Fishing for answers: Understanding obstacles to sustained autonomous local coral monitoring in community co-managed MPAs in the Central Visayas, Philippines

Data is required to manage and respond to global and local changes in marine systems. Unfortunately, capacity for monitoring is often lacking in regions where biodiversity is greatest and local populations are... [ view full abstract ]

Data is required to manage and respond to global and local changes in marine systems. Unfortunately, capacity for monitoring is often lacking in regions where biodiversity is greatest and local populations are disproportionately dependent upon dwindling resources. Local monitoring (i.e. citizen science) is increasingly hailed as a as a boon for stewardship, adaptive co-management, and sustainability, particularly in the developing context, where financial and human resources are limited and local people have significant interest in natural resource use. Local monitoring is thought to provide increased opportunity to address community-driven questions, placing resource decisions more fully into the hands of the people affected by the outcomes, in turn empowering local communities to better manage their resources, and shorten the adaptive management cycle. In the Philippines, where authority for coastal resource management and marine protected areas has been devolved to local governments for two decades, and MPAs are co-managed between local governments and fisher-folk, local coral monitoring programs have been widely implemented. 

However, despite two decades of efforts to train locals in coral monitoring, sustained autonomous monitoring in the Central Visayas is largely illusive following the withdrawal of the training organizations. I will present results from semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with fishers, local government officials, and training organizations to shed light on the question ‘Why are fishers and municipal officials failing to adopt and sustain coral monitoring practices?’ Results suggest misalignments in resource priorities, perceptions of the value of data, and theories of change among the three groups of actors.