Conserving Marine Resources to Benefit Both People and Nature

Blue Ventures is partnering with dozens of remote fishing villages along Madagascar’s southwest coast to create the largest community-run protected area in the entire Western Indian Ocean.

The reserve, called Velondriake – a local Malagasy word meaning “to live with the sea” – spans 800-square kilometers, benefits more than 10,000 people and protects coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass beds, baobab forests and other threatened habitats.

Local villagers worked with Blue Ventures to define the boarders of Velondriake and identify which habitats to protect. Villagers are being trained in conservation science and planning, and have established a management board that will oversee the implementation, management and monitoring of the reserve.

Along with traditional conservation strategies such as seasonal no-take zones and permanent reserves, the villagers living within and around Velondriake will benefit from a variety of sustainable development activities created by Blue Ventures, including sea cucumber farming, algae farming and eco-tourism.

Other partners on the project are Madagascar’s Institute of Marine Sciences (Institut Halieutique et des Sciences Marines – IHSM) and the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Blue Ventures began working in Madagascar in 2003, establishing its scientific research site in the remote fishing village of Andavadoaka, located along the country’s southwest coast. The region is home to some of the most diverse marine life on Earth, as well as the Vezo people.

The Vezo are known as “people of the sea” for their close cultural, economic and spiritual ties to the marine environment. They are wholly dependent on healthy marine systems for food, income and transportation, and often hold religious ceremonies thanking their ancestors for the bounty provided by the ocean waters.

But the region’s coastal areas face serious threats from growing populations, poorly managed tourism and an increasing number of commercial fishing companies operating in the area.

To counter these threats, Blue Ventures, in 2004, launched a partnership with Andavadoaka to create the world’s first community-run marine protected area (MPA) for octopus – the most valuable commodity in the region.

Combining local traditional knowledge and the latest conservation science, the MPA has not only increased the size and numbers of octopus, but also has resulted in greater yields for local fishermen.

The project proved so successful – studies show octopus catch increased 13 times after the MPA was implemented – that the national government used it as a model to create similar marine protected areas across Madagascar.

The Velondriake reserve will expand the benefits of conservation even further across Madagascar, proving that economic development can, and must, go hand in hand with environmental conservation.

To increase national capacity for conservation success across Madagascar, Blue Ventures is also running a variety of environmental education programmes for local communities – including children’s environmental clubs, conservation scholarship programmes and training workshops.

Blue Ventures shares its research data with Madagascar-based agencies and institutions to support their efforts to protect local natural resources. And Blue Ventures partners with the Madagascar national park service (ANGAP), which uses Andavadoaka’s conservation areas as a training centre for coastal management practitioners.

Award-winning Success

Over the years, Blue Ventures has won numerous awards for its conservation work in Madagascar.

In 2005 Blue Ventures became the first European organisation to win the SEED Award sponsored by the United Nations and the International Conservation Union (IUCN) in recognition of promising new locally-driven partnerships for delivering sustainable development and livelihoods.

In 2006, Skal, the world’s largest organisation of travel and tourism professionals, named Blue Ventures winner of its International Ecotourism Award.

And in 2007 the village of Andavadoaka’s partnership with Blue Ventures won the United Nation’s Development Programme’ Equator Prize in recognition of outstanding community efforts for poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation.