Module 6 - Indonesia: Community-based Coral Reef Management

Benefits and Impacts

Compliance rates (numbers of patrol days without violation/total patrol days) increased by 10 percent in pilot sites following introduction of the MCS system. According to the Independent Evaluation, “a very high level of community involvement in coral reef resource management was achieved in a few pilot areas, resulting in a significant reduction in illegal and destructive fishing and coral mining in most of the pilot sites by more than 50 percent.”

Awareness campaigns also seemed to have had a positive impact on fishers’ behavior; 39 percent of fishers with low to medium exposure to COREMAP reported using reef-friendly fishing gear, compared to 46 percent with a high exposure to the COREMAP.

Lessons Learned and Issues for Wider Applicability

COREMAP I represents the first time any developing country has initiated a program of such scale to target the sustainable management of coral reefs and associated ecosystems. For this reason, it was designed to test approaches in several pilot sites, to generate lessons that could inform the design of interventions in an expanded number of priority coral reef sites in COREMAP II and III. In particular, the independent evaluation of COREMAP I suggested that coral reef ecosystem management activities supported by the COREMAP program should take a greater development focus, placing community needs (rather than approaches entirely devoted to conservation) at the center of coral reef ecosystem management.

In addition to these lessons, significant institutional developments have taken place in Indonesia over the course of COMEMAP I. Decentralization has created an opportunity to adapt the approach for coral reef ecosystem management in COREMAP II, placing greater emphasis on local government implementation and community responsibility than was originally envisaged at the outset of the Adaptable Program Loan (APL). As a result, the national strategic framework for coral reef management in Indonesia is one of collaborative management or comanagement, in which communities are legally empowered to collaborate with local governments to sustainably manage coral reefs and associated ecosystems upon which they depend for their livelihood. It was also noted that the investments in MCS were too costly, and in particular the operational costs were almost impossible to sustain after program termination. For this reason, COREMAP II is based on a much more scaled-down and cost-effective community-based MCS.

Key lessons learned include:

• Communities should be placed at the center of coral reef ecosystem management.
  
  
• Coral reef ecosystem management is most likely to be sustainable when local governments form partnerships with coastal communities (example: collaborative management).
  
  
• Collaborative coral reef ecosystem management is a process and must be implemented as such, rather than in a compartmentalized or fragmented approach focused on individual components.
  
  
• As a result of the 1999 laws supporting decentralization, district governments should be charged with program implementation, with coordination and support from the national government.