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The
Coral Gardens Initiative provides support and
expertise to help communities conserve, manage
and restore their coral reef resources. The
project commenced in August 2003 and finished in January 2006.
The project is designed to empower resource-owning
communities to take full responsibility for
the wise utilization of their own marine resources,
and in accordance with existing traditional
and governmental structures. Coral Gardens thus
seeks to work with governmental departments
and with like-minded non-governmental organizations
towards this common goal of enhancing community-based
marine resource management.
Coral Gardens carries forward tested concepts
of community-based resource management developed
by Partners in Community Development Fiji amongst
others to the Caribbean and the Pacific.
The project has three main areas for implementation:
 Scoping
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to review the existing national situations in
relation to community based coastal management,
identify gaps in current capacity and action
in countries and develop a plan of action to
implement key capacity building, technical advice
and pilot activities to build on the existing
foundations as well as identify areas where
further efforts will be required beyond the
scope of the EC project.
Training and Technical Assistance – addressing
priority capacity building and technical assistance
requirements identified in the scoping component
and assisting local affiliates in accessing
resources for further implementation beyond
the scope of the EC project. This is achieved
through training of trainers, strengthening
networks, facilitating exchanges between practitioners
from within the region, sourcing resources for
organisations to support communities and provision
of information relevant to communities
Global Advocacy – promote community based
coastal management frameworks, lessons learnt
throughout small island developing states and
leverage further donor and government support
for these types of interventions. This component
of the project will mesh with the upcoming BPoA+10
review to be held in Mauritius in January 2005
as a key platform for the sustainable development
of small island developing states (SIDS)
In the Pacific FSPI is working in partnership
with its national affiliates in Tuvalu, Kiribati,
Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu to deliver this
project in parallel with specific site support
and research activities being implemented by
these affiliates through the support of Darwin,
ICRAN and Macarthur-Packard funds.
In the Caribbean FSPI is working in partnership
with Counterpart Caribbean and the Centre for
Resource Management and Environment Studies
a the University of the West Indies to deliver
the project under the banner of the 4 C’s program:
Counterpart Caribbean Coastal Co-management
and Coral Regeneration Program.
This project is implemented in partnership with
FSPK, TANGO, SIDT, Counterpart Caribbean, CERMES,
Counterpart International and Just World Partners
and is funded by the European Commission.
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