Blue Nature Alliance & Big Ocean Co-host Global Gathering to Advance Ocean Conservation at Scale

The Blue Nature Alliance (Alliance) GEF Project will catalyze the conservation of 1.25 billion hectares of ocean ecosystems, to safeguard biodiversity, help build resilience to climate change, promote human well-being, and enhance ecosystem connectivity and function. 

To meet this target, the Alliance’s Component 4: Global Enabling Conditions to Scale Up Ocean Conservation will cultivate global enabling conditions that are necessary to reach the ambitious goal of protecting 30 percent of the world’s ocean. This will include new science, tools, capacity, innovations, and policy directly related to the field of large-scale ocean conservation, thus contributing to individual sites and regions more broadly.

This IWEN spotlights an activity within the Knowledge management and learning for the fields of large-scale and transboundary ocean conservation has been strengthened and expanded (Outcome 4.2) that will result in increased knowledge, capacity, and tools to implement ocean conservation at scale and/or transboundary ocean governance. To maximize the utility of convenings, learning initiatives, and/or new tools and publications, the Blue Nature Alliance entered into partnership with Big Ocean to increase collaboration between practitioners and funders, enhance knowledge management, and develop and share new tools and approaches to increase manager capacity at large and often remote marine protected areas globally.

The only peer-learning network created ‘by managers for managers’ of large-scale marine areas, Big Ocean is a staunch advocate and leader in the field of Large-Scale Marine Protected Areas (LSMPAs). Since its inception in 2010, Big Ocean has fostered a vibrant Community of Practice that supports best-practice management at large-scale marine managed area globally; the network has 22 member sites representing 8 countries that collectively protect approximatley 16 million km2 of ocean. Big Ocean aims to contribute to:

• Peer-learning and networking opportunities for managers and practitioners working in marine conservation, protection and governance at scale;
• Understanding and amplifying the unique social, cultural and ecological value of large-scale marine managed areas;
• Sharing of resources and knowledge to enhance management effectiveness and amplify sound scientific research; and
• Enhancing best-practice standards and increase capacity building resources by communicating the conclusions and findings of the network’s efforts.

Big Ocean's leadership and collaboration in meeting the Alliance’s Component 4: Global Enabling Conditions to Scale Up Ocean Conservation focuses on prioritizing the capacity, resilience, and durability of Big Ocean through activities that add value to Alliance site engagements. Likewise, Big Ocean’s membership base and capacity-building resources for managers will support and engage LSMPAs that are a part of the Alliance pipelin

The Alliance is partnering with Big Ocean to increase collaboration between practitioners, enhance knowledge management, and develop and share new tools and approaches to increase manager-capacity at large and often remote marine protected areas globally. The next decade of ocean management and conservation at scale requires intentional cross-sector and cross-discipline collaboration to better document and leverage learnings that advance standards of best-practice management. With this in mind, Big Ocean and the Blue Nature Alliance co-hosted a global peer-learning exchange of ocean managers and practitioners in November 2022. Participants were a diverse group of 38 marine conservation practitioners and agency leaders, representing 16 national management authorities that protect ~8 million km2 of our global ocean. The week featured sessions about MPA priorities and challenges, indigenous led conservation, management effectiveness, capacity development and climate change. This exchange catalyzed strong relationships between marine managers that will produce benefits for years to come. Essential to achieving 30% by 2030 targets, relationships are the foundation for ongoing capacity building activities to support the broader field of Large-Scale Marine Protected Areas (LSMPAs). One of the most poignant themes shared at the exchange was ‘Successful, durable MPA management requires connection, context, and culture.’

Project Objective: To catalyze the conservation of 1.25 billion hectares of ocean ecosystems, to safeguard biodiversity, help build resilience to climate change, promote human well-being and enhance ecosystem connectivity and function.

In addition to the numerous ecological, economic, and cultural benefits they provide, large-scale MPAs are an important tool for achieving marine conservation goals such as the 30% by 2030 initiative, which calls for at least 30% of marine and coastal areas to be conserved in this decade. The vast size of marine managed and protected areas accentuates their inter-governmental and global significance: They can protect bio-cultural seascpaes, entire habitats or ecosystems, and migratory corridors, and affect international marine policies in ways that smaller scale MPAs cannot.

