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Coastal 500: Uniting Mayors for Ocean Conservation · How To Protect The Ocean

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When we talk about the oceans, we talk a lot of times about bad
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news is happening sea level rise and climate change effects like sea
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surface temperature increases and coral reefs dying because they're bleaching
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and all this bad stuff that happens around like small islands
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where they their shores are just all plastic from
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plastic pollution from other countries and things like that. A lot of
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the times we don't talk about the resiliency of these coastal communities in
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different parts of the world, especially small island states. On today's episode,
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we're actually going to be talking about the building of that capacity and that resiliency in
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different countries like the Philippines, Honduras, and
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other countries that just need that little extra help.
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And RARE, an organization that I've worked with before and
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we've had on the podcast before, talk about this on
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this episode. I talked to Rocky Sanchez-Tirona, who
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is here to talk about the projects in the Philippines, as well as other places,
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about their Fish Forever program, as well as their
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Coastal 500, where their goal is to bring together 500 communities,
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500 governments, to talk about
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and to sharing resources about building that coastal resiliency
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in a lot of places along the equator. We're going to talk about that on
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today's episode. I'm super excited. Let's start the show. Hey,
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everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I
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am your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the
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ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for
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a better ocean by taking action. And on today's episode, we're
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gonna be talking about living for a better ocean by taking action in
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a way that I haven't really talked about in a long time, and that's
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looking at what organizations like RARE does
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with small island communities. These
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are communities within small islands that are fishing communities that
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primarily depend on fish and
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fishing for their sustenance, as well as making a livelihood. And
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obviously changes in the environment that are affecting the availability of
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those fish, the availability of that seafood for
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them to live a proper life and the life that they're used to living. And
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so it's building that resiliency to be able to continue to
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you know, have that livelihood, be able to live the way they've wanted
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to live in the way they have lived for hundreds of if not thousands of years,
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and be able to do that in the face of change, ups and downs, whether
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a typhoon comes in, whether there is, you know, bleaching within
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a coral reef, or, you know, there's a change in, you
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know, the topography or whatever that might be, you never know what's
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going to happen in the ocean. That's what's kind of the dynamics of
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the ocean. It gives it such a great and interesting way of studying
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it. But also, you know, these communities depend on the
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fish and seafood from the coastal areas. And
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it's important that organizations like Rare help these communities
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as much as possible and provide them and empower them to
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be able to become resilient for a long time into the future.
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So, we have on a very special guest, Rocky Sanchez-Torona, who
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joined me from the Philippines to be able to talk about the
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program, how Fish Forever was built within the Philippines, how it
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grew by community and community, how they came to
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basically work with about 700 or 800 different types of
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villages, different governments, and how they're bringing mayors and
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government representatives from all over the world in
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small islands and other places where they're talking about protecting
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fish and how there's some similarities between some of the challenges that they have
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from Honduras to the Philippines to Mozambique to
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Mauritius and all different other types of islands. It's really interesting.
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It's something that I can't wait for you to listen to.
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So here is Rocky Sanchez-Torona from
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Rare talking about the Fish Forever program and the Coastal 500 program
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in the Philippines and elsewhere. Enjoy the interview and I will talk to
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you after. Hey, Rocky. Welcome
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to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Are you ready to talk about the
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wonderful i love the name coastal 500 almost sounds like a
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you know one of those f1 races or like those nascar races it's
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really sounds really exciting i'm looking forward to getting into this because this is
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how this conversation sort of came to be rocky and i you and i kind
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of got together because of a common colleague zach lowe
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who works for rare just like yourself and he was he reached out to
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me he's like andrew you know You've got to talk to Rocky about Coastal
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500. There's some new progress that's been made. We talked a little bit about
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it in my last conversation with Rare with Steve, but there's
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been so much that's happened since. I'm looking forward to getting into this
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conversation. But before we get into that, Rocky, why don't you just let the audience know
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Sure. So my name is Rocky. I'm based in Manila in
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the Philippines, and I am the managing director of
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a program called Fish Forever at Rare. We
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work with local communities and local governments to help them
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It's quite an interesting program because you
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work in the Philippines, obviously, but there are a lot of
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fishing villages in and around the Philippines who rely
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heavily on fishing for sustenance,
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for getting paid to feed their families, to
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get kids in school. That's a
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really cool thing, a really cool program to be
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a part of. How did you get to
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working with Rare? Where did your interest in this type
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So I have always loved the ocean. I'm a big
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scuba diver. I've been doing it for almost 30 years now. And
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so any excuse to get in the water, I will
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take it. My
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first life was actually in marketing and advertising communications.
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I'm sorry I sold a lot of shampoo.
