Mangrove conservation is one of the many projects of Blue Ventures, which was founded 20 years ago by Al Harris, a British marine scientist who had the idea of using the revenue from organising diving expeditions to fund marine protection efforts. 

As 97% of fish stocks are in developing countries, where small-scale fisheries support the livelihoods of at least 500m people, Harris quickly understood that protecting fisheries wasn’t only about biodiversity. First and foremost, it was a human rights issue: when fish stocks are depleted, the most vulnerable coastal communities lose their only source of subsistence. 

So the Blue Ventures approach – now funded by international partners including WWF, UNDP and the Skoll Foundation, as well as its own income from marine expeditions – is not about stopping fishing altogether. “We are very much a pro-fishing organisation,” says Harris, now CEO of Blue Ventures. “We're pro-regenerative fishing that is generally local, that is supporting high value, high quality, nutritious food that's coming from a well-functioning ecosystem and is benefiting the planet and society.” 

The nonprofit uses targeted, short-term closures of coastal zones to enable fisheries to regenerate. Once fishing reopens, fisherpeople benefit from increased fish stock and catch more in one go, generating a higher income.

Blue Ventures works with local civil society organisations, such as youth clubs, women's associations or fisherfolk organisations. These are often informal (not legally established), but are “proximate to those communities and credible within those communities,” explains Harris. “They're not operating in the kind of conventional world of philanthropy,” he says. “But they're doing some of the most important work on the planet.”

In small coastal states, there is often little government capacity to monitor and manage small-scale fisheries, and it is very difficult to enforce conservation laws, Harris explains. “In all cases, it’s really about whether the community supports it,” he adds. 

Blue Ventures has developed locally managed marine conservation projects in coastal states around the world – and everywhere it faces initial doubt from coastal communities. “There's always scepticism about the trade-off of forgoing fishing,” Harris says. “That's a big concern to any fishing person, anywhere we work. It's about understanding their reality, and coming up with proposals that can limit that upfront cost, that uncertainty, that anxiety.” 

The key is to be pragmatic. Asking them to stop fishing or setting unrealistic targets is simply not sustainable, as the livelihoods of many vulnerable coastal communities entirely depend on fishing for their income and food security, Harris explains. 

The first step is always to demonstrate the immediate benefits of managing fisheries with data – which can be done quickly as fish stocks are remarkably resilient, Harris adds. In Madagascar, Blue Ventures closed an area to octopus fishing for three months. After the closure period, their data showed that fishermen were getting 90% more octopus in one catch than they did before.

Malagasy marine scientist Cicelin Rakotomahazo coordinates Blue Ventures’ Tahiry Honko project in southwest Madagascar, a mangrove area of 1,200 hectares that has the potential to store 1,400 tonnes of carbon per year if properly managed. Mangrove management means local communities can still use some of the mangrove resources, but in a controlled way, making it a viable solution that can be sustained in the long term.

The project design is based on a participatory approach. It starts by asking communities what barriers to mangrove conservation they are facing, explains Rakotomahazo, who himself grew up in a coastal community in the north of the island. The communities are also involved in mapping out the different areas for different types of use: controlled exploitation, closure and replantation. Blue Ventures then trains and equips local people to monitor and patrol the mangrove to ensure the community is meeting its targets.

“If you want communities to change, you need to involve people from the start,”  Rakotomahazo says.  

In parallel to mangrove conservation and restoration work, Blue Ventures helps communities to build alternative income sources, such as aquaculture (seaweed and sea cucumber farming), so their livelihoods depend less on the exploitation of mangroves. 

But the conservation of mangroves alone could be a new source of income given its ability to store “blue carbon” – as scientists call the carbon stored in marine ecosystems.

Mangroves are full of growing, flowering plants that photosynthesise and store away carbon. The biggest store of carbon lies in the sediment around the tree – “the smelly oozy mud that you see in those kinds of mangrove forests,” Harris explains.

Cutting down mangroves would release all this carbon into the atmosphere. So Blue Ventures scientists quantified the amount of carbon that could be captured if mangroves are properly managed, and compared this with a “business as usual” scenario where they are destroyed. This figure can be converted into carbon credits – which can be sold on carbon markets. In international carbon markets, the amount of carbon a country can use is limited;  if it uses too much, it can buy additional allowances from countries that absorb carbon rather than emit it – these allowances are called carbon credits.

“There's a value on that carbon per tonne, which can technically be verified, audited, and then sold”, Harris explains. “Mangroves offer us all kinds of different opportunities for incentivising conservation, which aren't available in other places.” 

For Malagasy coastal communities, the main obstacle to accessing carbon credit money is regulation and legislation. Mangroves are covered by multiple government ministries – those responsible for fisheries, environment and forests – which can sometimes pass conflicting legislation or slow down regulatory reform. 

“In Madagascar, defining the beneficiaries of carbon credits is still in its infancy,” says  Rakotomahazo. “The question is: who is the owner of this project? The rights of local people should be respected.”

Carbon credits will also incentivise communities to meet targets: if they perform below a certain threshold, that will affect how much money they receive, says Rakotomahazo. 

A law is in progress, but Rakotomahazo worries about political instability in Madagascar. “The structure always changes, and sometimes you have to go back to zero,” he says.

And Harris argues that “there needs to be a more equitable marketplace for connecting communities with those [carbon] markets, which currently doesn't exist… The market still fundamentally needs a lot of work to make it connect doers with payers, equitably, and efficiently.”

Today, Blue Ventures is becoming more vocal about the need for change from governments and consumers in developed countries. “Everything that we've achieved in terms of building local governance is very fragile,” Harris says. Too often, coastal communities see their hard conservation work wasted by industrial trawlers racking the seabed to provide developed countries with cheap exotic products, no matter the time of year. 

And climate change “will be terminal for a number of ecosystems that cannot tolerate thermal stress,” explains Harris. “In the tropics, for example, many animals already live at the very upper limit of that thermal tolerance. [Increasing temperature] changes oxygen concentrations in water… So a lot of species will have to move into deeper waters to be able to breathe.” Add this to dying coral reefs, fish migration and food chain disruption, and the future looks bleak for the marine world.

Blue carbon is attracting international attention as a means to reach “net zero” emissions targets. While Harris welcomes the interest, he laments that biodiversity, human rights and food security weren’t enough to make people care about coastal ecosystems. There is some promising legislation in the making, and consumers are starting to pay attention to the ecological – though rarely social – sustainability of what they buy, yet much further action is needed, he adds.

But Harris is encouraged by the rising interest in community ownership of management rights and governance of the sea.

“[It] is the most exciting thing marine conservation has ever, ever had,” he says. “Because it's a civil society movement and a human-led movement. It is a revolution in the way people think about their rights to rebuild fisheries from which they've typically been marginalised.”

Photos courtesy of Blue Ventures
Design by Fanny Blanquier