The budding field of large-scale ocean management requires intentional collaboration between researchers, managers, and practitioners to build a knowledge base for how to protect large, and often remote ocean spaces. It is essential that we strengthen connections between and amongst managers and practitioners to address the priority needs of those working on-the-ground globally.

To advance best practices in large-scale ocean conservation and create new peer-to-peer relationships, Big Ocean and the Blue Nature Alliance co-hosted a global learning exchange of ocean managers and practitioners in November 2022, titled the Ocean Manager’s XCHANGE. Participants spent the week sharing lived experiences to cultivate knowledge, capacity, and authentic relationships on behalf of the marine areas and communities they work to protect.  

As the origin of large-scale marine conservation is in the Pacific, and Big Ocean was conceived out of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, this collaborative event was held in Hawaii on the Island of ‘Oahu. Native Hawaiian values, practices, and intergenerational knowledge underpinned the framework of the exchange, with an emphasis on listening, learning, and building relationships between and amongst sites and managers.

Bringing together Big Ocean’s experience convening marine managers and the Alliance’s global network of partners, the exchange included a greater diversity of participants and sites than ever before. To help participants reconnect post-pandemic, the event featured interactive sessions and experiential peer learning opportunities, including the launch of the Alliance’s Capacity Development and Learning workstream which engaged managers in the design of strategies to advance knowledge sharing approaches, tools, and lessons learned.

The exchange strengthened the community of practice for managing oceans at-scale by balancing knowledge sharing presentations and peer learning, with experiential activities, and unstructured time for relationships to form organically. The agenda featured dialogue across the following topics:

• Increasing management effectiveness.
• Enhancing capacity development and learning.
• Navigating equitable solutions for Indigenous peoples and local communities.
• Co-designing strategies to advance knowledge sharing of approaches, tools, and lessons learned.

38 participants from 16 countries with management authority representing ~8 million km2 attended the 2022 Ocean Manager’s XCHANGE. Approximately half of attendees identified as MPA managers, with the other half being a mix of Alliance and Big Ocean staff, subject-matter experts, or expert practitioners. Participants spoke a variety of languages, with Spanish being the most common first language, and represented a range of cultures, communities, and ethnicities, with many self-identifying as being Indigenous Peoples.

Given the diverse composition of participants, the power of this convening was in its focus on relationship building. Throughout the exchange, a safe space was held for Indigenous participants to discuss cultural and traditional knowledge, including the importance of defining and holding space using cultural protocol to open and close activities and special sessions. One example was the Kapu Kai (a cleansing ceremony) and the opening Waiwai sharing that set the foundation for building authentic relationships. Participants were asked to bring a bottle of kai (seawater) or wai (freshwater) from their homeland to present during the official welcome. This symbolic offering of “their ocean” helped to create connection to each other and the ocean. Intentionally defining and maintaining a safe space allowed for meaningful introductions despite the group being from all corners of the globe.

Large Scale Marine Protected Areas Sessions

Leveraging the expertise and experience of event attendees and organizers, key LSMPA topics up for discussion included management priorities and effectiveness; relationship building between and amongst sites in preparation for future activities; and Indigenous-led conservation.

Management priorities and effectiveness were addressed primarily through site presentations and the session on refining the Human Dimensions Survey (HD Survey; See previous IW Learn Experience Note) in advance of its launch in mid-2023. The site presentations, which took place intermittently over the first three days of the exchange, allowed space for participants to ask each other questions in real-time and note topics for further discussion. Big Ocean collected site-based learnings for further development into more detailed case studies, specifically: sister-site agreements; culturally based management planning approaches; the importance of tracking and assessing cumulative impacts; agency-based Indigenous initiatives and staffing; and, expanding LSMPA capacity to integrate social science research and protocols into management.

During the Management Priorities and Progress Survey session, participants helped revise questions previously deployed at the 2021 LSMPA Managers Virtual Summit and the group was introduced to the survey and data analysis team. A key finding made apparent during these discussions was that LSMPA managers face a wide array of challenges, reinforcing the value of peer-to-peer manager learning.

A synthesis of the challenges that emerged from site presentations and the HD survey discussion showed a clear overlap with issues around site durability, which prompted Big Ocean to initiate a Political Conditions Assessment Project that was deployed two months later at the 5th International Marine Protected Area Congress (IMPAC5).