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But increasingly, over time, I really wanted to try
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and see whether those skills could be applied to
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B3D, the things I really cared about. And when
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I heard about RARE, it felt like the perfect fit. RARE
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is focused on the human aspects of environment
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and conservation, and really understanding how
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you can help people become solutions to
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environmental challenges. And so I thought that at
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least my background in help understanding
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human behavior and really thinking about the
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ways that can move people can be useful. So I joined RARE
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and that came at a time when RARE was just
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starting Fish Forever in the Philippines. And like, so
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I finally found myself in a position where I could use my skills and
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Now, that's quite exciting to be able to want
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a position very similar to this. It obviously matches up
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very well to your skill set and your experiences in
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marketing and communications from before. But Rare
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is that kind of organization. It's a rare organization, no pun intended,
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of an organization that's built on
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marine conservation principles, but really focusing on
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people. Now, I have to admit, a lot
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of times when someone says, oh, I'm involved with an organization that
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protects the ocean, when you started to
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look at things that were important to you, which I assume were ocean
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protection and conservation and things like that, did
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you think organizations like RARE, being
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out of the field of marine conservation, did you think organizations
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like Rare existed? Have you ever met or learned about
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No, I had been dabbling in another
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NGO, I was volunteering for the board and it was very focused on
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reefs and kind of like, you know, so I learned how
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to do transects and count fish and
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things like that. But I hadn't really
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thought about really putting all
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the effort or I guess predominant, you know, a large part
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of the effort really on the people side of things. I mean, It
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felt like a no-brainer, and I was really glad to
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see that Rare had really positioned
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itself squarely in that space. And
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Rare doesn't just work on marine, it's really the
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understanding that you can apply behavioral insights to
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any sort of environmental challenge, right? There's
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So is that why you got into marketing and communications in the first place
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was more of the psychology behind, you
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know, putting out messaging for whether you're
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Yeah, I think so. I was actually a psych major in college.
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That was my next question. Yeah. And but
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I also like to write so so so it felt again, it
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I sort of like fall into these things where, yeah, oh, okay, here's where
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I kind of are interested in people, but I can
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write and I'm creative. So And I stayed there
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for quite a long time because it's a fun industry, you learn a
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lot, there's a lot of interesting things
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to do. And even within that field, I
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started gravitating towards communications projects that
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were really focused on social impact and
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behavior change. and advocacy. So that's
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where I was happiest, right? And that's actually
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how I met Rare. Rare was my client first.
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And I said, hey, they're really cool. They do these things and
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I can help. So when I said I want to make the jump, I
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really came to Rare and said, what can I do for you? I mean,
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So before you met Rare, though, and you were doing this, seems like
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a consultancy, what other type of social impact projects
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I did a lot of work on family planning. And
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that's another big one, right? Health, vaccination, and
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kind of just health, good governance is
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another thing, anti-corruption kind of activity. So I
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think that gave me a really good view of society
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and kind of like systems, right? And so I
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kind of know what are the levers.
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We had a client that was great at education, for
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example, and education governance. And I still see a lot of
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those parallels to the work we're doing now on environment, right?
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And the role that local governments, for example, play.
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Yeah, no doubt. It's really interesting. When
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you first started working with Rare, was it this project, like the Coastal 500 that
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So in the beginning, actually,
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this Fish Forever actually has expanded and grown. When
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we started it, When I started at Rare, it was
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just starting and basically what we were trying to
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figure out was how you can get
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communities to manage
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the fishing effort around protected areas so
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that they could kind of
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like reap better benefits than just kind of
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closing off areas. The premise was
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that Having these communities
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have exclusive rights or preferential rights to fish in
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an area gives them reason to actually
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protect and manage more sustainably because they're the
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ones that are going to benefit from the catch. So
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we started out by just kind of proving that that was true and
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that we could do that and figure out what's the policy
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that needs to be in place so that that can happen. And
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we started doing that in the Philippines and it took off. And
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really, people got excited. The first time
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we did it, there were communities
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that said, wow, we've been doing marine protected areas
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for years. And while
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we saw the impact of that, this is the missing piece.
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This is the part where now we know that we're the ones that are
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fishing around it. And therefore, we
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have good reason to change our gear, to cooperate with each
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other. follow more rules, right? So it becomes a much more
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holistic kind of protection. So that's
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Yeah. So for the Fish Forever, like so before Fish Forever kind of
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was built in the Philippines or was brought to the Philippines, before
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it was what people would just say, here's a marine protected area, you have to
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follow the rules. Go protect it. But
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the fishing villages didn't really completely understand
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I think the benefits were sort of limited. So
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yeah, so before I joined Rare, actually
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the first, Rare got
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known for what are called pride campaigns. They
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would teach communities how to
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run behavior change campaigns around certain solutions. So
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the first round of work in the Philippines were there
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were these protected areas and then they added on these behavior change
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campaigns and they were excited because the fish came back
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and people were really all on board. But then the fishers
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would say, we've been doing all this work protecting and then other people
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come and fish. in the area around the protected area
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and we're still poor, right? So that's the
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piece that was missing. That's the part that said, okay, if
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we then try and manage how you're fishing in the areas around
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the protected areas, and you're the ones that
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benefit from it, then you can actually stick to it longer. So
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that's how it expanded, and that's where we
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got, we started working much more closely with local governments in
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the Philippines, for example, because they have authority
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over all of these municipal waters. So now they saw,
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okay, that combination of protected areas, and
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then these areas where the fishers are following rules
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and changing their gears, they're benefiting from this, that
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becomes something that we can sustain and actually keep
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going because this is in effect the whole engine.
