Case Study: Nguna-Pele Marine Protected Area in Vanuatu What is the Nguna-Pele MPA? The Nguna-Pele Marine Protected Area is a small, community-based and managed organization on the islands of Nguna and Pele in central Vanuatu. The organization is well renown throughout Vanuatu, including with government and non-government bodies, and internationally. The name “MPA” or “Nguna-Pele Marine Protected Area” refers to the organization and not to any particular village marine reserve or any distinct area. All communities on Nguna and Pele have the right to join the NPMPA Network. To join, a community must have written agreement and support of the chief and council. The community should have or begin to draft a management plan. And community must have a conservation area or conservation committee. By joining with the NPMPA network, communities gain power, information and solidarity to achieve joint goals and area development priorities. The role of the NPMPA is to provide awareness to individual villages to help them achieve sustainability and resilience. The NPMPA can help villages design and carry out projects that match resource use objectives. The NPMPA sources opportunities for education and training courses to benefit individuals and communities. The NPMPA gives clout to village requests to government bodies, and improves the power of negotiation that communities on Nguna and Pele have with external bodies. The Nguna-Pele MPA does not have any right, ownership, responsibility or authority over village lands, boundaries or conservation areas. Benefits to communities of the NPMPA network are proportional to the commitment and investment of time, energy and resources they community puts in. The NPMPA has an organizational structure and constitution, and day to day administration is implemented by a full-time MPA Manager. In addition, there are four part-time staff, including a boat captain, who are the extension agents of the MPA, responsible for community awareness, conservation activities and resource monitoring. Manager and staff salaries come from external funding and grants. The NPMPA is governed by management committee which is made up of representatives from each community. To lead the management committee, an executive committee is elected by village representatives to serve for a two year term. The executive committee chairs the monthly meetings of the NPMPA. All representatives on the management and executive committees are voluntary. The NPMPA has extensive infrastructure on the two islands, which jointly belongs to all community members. Background: In the 1990’s the Fisheries Department, as part of a trochus management project, began speaking to communities on the North coast of Efate island on the benefits of area closures for stock recovery. Soon Emua village had established an indefinite closure on all species. In 1995 Wan Smol Bag created the Turtle Monitor network with a conservation message, and an area-wide 10-year ban on turtle harvest was enacted by the chiefs on Nguna-Pele. In 1998, the community of Mere-Sauwia created a terrestrial, permanent protected area. In the next year Utanlangi established the first marine taboo on Nguna. In 2002, the community of Piliura on Pele requested a Peace Corps Volunteer to advise on the location for a permanent marine closure, which the community called a conservation area. In 2003, four chiefs from Piliura, Worearu, Unakap and Taloa established an informal network called the Nguna-Pele MPA. Note: The name “Nguna-Pele MPA” or “MPA” does not refer to any particular marine closure. Instead these terms refer to the organization/network of communities on Nguna and Pele. Most communities on Nguna and Pele call their reserves and area closures “Conservation Areas”. Some call the closures “tabus”. Only one village refers to its closure as an MPA. When people on Nguna and Pele talk about the “MPA”, they are talking about the group of community representatives that meet regularly to mutually assist individual village efforts. Networking Applicability: The islands of Nguna and Pele are linked by many natural, pre-existing networks: the NaPe Council of Chiefs, the Nguna-Pele Presbyterian Session and the Nguna-Pele Shefa Provincial Councilor/TAG. For this reason the Nguna-Pele MPA fits well within the area’s social and political setting. It also allows for strategic planning and scaling-up of closures from the village to regional level. Cooperative Management: Individual villages on Nguna and Pele have complete control over marine management within their tenured boundaries. Each community is responsible for establishing its own rules and regulations through the most appropriate channels (chiefs or councils). The NP-MPA provides information, advice and broad coordination only. Requests for technical assistance from government and NGO’s originate in a village, and are then submitted externally through the MPA executive committee. Villages on Nguna and Pele, and the MPA organization have a long history of cooperation with external entities. Wan Smol Bag turtle monitors are the heart and soul of the Nguna-Pele MPA. These locally-elected monitors are the marine experts in