Indigenous-led conservation is easy to talk about but challenging to design and implement as it requires Indigenous Peoples to lead from the conceptual stage through design, implementation, and post-evaluation; they also need to be included in activities or publications developed from related outputs. Additionally, best practice dictates that Indigenous Peoples should be involved in site management or as project staff. To do this well, Indigenous project staff must also involve peers and experts from the broader community. Therefore, Big Ocean convened a Kūkākuka (a session to reflect) to create a safe space for invited Indigenous scholars, conservation professionals, and cultural leaders to explore their perspectives on Indigenous-led conservation. From the dynamic conversation, a need surfaced for conservation NGOs and government management authorities to build their capacity to empower Indigenous Peoples to lead conservation using intergenerational values, practices, and norms. Historically, conservation gatherings, convenings, and conferences have been designed to validate colonial structures, namely academia and science, as opposed to equitably valuing multiple knowledge systems. This Kūkākuka session was a successfully modelled true Indigenous-led conservation.

Recommendations for the Effective Delivery of Capacity Development to Strengthen Ocean Conservation at Scale:

Over the course of the exchange, participants were asked how the Alliance can best conduct capacity sharing, learning, and development activities to support the effectiveness of MPA managers. Here is a summary of their inputs:

1. Areas in need of capacity sharing support:

• Technology & Science – develop tools and innovations (i.e., enforcement), and connect researchers to managers.     
• Educational Access – increase manager’s knowledge and skills development, as well as community education through visitor centers.
• Better Engagement in Management - build strong manager networks and connect with stakeholders at the site, regional, and global levels to inform management.
• Equity - better inclusion and coordination with and for Indigenous People, woman, youth and appropriate stakeholders (i.e., respect for ancestral peoples).

1. Barriers to effective capacity development delivery: 

• Political will – weather transitions, address lack of support and create incentives for action
• Measuring Impact – explore how to show change, take the time to measure results, and address the lack of follow-up and lack of access to information.  
• Community informed, designed, and delivered conservation – address tendency for conservation to be driven by external researchers, governments, and non-governmental organizations. Consider overall bandwidth with multiple projects.
• Staffing – address the inconsistency of short-term personnel support and high staff turnover, explore the prioritization of workload and need to put learning into practice
• Partnerships & Relationships - build trust and coordination to address challenges associated with misalignment, fragility, and geographic distance.
• Funding – access to highly competitive funding is limited, challenges in appealing to funders, and alleviating reporting burdens.

1. Recommendations for the design and delivery of capacity development programs:

• Place-based prioritization – co-design priorities and programming with Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs), listen deeply to the needs of the site, develop flexible and shared goals, and tailor programming to the governance context.
• Authentic community engagement & outreach – understand your audience, share information openly with all parties, articulate goals and intentions, manage expectations relating to goals and results, and address inequities in programming.
• Long-term design – leverage and engage existing expertise in-country, develop a strong succession plan through mentorship, ensure the audience includes those with influence on the enabling environment, strengthen partnerships over the lifespan of programming, solve for the challenges of effective monitoring and evaluation, and learn solutions for diversifying sustainable funding opportunities. 

Co-creation and sharing of lessons learned for managing oceans at scale.

On the last day of the exchange, the Alliance facilitated interactive breakout sessions for participants to reflect on and capture compelling stories from their site’s implementation. By sharing lessons together with our partners, we can grow the field of ocean conservation at scale by:

• Supporting site managers to strengthen management effectiveness, governance processes, and the integration of human dimensions;
• Assisting additional sites to address or overcome similar issues and/or challenges and take advantage of innovations and insights;
• Strengthening or improving the practice of large-scale ocean conservation across all oceans through shared learning and reflection; and
• Supporting communication efforts to raise awareness about the value and importance of ocean conservation at scale.

At most global and even regional convenings of site managers, only a select few individuals can attend and there is often only one participant from each site. This allows for wide geographic representation and helps maintain the intended atmosphere for connection within logistical constraints. To this end, the convening featured interactive activities that enhanced engagement and allowed for the authentic exchange of lessons-learned across a spectrum of site managers and practitioners. As an example, peer-to-peer learning sessions allowed for small group work and the sharing of knowledge, expertise, and learning. Participants also documented their personal management stories, six of which have become written testimonials. Further, ten participant interviews were recorded with the assistance of a local production company. A summary video entitled “Our Big Ocean” was created from the interview footage to convey the global nature of the challenges MPA Managers face at their sites daily, and highlight the key lessons surfaced throughout the week. Editing of the individual interviews is underway with the aim of generating a publicly accessible series of videos spotlighting each site.