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So that's Fish Forever. And then
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when Coastal, we got the idea for Coastal 500 when
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we realized just how much power the local
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leaders, like the mayors that were on
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board, had in making change
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happen, right? So when you had a good, inspired mayor
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that really pushed things, made the right calls to policies,
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allocated budgets, showed up at these events and
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told fishers why it was important to do this, things moved
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a lot faster and it really paid off. So
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we thought then the next logical step is to bring these mayors
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together. so that they could learn from each other, inspire each
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other, and actually kind of like become a
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That's really interesting. Okay. And so now that,
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so coastal, so you had Fish Forever that really helped show
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the benefits of a little extra management around
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the marine protected areas, so that the
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local area would benefit more instead of having everybody else
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come in and and benefit from this protected area, even though they didn't really
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necessarily make the sacrifices that, you know, the local fishers
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would do. And then Coastal 500 kind of expanded on
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that, where it started to bring in the local mayors
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and other bodies like municipal and regional bodies
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to say, hey, let's expand on these protections. Am
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I understanding that right? And so they got more involved. So
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for the mayors to get more involved, I guess it's
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interesting when you have local management where there's
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a community that's managing it. But then when the government comes in
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and says, OK, we're going to manage this a little bit more, does there need to be community and
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Yeah, so that's where the idea of co-management comes
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in. Depending on the
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country you're in, the level of authority that's
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devolved to local governments varies. We
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were lucky to have been starting it in the Philippines, where
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there's really a fully devolved local government, so
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they have authority over these waters. And
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the challenge was to convince the local government that they actually
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get better work done and have
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more success if they work with the community from
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the get-go. to gather the
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representatives from the local government and leaders of the, let's
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say, the fishers, if they're the ones saying, oh, this is the area
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that needs protection. These are the kinds of rules that will work.
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And then everybody agrees on that and it's turned into policy by
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the local government, then it's much easier to enforce and
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the community will support it more
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When you get the buy-in from the community, so the
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legislation, the laws that get passed end up being a
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lot stronger because you have the buy-in from the community. It makes the
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government look good because they're passing laws that are actually seeing change
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because they have the buy-in, because they've already done the work. How much
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work is it for those mayors
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and government to talk and,
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I guess, negotiate with the community? I mean,
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there's got to be times where there's a bit of conflict, right?
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Not everybody's going to see eye to eye. There's trust to be
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built. There may have already been trust
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issues. You never know, like I live in Canada and I know there's trust issues between
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the government and everyone. So I can imagine, you know, a
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small state where there's maybe more contact with the government. There's
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probably some trust issues there. How
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does that happen? Like, does that happen often? And then how does
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So that's, I think that's a large part of what we do,
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kind of like facilitating that process to get
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to agreement and then kind of like helping them
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sustain it. I think the key pieces there
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are finding the right people in the local government
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that can lead that process and then building their
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capacity and helping them, arm them with the tools
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and skills needed. So for example, If you're
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going to go into a community and you know you're going to have to start
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that difficult conversation of, hey, we're going to have to protect certain areas
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or we're going to have to impose new rules, right? How do
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you have that conversation so that they're
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open to the idea and kind of like go
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with you along the way? So that's where we give them things like, here's
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a fish game where if you run it in the community, people
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play, they come to realizations about kind
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of like how things are and what will happen if we keep them the
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way they are, if we don't make any changes. But they
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do it in a safe, friendly way where they're having
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fun and they're much more willing to have
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that conversation afterwards. So providing those
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kinds of trainings and tools and processes, I
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think is where we come in. And that's where our
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partners have kind of said, we really appreciate you
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helping us do this and helping us
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also translate science in a way that's easier
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to absorb and kind of like exactly what is
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Right. And it's interesting because Rare has a really good reputation for
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working in collaboration with communities. You mentioned it like partners. It's
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not as if, you know, Rare is going in, it's like, you need to do this, you need to do this, you
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need to do this. A lot of the times from my understanding is you come in and it's
21:16
like, hey, what help do you need? Like, what are your challenges that you're facing?
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So Rare continues to do that. So I assume
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like a lot of the times, once you get a reputation within some villages
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and some coastal communities, I assume other communities might be
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inviting you to help them and have conversations with
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Yes, exactly. And that's sort of how we've been growing, where
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one community does it and then their neighbors say they want to do it.
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local governments. So we've helped them come together as
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an alliance so that they can coordinate among themselves and
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share resources as well. So that's sort of like a
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And I think that kind of comes to sort of the name Coastal 500. Can
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you just sort of describe what the 500, obviously coastal is
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So 500 was sort of like the aspirational
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number. If we had 500 local governments doing this, we
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could actually cover this
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many communities and this many people. It also
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And we know we will exceed it. I think what we're hoping for is by 2025, we're
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doing 500 communities. By 2030, hopefully we have 5,000. then
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we will figure out the ways that we can pass
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on more resources, more learning, more connections in
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ways that don't maybe a little less intensive on
23:21
So are you looking at 500 communities within the Philippines
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or is this 500 communities almost across the world, right?
