencies along thousands of miles of coastline.Blue Ventures has created the largest locally-managed marine protected areas in the Indian Ocean, catalyzed a sea change in community-led fisheries management, established sustainable livelihood, aquaculture and ecotourism businesses, and developed new approaches to financing and incentivizing marine conservation. So far their work has impacted the lives of over 490,000 of the world’s poorest coastal people. Impact Founded in Madagascar in 2003, Blue Ventures has inspired the establishment of over 70 locally and co-managed marine areas, collectively covering 18.7 percent of Madagascar’s inshore seabed. In a seven-year peer-reviewed study, the 30-day temporary closure model yielded significant and recurring economic benefits for local communities, including a 136 percent average increase in village income in the month after a closure and an 87 percent increase in fish caught per day. The advocacy by the national network of locally managed marine areas, MIHARI, incubated by Blue Ventures, has resulted in ambitious national commitments from the Minister of Fisheries to triple the area of marine protected areas, and reform the marine legislation to support community fishing rights. Blue Ventures has supported 32 partners across 10 countries with toolkits, training, technical advice, mentoring, and learning exchanges. The core model has been adopted by partners in Tanzania, Mozambique, Indonesia, Comoros, Mauritius, and Mayotte, among others, and replication efforts are underway in Kenya, India, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, and Timor-Leste, globally impacting over 490,000 people Path to Scale To broaden its reach and accelerate impact, Blue Ventures builds long-term relationships with like-minded partners who are working with coastal communities in other geographies. BV shares its experiences and resources with partners, supporting them to implement effective, community-led approaches to marine management. Social Entrepreneur A lifelong fascination with the oceans and marine life led Al Harris to pursue a career in marine biology. As a graduate student studying threats to tropical reefs, observing widespread over- exploitation and climate-related damage to marine biodiversity, he realized that he could not spend his life as a researcher, simply documenting the destruction. He also recognized that traditional approaches to marine conservation, such as protected areas, could succeed only if the people who depend on the resources could be enlisted as allies. To build such alliances, conservationists had to understand the fundamental needs of fishing people, and coastal communities had to see meaningful benefits of marine protection in the short term. Al created Blue Ventures as a way of finding and sharing practical conservation solutions that work for communities struggling with poverty and collapsing fisheries. Al launched Blue Ventures (BV) in 2003, initially as a social enterprise offering underwater research expeditions and volunteer opportunities for ocean enthusiasts. These expeditions take paying volunteers into low income coastal communities to participate in underwater marine surveys, collecting data that help advise locally-led conservation plans, and providing funding to support BV’s work. In 2004, building on the foundation provided by its expeditions, the BV team worked with a coastal community in southwest Madagascar to introduce short-term closures of fishing grounds to boost catches. The pilot closure resulted in dramatic gains for local people and caught the attention of neighboring communities, building support for more ambitious conservation efforts led by communities. By returning economic benefits in timeframes that worked for traditional fishers, the model was able to inspire local leadership in embracing conservation as an opportunity, rather than a threat, for communities. The success of these closures resulted in the advent of Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMAs) – larger areas of ocean managed by communities to protect threatened ecosystems, and improve the sustainability of fishing practices. Over the subsequent decade, the LMMA model grew through community exchanges, being replicating by hundreds of coastal communities along one of Africa’s longest coastlines, and now covering over 17.5% of Madagascar’s inshore seabed. Inspired by this grassroots marine conservation movement, BV has grown beyond Madagascar. The organization is now active in eight tropical coastal states across the Indian Ocean, driving the development of new models for conservation that continue to put the human rights and economic needs of fishing people to the fore. Equilibrium Overview Current Equilibrium In the current equilibrium, more than 90% of the world’s fish stocks are considered either fully fished or overfished. The hundreds of millions of people who depend on coral reefs, mangroves, seagrasses and associated ecosystems for food security and livelihoods are unable to arrest the decline of these resources. With the human population surrounding our tropical coasts forecast to grow by 45% to 1.95 billion by 2050, the potential collapse of global fisheries, and tropical fisheries in particular, represents an existential problem at the nexus of food security, development and biodiversity conservation, further imperilled by the soaring impacts of climate change. The urgent need for large scale protection of our oceans is now well recognized, yet the majority of marine conservation efforts fail. Declaring areas of ocean permanently off-limits to fishing all-too-often puts conservation at loggerheads with the needs of coastal communities, disenfranchising traditional resource users. At the same time, conventional models for marine protection are typically ineffective in regions where coastal management and governance regimes are weak, and where poverty and human dependence on fishing are high. Several large areas encompassing globally important marine biodiversity are facing unprecedented threats, notably in the marine biodiversity hotspots of the northern Mozambique Channel and Indo-Pacific “Coral Triangle”. These areas contain coral reefs, mangroves [i] and seagrasses [ii] that are fundamental to the livelihoods and cultures of hundreds of millions of coastal people, but are under threat from overfishing, habitat destruction, and climate change. [i] http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v4/n5/full/ngeo1123.html [ii] http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n7/full/ngeo1477.html New Equilibrium In the new equilibrium, management approaches focused on so-called small-scale fisheries overcome the opportunity cost of reducing or surrendering fishing in a managed area. Coastal communities in the tropics are empowered to take the lead in managing marine resources sustainably, and marine conservation delivers meaningful benefits to people and nature. Tropical marine conservation efforts are grounded in outcomes associated with improving livelihoods, human rights and community health, and new sustainable alternative livelihoods provide coastal communities with a broader range of income opportunities reducing dependence on fishing. The success and resilience of locally-led marine conservation in turn encourages governments to respect and protect local fishing rights, and raises global awareness of the importance of small-scale fisheries in ensuring food security among coastal communities. Innovation Blue Ventures supports communities in low income tropical coastal states to design and implement practical conservation measures to secure marine resources for future generations. BV’s first action with any community is to listen. Through open dialogue, BV seeks to understand opportunities for local management, as well as potential barriers. Together with the community, BV develops, pilots and adapts marine resource management tools that generate meaningful gains for communities, while