Experience Notes & Lessons Learned

Feedback on experiences and lessons learned from the project.
FileExperience Note: Integrating Fisheries and Habitat Management: Fisheries Refugia in the South China Sea
This note covers an effort to address the over-exploitation of fisheries. Increasing levels of fishing effort, coupled with continued decline in the total area of habitats critical to the life-cycles of most species, have raised serious concerns for the long-term sustainability of artisanal fisheries. Given the feed back loops between fish stock and habitat quality on the one hand, and fishing activities and habitat quality on the other it was necessary to develop a regional initiative aimed at improving the management of fish stocks and their habitats. Fisheries refugia are, “Spatially and geographically defined, marine or coastal areas in which specific management measures are applied to sustain important species [fisheries resources] during critical stages of their life cycle, for their sustainable use.” It appears that the refugia concept is a successful approach to addressing a significant barrier to effective management action that addresses fish stocks and habitats important to critical stages of the life cycle of those stocks, namely the adverse reaction to the Marine Protected Area concept that is elicited from fishing communities and fisheries officers at the local and provincial levels. It is anticipated that the experiences gained in this region will be suitable for application in other large marine ecosystems where over-fishing and the use of inappropriate fishing gear are significant impediments to more sustainable exploitation of fisheries resources. This experience is considered important because of the potential global fisheries benefits associated with effective fisheries and habitat management at the local level, which is particularly important in the case of Southeast Asia due to the continuing importance of fisheries to food security, and maintenance of livelihoods. Christopher Paterson and John Pernetta South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand Project
FileExperience Note: Connecting GEF Projects with a Global Audience: Outreach Initiatives of the South China Sea Project
A large number and wide variety of information and data outputs were produced as part of the South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand project (SCS project). This note covers the efforts of the SCS project to build awareness of these outputs via the Internet by: (1) building the online visibility of the SCS project website; and (2) by providing website visitors with an engaging and interactive insight into project interventions and achievements. A combined strategy of improving the search engine friendliness and content richness of the SCS project website resulted in a large increase in the number of visitors accessing the website via Internet search engines. The creation of a SCS project layer for viewing on Google Earth also assisted in building awareness of project outputs and interventions. It also resulted in several unanticipated outreach benefits, including addition of the project to Google’s Outreach Showcase and its promotion in the official Google news as “a great example of how to connect with a wide audience”. The technical aspects of this work represent application of basic operating practices for online businesses to a GEF project. The potential for replicating the online outreach initiatives of the SCS project in other projects is high, particularly considering the outcomes were achieved using freely available software designed for use by non-Information Technology specialists. Christopher Paterson patersonc@un.org
Lessons Learned in Coastal Habitat and Land-Based Pollution Management in the South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand
A range of lessons learned from the UNEP/GEF South China Sea Project’s network of coastal habitat demonstration sites and pollution pilot activities were identified in 2007 as being worthy of documentation for sharing between and among other waters projects. Nine lessons learned were prepared during the first half of 2008 and reviewed by the ninth meeting of the project’s Regional Scientific and Technical Committee
FileManaging Multi-lateral Intergovernmental Projects and Programmes. 2005. (335 KB)
The management of comprehensive and extensive, multi-lateral and multi-national programmes and projects in the field of coastal and ocean management poses numerous organisational problems encompassing co-ordination between the actions of individual participating countries and interventions that are designed to address issues as diverse as: biological diversity conservation and sustainable use; fisheries management; maritime transport; and the control of land based pollution. Whilst the substantive issues and problems that are to be addressed during project implementation are generally well analysed and the potential solutions are generally identified based on sound scientific knowledge and information, less attention is all too frequently paid to the management structure that will ensure coherence and co-ordination of the interventions once the programme or project is under implementation.
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