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Right now, we have 170 or so member
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communities in seven countries. Right
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now, those are also areas where we're directly working
23:45
as RARE, so RARE staff are on the ground. working with these
23:48
communities. We wanna get to a point soon where
23:52
we can open up membership to others, where
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they'll just get kind of like a set of tools and resources and
24:00
links, connections to the others, and then they can do things
24:05
It's more scaling it, because you can only be
24:09
in so many places, right? Right. How
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many communities right now are working on
24:17
this program within the Philippines itself? Because I feel like
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just with the way that the island's shaped, the country's shaped, there are
24:23
a lot of sort of archipelagos and ins
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So how many communities? We have 75 local
24:34
governments that are members of Coastal 500. They
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represent, I think, something
24:42
like 700 or 800 communities
24:46
or villages actually. Wow. Within that,
24:53
That's a lot. We think it's
24:56
about almost, we're at about 9% of
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all the coastal municipalities in
25:04
the Philippines. So it's a lot. It's
25:07
a lot. Yeah. And it's
25:11
nice because
25:15
of that devolution, right? There really is a clear mandate for
25:18
local governments to do this for their constituents.
25:23
So it's very aligned. The government understands
25:27
this. The Department of Interior supports that. And
25:32
the mayors are kind of like really also see the value
25:39
So for RARE, do you have a system where you
25:42
evaluate the sort
25:52
I would imagine too, because I
25:55
would imagine each community has their own goals that they want
25:58
to set that are probably very different by region
26:04
Right, so we do have a number of indicators that
26:08
we're tracking like you know the number of hectares that
26:12
are under strict protection or no take, the number of
26:15
hectares that are under some form of management, so
26:18
that's sort of like at the very loose end. We try to figure
26:22
out whether there's an actual management body that's established
26:26
and meeting. That kind of means
26:29
it's functional in some way. And then we
26:33
are also gathering data where we can. about
26:37
the ecological impacts. So the amount
26:41
of fish in the water, the biomass and the abundance of
26:46
the fish of certain species that are important to the community. So
26:49
we're tracking that. We're doing household surveys and tracking
26:53
changes in how people are feeling. Are they feeling more positive? Are
26:57
they feeling like food secure or livelihood secure
27:02
kind of thing? But it's It's a lot
27:05
of places and the more we scale, the less able we
27:09
are to kind of like have data constantly. So
27:13
we're sort of thinking about what are the quick
27:16
ways that we can keep doing this for years so that we
27:20
really know what's happening. Because even in
27:23
the places where we're tracking, we'll see, okay, doing well, doing well, and
27:26
then a typhoon kind of like wipes out the coral and
27:30
then it all drops. So again, try again. understanding
27:39
Yeah, changes happen. I mean, even like a global pandemic, you
27:43
know, that probably changes things as well as you go through depending
27:47
on where you live. And, you know, changes happen,
27:50
especially with the storms these years. I know, you
27:54
know, in North America and the Caribbean, we're expecting probably our worst hurricanes
27:59
a season. yet, you know, the record. I
28:02
would imagine the same thing is similar in your
28:06
area, like you're part of the world in Southeast Asia. And
28:10
so it could be interesting. I mean, changes do happen,
28:14
you know, and there are a lot of changes in the environment that can happen
28:17
that will affect communities. And I think it's funny because when
28:21
you do evaluation programs, you're always looking for
28:25
Positive outcomes and if the positive outcomes don't hit you're like, well, what's
28:28
wrong with the program? But that doesn't necessarily mean there's something wrong
28:31
with the program It could just be like you said a typhoon comes in wipes
28:35
out the corals or ruins the corals that habitats gone So
28:38
it might take a year six months a couple years to
28:42
rebuild and rebuild that fishery but I think having
28:47
And having that program in that evaluation program and tracking it
28:50
through, you can see how fast the recovery might
28:54
be. And once you start getting that information, you
28:57
can better predict what's going to happen. So if
29:00
a typhoon hits, as you mentioned, coral gets ruined.
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The next time that happens after you rebuild, what worked
29:07
last time to help rebuild it faster? How did the community get
29:11
involved? How did the local government get involved? Is
29:14
there funding to help that? You can build almost programs from
29:18
that, right? Like that adaptation would probably be a lot
29:21
more helpful from programs like that. Is that sort of where you're
29:28
Exactly, yeah. And I think increasingly we're recognizing
29:32
that resilience really comes from
29:36
having people that can work together, that kind of
29:39
know what to do, so that they can act on changes
29:44
and respond to them and adapt, right? And
29:47
increasingly that's what we're after, I
29:51
think. Gotcha. Yeah, so even things like,
29:56
in a way, we've been seeing kind of like, we've been adding
29:59
things to the program that help enhance that. So, for
30:02
example, financial resilience, right,
30:06
of households. So, we've got these savings clubs that
30:10
are being formed in the communities. They're keeping money. Next
30:14
time a typhoon comes, they're actually able to draw from those savings.
30:18
So, those are things that enable them to then sustain the
30:22
good practices that they're doing because they
30:25
have that. And having
30:29
leaders that can read that and kind of understand that
30:33
that's what we need to keep pushing, I think it's important.