The partnership between Big Ocean and the Blue Nature Alliance successfully catalyzed peer-to-peer learning between the participating marine managers and established the foundation for increasing capacity of the broader field of marine management at scale. In compliment to the rapid growth of Big Ocean’s network of member sites, connections built during the exchange will increase momentum towards reaching the 30% by 2030 marine target. During the exchange, participants expressed interest in future convenings to deepen learning on the following priority topics:

• Integrating climate change into MPA management and management planning;
• Sustainable financing and durability for MPAs;
• Applied technologies and policies of Large-Scale MPAs (i.e., global outlook on enforcement technology); and
• Market structure of fisheries.

By evaluating the exchange planning process, we can inform how convenings might be designed to more meaningfully contribute to global MPA best-practice and expansion. Outcomes similar to those made during this exchange can be replicated through convenings that meet the following conditions:

• Begin with a clearly articulated vision and purpose statement by the core sponsor organizations, event coordination staff, and coordination team.
• Ensure roles and responsibilities of the coordination team and a decision-making framework are clearly outlined and in place before any substantive planning begins; this task can be carried out by the sponsoring entities, the planning committee, or both.
• Employ skilled facilitators (that should include participants if possible) to foster a collaborative approach that honors lived experience as well as academic and research-based accumen. Ensure the facilitators are accustomed to designing highly experiential agendas and are able to draw out tacit knowledge from participants, core to successful peer-to-peer learning.
• Engage a diverse planning committee (or similar body) to support sponsor organizations and lead coordination staff; ensure members include individuals with demonstrated experience in various aspects of event planning, and sector-specific content developement relevant to the type, scope, and scale of the gathering being envisioned.
• Ensure Indigenous Peoples (preferrabley a participant) are represented on the planning committee if Indigenous or Traditional (Ecological) Knowledge is a part of the agenda; any planning or event session, topic area, side event or site visit related to Indigneous or Tradtional Knowledge or are on ancestral lands must also be led by Indigenous Peoples.
• Seek input from target audiences, namely large-scale MPA managers, to ensure the agenda is relevant, and responsive to current needs and priorities.
• Select a venue that encourages participants to disconnect from their daily work and connect with each other – if resources allow, one that is near the ocean, or any culturally significant ecosystem or landscape that is seen as a source of healing and rejuvenation.

On the heels of COVID-19, the exchange seeded the kinds of relationships essential to peer-learning and networking among those leading on-the-ground ocean conservation and governance efforts. Scaling ocean protection to 30% by 2030 will require substantial increase of human, technical, and institutional capacity to manage new and existing marine managed areas. One of the most poignant themes shared at the exchange was ‘Successful, durable MPA management requires connection, context, and culture.’ Site managers need to create connections with people, and between people and the place; they also need to develop and impart a comprehensive understanding of the site’s context in relation to the broader national or even regional history and enabling conditions, namely––colonization, human rights, tenure, and rightsholders (including Indigenous Peoples and local communities), social and determinants, education, and culture. This theme emphasizes the importance of on-the-ground managers participating in capacity development and learning program design and delivery. -

The exchange provided an opportunity to share and capture insights from new and veteran protected areas managers, which can significantly benefit the field of marine management for years to come. Participants emerged from the week inspired to collaborate with their colleagues in new ways and to pursue professional development opportunities in service of improving management of their MPA. Some of reflections quoted anonymously were:

“This was an amazing XChange that re-energized me to continue to conserve and protect cultural and natural resource not only in the site I support, but in all that I do.”

" …it is important to recognize that managing our sites was more than finalizing a management plan for the site, rather it is connecting people with nature."

"One size doesn't fit all! The challenges managers face are very different around the world, it is so important to share lessons learned so others don't reinvent the wheel.”

Cultivating a self-sustaining support system for managers working in all types of ocean conservation areas, from LMMAs to LSMPAs, will require coordinated effort to ensure that conservation work is effective and durable. The Blue Nature Alliance and Big Ocean are identifying future opportuities to amplify the outcomes of this inaugural gathering; to further enhance the capacity of marine managers, practitioners, and communities to meet the challenge of healing our oceans for future generations.