Dale Galvin, Rare’s Chief Operating Officer, blogs about his trip to Fiji where he joined a hard-working Rare team to host a social marketing workshop for potential Pride campaign partners in the region. Follow Dale’s adventures as he and his team witness local conservation efforts to protect marine species, introduce regional conservation experts to Rare’s methodology and share how the Pride campaign model can support lasting conservation impact in their communities.
After traveling for 24 hours, I finally landed in Suva, Fiji to attend a three day workshop to introduce potential partners to Rare’s Pride program and social marketing concepts. Participants came from Fiji, Western Samoa, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea and represented organizations such as SeaWeb, Coral Reef Alliance, Fiji National Trust and the University of South Pacific. Participants learned more about what Rare does and were given a sample of the topics that Rare covers in its university training program (learn more) to equip local leaders with a comprehensive toolkit for achieving lasting conservation results.
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Introduction and greetings from Sunia Waqainabete, Chairman of FLMMA and Senior Research Office of the Fijian Fisheries Department.
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Pride campaign manager applicant, Fremden Yanhambath of Live and Learn Environmental Education, speaks to the participants about the top threats at his site in Vanuatu.
There was a lot of healthy interaction, learning, and feedback between Rare Staff, Pride campaign applicants and conservation experts. Many of the participants seemed to enjoy learning more about social marketing and Rare’s methodology. Conversations produced solid progress in our efforts to develop a suite of Pride campaigns focused on a common conservation threat and solution for the Pride English Program, including looking at some creative ways of maximizing impact. During one threat ranking exercise it became clear that many of the threats to the LMMAs in Fiji are common in other Pacific sites as well. Some of these threats include:
- Poaching by people from outside the management area
- Poaching by people from inside the management area
- Overfishing after opening of no-take (tabu) areas for community fundraising or celebration events
- Destructive fishing methods such as the use of poison, dynamite or fine mesh nets (such as mosquito nets)
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Group working together during a break-out session.
Our challenge then was to identify the specific conservation outcome that a cohort of Pride campaigns might support. There are a lot of options, including:One challenge – identifying the specific conservation outcome that a cohort of Pride campaigns might support. There are a lot of options, including:One challenge – identifying the specific conservation outcome that a cohort of Pride campaigns might support. There are a lot of options, including:One challenge – identifying the specific conservation outcome that a cohort of Pride campaigns might support. There are a lot of options, including:
- Developing new Managed Protected Areas and/ or No-Take Zones.
- Creating well-functioning reserves from those that are “paper parks”
- Strengthening already decently functioning fishing reserves by increasing enforcement, solidifying legislation, etc.
- Focusing on destructive fishing, “outsiders,” and other threats
Another cause of debate – the size of No-Take-Zones, and the method of determining what is deemed “successful.” In the Coral Triangle, our assumption is that a minimum No-Take Zone size should be 1000 hectares. The Fiji Locally-Managed Marine Area (FLMMA) scientists think much smaller reserves can and do work. The reason may be different habitat, levels of productivity in the reef, or just a difference in opinion. There is also a challenge of increasing No-Take Zones referred to as “tabu” size when the perception is that the current size is working, and expansion would be hard to accommodate.
One participant used an interesting analogy:
“…Asking a community to self-impose a No-Take-Zone, which is a significant portion of the overall fishing grounds of the community, for the promise (but not guarantee!) of some future benefit is akin to asking the residents of Washington, DC, to vote themselves a 30% additional tax, in the hopes that some future social benefit will accrue.”
Not an easy sale!
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