30:37
So it's almost building that capacity to understand, here
30:40
are the environmental changes that could happen, here's how it's affecting the
30:43
community. We have the data, you know and now you can track
30:47
it and now you can be better prepared for it and each community can
30:50
be better prepared for it instead of just sort of going through the motions and
30:54
never knowing what to do afterwards. Do you find that
30:58
change is already happening like you're already starting to see positive outcomes
31:02
from you know, storm coming through and
31:05
people, you know, there's there's a bit of savings or is it too early in the program to
31:09
No, so those we've seen. In fact, I love savings
31:12
clubs because they're sort of like quick return, right?
31:17
A nine month cycle, they'll already have money while
31:20
you're while the fish take seven years to recover. There
31:28
are days where we joke, let's just put up savings clouds. The
31:34
payback is, the emotional payback is
31:38
faster. But yeah, so we see those. We've
31:42
seen examples where because they were organized and
31:46
kind of like working together when a typhoon comes, they're actually
31:50
the team that actually helps the rebuild and
31:54
kind of like does the you
31:58
know, in one place, they actually, two days after the typhoon hit
32:02
their town and their houses were destroyed, they were actually back in the water putting
32:05
back the marker buoys for the protected areas, right?
32:09
So, because they know that that's important and they
32:12
know that they actually saw it for themselves that
32:17
in the period right after the typhoon, they could get food
32:20
from the marine protected area. Because it was already there. Yeah.
32:28
Oh, that's really cool. That's really cool. I love to
32:31
hear that. That's that's amazing. Instead of before, if
32:34
there was no marine protected area, everybody's fishing wherever that
32:38
could have been overfished a long time ago. So when a typhoon hits,
32:41
you're not going to get anything. At least now you can get something and
32:45
you can still feed your families. You can still pay for food, like, you
32:48
know, basically support your families and things like that and support
32:52
a living. That's amazing just to think about that.
32:57
Now, it's interesting to work with regions and
33:01
different villages, as you mentioned, 700, 800 villages
33:04
and talking about different regional governments. But
33:08
recently, you guys had a meeting, and I think it was in the last few months,
33:11
where you brought those leaders from the communities, the mayors
33:15
and from those governments. into one area. Was it Manila? Was
33:20
No, we went to Siargao in the Philippines.
33:24
That's a set of islands in the southern, southeastern
33:28
part of the Philippines. We had, including
33:32
the Philippine mayors, we had 16 mayors from six
33:41
Different countries, yeah. Oh, cool, cool. So we had mayors
33:45
from Honduras, Guatemala, district
33:48
administrators from Mozambique, representatives of
33:52
the local government from Brazil, from Honduras and then Indonesia.
33:58
Palau, a governor from Palau was there, yeah.
34:02
And they spent a week in the Philippines and it was nice
34:06
because it was a series of things. The first two
34:10
days were about visiting communities
34:15
in Siargao, so two separate local governments hosted
34:19
them for the day where they kind of saw different aspects
34:22
of coastal resource management, right? So on
34:26
the first day it was kind of like the protected area, the
34:30
enforcement, the kind of like policies that
34:35
the local government had passed. And then they talked to
34:38
savings clubs. On the second day, it
34:42
was a kind of like the ecotourism component of
34:46
the work that the local government was doing. along with
34:50
additional social protection programs that they had implemented
34:54
for their fishers, so insurance links to the government projects,
34:57
etc. So, those were like the field
35:01
trips, and then in the afternoons, they would come back together and
35:04
sort of brainstorm what this meant for them and
35:08
kind of like things that they would want to do. in their own countries
35:13
and communities, right? And then we got them together to
35:17
then also think about, okay, as a network, what could you do together?
35:22
So, we see that sometimes in alliances when
35:25
they're kind of like associated and they'll say, okay, we'll do a joint enforcement plan,
35:29
etc. At the national level, they can
35:33
become a real powerful force for advocacy. In
35:38
Honduras, the mayors all along this one bay have
35:42
been working with the national agency to push
35:45
for a law that will exclude industrial
35:49
fishing from 12 nautical miles to really
35:53
kind of like protect 12 nautical miles and reserve it for artisanal fishers
35:57
and the communities that depend on them. And that will also take out
36:01
some of the more destructive fishing practices like bottom trawling.
