Community Conservation

Blue Ventures’ strategy focuses on empowering coastal communities to manage their own resources, developing marine protection initiatives designed to sustain local fisheries and safeguard marine biodiversity.

These initiatives have guided fisheries policy and legislation, and been replicated by coastal communities, NGOs, and government agencies across hundreds of kilometres of coastline.

Recent successes include the creation of Velondriake, the largest community-managed marine reserve in the Indian Ocean, and a partnership with Madagascar National Parks to develop a Locally Managed Marine Area (LMMA) in the buffer zone next to the Kirindy Mité Marine Park.

Blue Ventures is now focusing on scaling-up community-based conservation activities at national and international levels across the Indian Ocean region, including the development of a Madagascan LMMA network to encourage peer-to-peer learning. 

Related Articles

L’utilisation du dina comme outil de gouvernance des ressources naturelles : leçons tirés de Velondriake, sud-ouest de Madagascar, Dec. 2010	Foraging for Development: a Comparison of Food insecurity, Production, and risk among Farmers, Forest Foragers, and marine Foragers in Southwestern Madagascar, 2010	Using community members to assess artisanal fisheries: the marine turtle fishery in Madagascar, Sept. 2010
Community creation and management of the Velondriake marine protected area, 2009	Understanding migration amongst the traditional fishers of West Madagascar, 2009	Vezo Fishing: An introduction to the methods used by fishers in Andavadoaka, southwest Madagascar, 2009
From hatchery to community - Madagacar's first village based Holothurian Mariculture programme, Jun. 2009	Biodiversity and health of coral reefs at pilot sites south of Toliara WWF Southern Toliara Marine Natural Resource Management project MG 0910.01, 2009	Mapping Velondriake: the application of bathymetric and marine habitat mapping to support conservation planning, southwest Madagascar, 2009