Please note: due to the completion of the project, this website is now in archive status. Visit the new Blue Communities legacy website here for final outputs and any future updates.
16 June 2020
By Dr Matt Fortnam, University of Exeter
 

Teams of scientists and practitioners are working together to analyse new approaches to managing the marine environment in four case studies in South-East Asia

Stakeholders of UNESCO Man and Biosphere Reserves used interactive participatory methods to diagnose what has enabled and blocked the successful implementation of a range of marine planning innovations, including marine zoning, multi-use marine protected areas and alternative livelihood approaches.
 
Following a regional training workshop in Kuala Lumpar, in-country teams organised workshops and interviews with a diverse range of stakeholders, who looked back at the history of their marine innovation to reflect on ingredients for success and the obstacles that they had faced along the way. They then mapped the relationships and power dynamics amongst all actors involved in or affected by the innovation, using a participatory social network analysis method – NetMap. University of Exeter Research Fellow, Dr Matt Fortnam, was stationed in the region for several months to support the teams implement the methods.
 
Marine innovation workshop
During an interactive workshop at the Blue Communities 2019 annual meeting in Plymouth, the teams compared their findings, and received training in qualitative data analysis and writing high impact publications.
 
Training workshop in Plymouth, UK
Data collection has now been completed and each team are close to completing draft manuscripts of scientific journal articles. Next, we will meet virtually in a ‘writeshop’ to co-write the draft results section of a meta-analysis paper that draws from the insights from across the four case studies. Later, the teams plan to produce policy briefs and feedback findings to stakeholders during learning workshops in each case study to improve the governance of each marine reserve/park.


Project 2 introduction

Image courtesy of Dr Matt Fortnam, University of Exeter.

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