36:06
And if they were just going like one or two mayors tried to do
36:09
that, it probably wouldn't work. But the fact that they had 16, that made
36:16
Yeah, nice. Yeah, so that's super exciting and
36:20
it fires up the, yeah, it gets action
36:23
from national government and the communities feel
36:27
like they have somebody backing
36:31
them up, right? Right. So that's exciting. And then we
36:34
also have been taking the mayors to global events. So our
36:38
mayors have spoken at the UNFCCC COP,
36:42
they've spoken at our oceans and the CBD,
36:46
right? And it's a way to elevate the voices of
36:50
local I think that's one of the other very important pieces
36:53
here. As the world talks about protecting the
36:57
ocean, land, and sea, and hitting these targets, we
37:01
have to make sure that we're not forgetting that so many
37:07
people depend on these coastal waters, and
37:11
that they actually have the power to
37:15
make change happen and sustain it because they're the ones closest
37:21
That is so cool. That is awesome. So we're
37:24
seeing a lot of power in that and even sharing among
37:28
sort of global leaders in this has probably helped. Were
37:32
there any sort of benefits that we saw? I know it's still soon
37:36
to tell because they just met a couple of months ago, but did
37:39
you hear of talk of being excited of learning to
37:57
Yeah, I think that really came through where
38:00
they said, I'm going to copy that, or I'm going to
38:04
do that thing. Because in
38:07
a way, they're all really working the same problem. And
38:11
there's a general similar solution, but how
38:15
it's adapted or how it plays out, those are the ones where you really need to
38:19
see somebody else doing it and
38:24
Yeah, even offering advice on how to go about doing
38:28
it, more mayors together, more advocacy power, even
38:32
just sort of the structure, the framework of how to do it. could
38:35
probably help a lot. And I guess now they're probably going to just be in constant
38:39
connection. You know, they've met each other. They, you
38:45
Yeah, we've set up a WhatsApp community. Oh, you know, WhatsApp
38:48
is just texting back and forth, talking to each other. I love it.
38:52
And hopefully we're trying to drive more of like, show, you know, send
38:56
a picture of what you did to get other people excited. Yeah.
39:00
Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. I'm sure that communication will
39:04
develop as you go along to do that stuff.
39:07
There seems to be a lot of great things on this program. And
39:12
it seems to be just getting bigger and bigger. How
39:17
is Rare trying to grow this program to include
39:31
One very big element of this is really
39:34
kind of rethinking our delivery pathways. As
39:38
I explained earlier, for the longest time,
39:42
we got where we were by really having people on the ground
39:45
working closely with every local government
39:49
or community and kind of like walking them through the process. So
39:53
we are still doing that, and that's an important part of the
39:56
work. But we're also really trying to figure
40:00
out ways that we can pass it on to others. So
40:03
we're working with, let's say, provincial governments. where
40:07
we're training their staff on how to work with local governments so
40:11
that they can help them do certain things, or
40:15
universities, for example, and again, downloading elements
40:19
of the program in that way. Coastal 500 is,
40:23
in effect, another piece of it where it's really
40:27
lighter touch, where it's about influence and
40:30
access to others into a network. Hopefully
40:35
all of those kinds of things add up, right? and
40:39
they come up to a growth and
40:43
kind of like deeper, I guess wider reach. We're
40:49
also exploring a lot of partnerships as well, either
40:53
with other NGOs or other kind
40:58
of like initiatives or programs where we can add
41:01
value or just maybe do a component of it. as
41:04
well. We're also looking at ways
41:08
that, so some of the partnerships we're exploring are with
41:12
groups that, let's say, fund local
41:16
organizations. So, you know, having a combination where
41:19
they're providing the funding but we're providing the training would
41:25
Yeah, getting more dedicated groups because they can spend more time
41:28
on it because they're getting paid to do it. is probably a lot better than just
41:32
having volunteers who have other jobs or other priorities. And
41:36
then it's an extra thing on the board. I can I can see that happening a lot. I
41:39
mean, you see that a lot with board of directors, right? If they're volunteering, some
41:42
of them may be too busy to do the work that they need to volunteer as
41:48
Some board members are more present than others. I would imagine the same thing with
41:51
communities if they they have the funding to actually spend
41:54
some time on it and get the right resources for it. then
41:58
it'll probably be a lot more dedicated to achieving those goals, right?
42:02
Yeah, yeah. So we're trying to find ways to link
42:06
our partners, our community partners to more sources
42:10
Yeah, that's awesome. That's amazing. You
42:14
know, you've done this for quite some time. You've seen a lot of different
42:17
communities, you know, change over
42:21
time. Can you talk about maybe one that really stuck
42:25
in the back of your mind of just being like, this is this was a really cool to
42:31
Sure. I
42:35
visited a local government, this
42:39
is interesting because we started working in this area
42:44
called Tanyan Strait in the Philippines back
42:48
in 2010. This
42:53
particular local government was actually not part of
42:56
the first ones that we had worked with. So they were like a neighbor. And
43:02
they were just there, but they're pretty strong and awesome on
43:05
their own. They have good staff that have stayed there and
43:09
they were doing things, but we hadn't kind of partnered with them. And
43:13
then in 2017, we
43:19
finally signed an MOU with them and
43:22
they were part of a batch of communities in
43:25
that area where we did kind of like almost just a light kind
43:29
of intervention. We were experimenting to
43:33
see how much lighter can we go, right? So
43:36
that it's not so intensive and expensive. And
43:41
they were like the star pupil in that cohort and kind of like ran
43:45
with it, et cetera, and did things. And
43:48
then at the tail end of that two-year
43:51
engagement, they were also saying, oh, and you know what, we're going to pull together our
43:55
neighbors and form an alliance. Oh, wow. So
43:59
they went ahead and we helped a little bit in
44:02
terms of kind of like, oh, here, Manuel is here. But they kind
44:06
of ran with it. They worked with the provincial government. I visited them
44:09
recently, and they were showing me stuff like,
44:13
here's the roadmap that you showed us, and we still do
44:17
this. That is so cool. So
44:20
to me, that's kind of like, that's our dream,
44:24
right? And they were, even now, they're functioning
44:31
as the lead in that alliance where
44:34
they're actually sending their divers to help
44:38
do ecological surveys in the other communities. Wow.