the area, and attend annual meetings and trainings organized by the Fisheries Department and local NGO’s. These WSB village monitors are also commonly the village reps to the NPMPA. Several Vanuatu Cultural Center fieldworkers are members and reps of the NPMPAMPA. Peace Corps Vanuatu has, to-date, provided six volunteers who have lived in different communities across Nguna and Pele. These volunteers have been assigned to the NPMPA organization to assist with planning, education, coordination and technical expertise. FSP Vanuatu has provided technical and material funding to some MPA communities through its coral gardens project. The Vanuatu Environment Unit registered the NPMPA under its EMAC Act and has supported its initiatives, providing technical and ideological advice. The Vanuatu Fisheries Department has provided continuous technical assistance and supported the MPA in many other ways including invitations to important meetings and providing duty free exemptions for research and monitoring. The Department of Lands has provided advice, support and land dispute mediation between some MPA communities. Vanuatu-based and international donors have continuously supported village and network-wide pilot projects and sustainability measures. Challenges: Some of the MPAs past pilot projects have been unsuccessful. For example, a village-based giant clam and trochus hatchery, through providing valuable education and awareness, was inoperable due to underestimated fuel and pump maintenance costs. Land disputes, unrelated to the MPA, have at times caused internal friction among some MPA member communities. A key challenge within Vanuatu as a whole is the lack of an official mechanism for collaboration among all the organizations and departments that support community-based resource management activities. The Current MPA: Today 16 villages on Nguna and Pele have officially joined the NPMPA Network. The network and its member villages are moving away from the “pilot project” focus of the MPA’s initial years and towards internally-focused, long-term sustainability and independence. Each community, with the assistance of the MPA manager, staff and volunteers, is now drafting individualized management plans which will guide long-term village development. The MPA has experienced the benefits of working as a network, and also sees the need for regular income to support network initiatives (meetings, admin, education, etc). Ideally, seed money should come from MPA member communities, but village-level priorities make fundraising for the NPMPA network difficult. The NPMPA has recently established several small-scale revenue generating activities to support network-wide activities. The NPMPA has an MOU with the Fisheries Department for collaboration and information sharing. There is a strong commitment by the village members of the Nguna-Pele Marine Protected Area to work within national priorities and share lessons, resources and capacity with other ni-Vanuatu groups. Cutting-Edge Research at the Nguna-Pele MPA In 2005 the Nguna-Pele MPA and scientists from James Cook University embarked on a major research project to understand how small community conservation areas benefit niVanuatu communities and their marine resources. Together they designed a research methodology to examine the outcomes of different expressions of village marine closures. Specifically the team compared permanentlyclosed reserves to those opened periodically for harvest. Ni-Vanuatu and foreign researchers used underwater visual censes to determine the abundances and biomass of target fisheries resources inside and outside village marine closures. They considered three communities with permanent closures and three communities that used the tabu system of periodic harvest. Results of the study show that both permanent and periodic closures have higher biomass inside than outside the reserve. This suggests that small-scale village-based reserves are effective resource management tools. Results also show that permanent and periodic closures do not have significantly different biomass levels of target fish species. This result suggests that opening a reserve temporarily for harvest following community needs may be a practice compatible with conservation goals. However, the duration and scope of the harvest should be well managed se as not to overharvest or damage the ecosystem during reserve openings. We also found that sedentary target invertebrates like giant clams and oysters can be severely impacted when a village closure is opened. These results show that reserve openings should be limited to fish and managed to protected vulnerable species that cannot easily escape harvest. Figure 1 Graph showing the target fish biomass inside and outside permanent and periodically harvested village marine reserves. NS- no significant difference, D= Cohen’s effect size, >0.8 is a significant effect. For further information, contact: 1. Kalpat Tarip, Manager of the Nguna-Pele Marine Protected Area at [email protected] or visit www.marineprotectedarea.com.vu or 2. Christopher Bartlett, JCU Coral Reef Center of Excellence at [email protected] or www.ChristopherYBartlett.com