44:45
Yeah, that's so cool. Like to be able to see a community
44:48
just take it on so much and you see the benefits, right, of all the communities that
44:53
take it on and they're much more prepared for
44:56
any kind of adaptation or any kind of, you know, change,
45:00
ups and downs and so forth. It must make your job feel
45:03
really good to see like your communities really, you
45:07
know, rallying behind this and being
45:11
able to see, you know, that resilience in those
45:14
communities to the different environmental changes that happen, especially
45:17
in in small islands because small islands feel it the most with
45:22
these different changes. So I
45:26
really do appreciate hearing that. Now,
45:30
are there some challenges that are faced,
45:34
particularly in the Philippines, maybe new challenges
45:38
that need to be addressed that you're looking forward to sort of
45:41
taking on? you know, whether it be sea level
45:44
rise, whether it be, you know, plastic pollution or
45:48
any kind of like litter, marine litter, or anything
45:52
like that. Have you seen anything that's been like a sort
45:58
I think in the Philippines and
46:02
countries where there's high population and
46:05
just kind of like the rate of coastal development, I think this
46:09
is the piece that maybe
46:13
something to be confronted really. And I think that's why
46:17
it's so important to be working with the local governments where everything lands.
46:23
Planning and everything. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of it has to do with planning and
46:26
what's allowed, what's not allowed in the area.
46:30
Because along with that are things like sewage going
46:33
into the ocean. Yes. Making sure. And
46:37
those things you can't fix without good land
46:41
use and planning plans and systems. Yeah.
46:45
That's a big, that's a big thing. One of the articles that Zach
46:48
sent me It was about
46:52
the meeting and one of the mayors mentioned,
46:56
I guess it was in Seargo, is that how you pronounce it?
46:59
Mentioned how the mangroves protected
47:06
them from, it was a typhoon. that
47:15
Yeah, two years ago. So can you just talk a little bit about like,
47:18
like maintain, like, you know, you talk about planning, talk about urban development, the importance of
47:22
maintaining those coastal systems. You know,
47:25
this, this mayor mentioned how this was going to be like, this was a
47:28
huge thing. Is that is that with
47:32
all the members that are part of the coastal 500? Is that a a
47:36
common theme is mangrove, seagrass, you know, coral
47:44
Yeah, sure. So that case in
47:47
Siargao is actually really interesting and we really can't
47:51
take credit for all that they've done because he was, that
47:55
mayor's pretty visionary when he first took office in
48:00
the, I think in the, around 2010 or thereabouts. That's
48:06
when he kind of really saw that
48:09
they needed to address the threats to the mangrove areas.
48:13
They've got the largest contiguous mangrove forest in
48:16
the Philippines actually, so it's a big deal. But it was also
48:19
getting cut down for firewood, etc. So he kind
48:23
of like put in a lot of policies and systems. at
48:28
the time and kind of like, you know, demonstrated political
48:31
will to really kind of like stop that. Then
48:36
he met us in 2014, I
48:40
think, and that's when we kind of like trained them
48:44
on behavior adoption strategy. So they sort of like layered that
48:47
on and applied it and in effect deepened the
48:51
impact of it. So that's really changed. He
48:55
took it upon himself to add on livelihood programs
48:59
around the mangroves that made it more,
49:03
you know, again created greater incentive for communities to stick
49:07
with protection. And so their payoff
49:10
was really during that typhoon where it was, it's
49:14
there. And we've seen that in many ways,
49:18
either for coral reefs, paying off for food,
49:25
Even like wave energy too, right? Dissipating wave energy that comes
49:32
Yeah, the science just isn't great, so it's a little harder
49:36
to prove it to communities. Yes,
49:40
true, true. Yeah, yeah. It's
49:44
not as obvious that way, but yes, I think food
49:48
is kind of like the main thing that people see
49:51
when they think about coral. But with
49:54
mangroves, it's this really kind of like that
49:59
Yeah, it's you know, I think this is this example right here
50:02
is where you see the power of coastal 500 because you have, you
50:06
know, a mayor who may or may not in the past have
50:09
only been able to speak to a couple of other mayors in and around the
50:13
region to and I don't know what the dynamics are in the Philippines in
50:16
terms of how often mayors get together and how far reach
50:20
they have to other mayors in the country. But now
50:23
we're talking over different countries and
50:27
different parts of the world and being able to share the
50:30
benefits of maintaining mangroves, not
50:34
only for protection, but also doubling down and saying, hey, we're going
50:37
to put livelihoods around the maintenance of the mangroves and things
50:40
like that. So now I see now where it's like, OK, other mayors
50:44
start to see this and be like, oh, so there is a reason not like
50:47
more than one reason to keep those mangroves in instead of like, you
50:50
know, getting pressure from developers to be like, Oh, no, we're gonna put a hotel or
50:54
resort here, or we're gonna put a building here, we're gonna
50:57
put some whatever development that might be. I think
51:00
that's really cool. Because you get those, those mayors with those
51:03
types of visions really have a lot more power in
51:08
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think there's also
51:13
I think there's also benefit to it being a
51:16
global group. Yes. Because in
51:20
a way you remove the element of political competition
51:24
and kind of like... Yeah, true. Because they're just
51:28
mayors together, right? When they're in that
51:31
kind of a situation. So it's fantastic. They let
51:34
their guard down. They're more open and honest as well
51:40
And even seeing, as you mentioned before, the similarities of
51:43
the problems and the challenges that they face, and then
51:47
how those solutions can maybe help one in
51:50
the Philippines and one in like Honduras or Guatemala or
51:54
wherever that might be. There's a lot of power in this. And
51:57
I really like the fact that Rare is involved in
52:00
this and trying to help and scale it to a point where it's like, you
52:04
may not need Rare at this point too much. You know, it's a
52:07
it's a it's a large organization, but it's a small organization for
52:11
the impact that you're having. And I just appreciate the
52:14
work that you and your colleagues have done to get this program off
52:18
the ground and to help these communities and and, you
52:21
know, to really empower the communities. I think that's really what's, you
52:24
know, where conservation has been heading for a long time. And Rare's been
52:28
at the forefront of that for a very long time
52:31
with Fish Forever and their other programs and the pride campaigns that
52:35
they've had for various species
52:38
at risk and so forth. So Rocky, thank you so much
52:42
for joining me today on the podcast to share this
52:45
information. I know this is something that's very positive for
52:49
us to hear and for the audience to hear because every once
52:52
in a while we need some positive news about marine conservation and
53:00
Thank you for having me. It was fun. You bet. Good conversation. Thank
53:04
Absolutely. You bet. Thank
53:08
you, Rocky, for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
53:12
This was amazing. I
53:16
love being able, this is what I love about my job. This is what I love about doing this
53:19
podcast is I get to speak to people like Rocky who work
53:23
for organizations like Rare, who work with communities to
53:26
become more resilient. It energizes me because I know that these
53:29
communities are better off. a savings account
53:33
for the community, having this savings bank to say, hey, you
53:37
know what, if something happens, we're ready to go. You
53:40
know, we're ready to be able to support each other because we're prepared
53:44
for anything that might happen. Because we never know what kind of storm is going
53:47
to come through. We never know what might happen. Our infrastructure is
53:50
better. Our support is better. Our financial support is better.
53:54
And we're ready to go. Even to just think that after a storm, Villages
53:59
will go out and put out their marker buoys to mark out the
54:03
boundaries for the marine protected area because they know that
54:06
they have more fish after a storm than they would previously if
54:10
they didn't have a marine protected area in place. That is huge.
54:13
That is what we call resiliency. And that is what I'd like to see more
54:17
and more of and hear more and more of with different communities
54:21
that live around the ocean, live on the coast. around the
54:24
world. I want to hear this because a lot of the times we hear this news
54:28
and even on this podcast, we hear news and I tell news about
54:32
really damaging things and really big challenges that we face.
54:36
But we see these organizations and these communities come together to
54:39
work, to become more resilient to these changes and be able
54:43
to adapt. and manage these areas a lot better
54:46
than they have been in the past, just because of the changes that they're facing. And
54:49
even though there are probably more changes coming, they're still going to
54:52
be able to be more resilient because they're prepared. And although
54:56
that change is going to continue to happen, although there's going to be challenges that they're
55:00
going to face, they're going to adapt, they're going to make more preparations, and
55:03
they're going to be able to be ready for anything that is
55:06
put in their place, and they'll be more resilient for it. This is what I love about my
55:10
job. This is what I love about organizations like Rare, about people
55:13
like Rocky, to be able to work with communities like this. And of course, the
55:16
resiliency of the community to be able to identify challenges
55:20
that they have, invite people in such
55:24
as Rare to come in and help them out and provide resources, work
55:28
with governments that There may
55:32
have been trust issues in the past and be able to overcome those
55:36
and have visionaries of mayors like
55:39
we just talked about in Siargao in the Philippines to
55:43
be able to say, hey, we need mangroves. And mangroves actually save
55:46
our towns because when we keep them in place, they save our towns from
55:50
flooding and from storm surges and so forth during typhoons. And
55:53
we're going to put livelihoods around that. So we need to protect even
55:57
more, especially after there's a lot of development, in the face of
56:00
a lot of development. So love the fact that we have these types
56:03
of episodes. Love the fact we have these organizations and people like Rocky
56:07
and Rare to be able to help out these communities
56:11
in all different types of places. Thank you, Zach, for putting me in touch with Rocky and
56:15
making me aware of this story. Thank you, Rocky, for coming on the podcast and
56:18
sharing your insights, sharing your experiences, and sharing your
56:21
stories. And thank you, the audience members, for listening to this. I
56:25
want you to share this because this is one of those episodes that I feel like
56:28
are so shareable that people will really become more
56:31
optimistic about how we adapt to changes in
56:35
our environment, to changes in our ocean. So, share this with one
56:39
of your friends, your colleagues, your family members, whoever that might be. These
56:43
are stories that we need to get out more and more. So, thank
56:46
you so much for listening to this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
56:50
I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and