Progress report for
Mapping Ocean Wealth
Achievement at a glance
In January 2019, the Mapping Ocean Wealth (MOW) commenced a 3-year project to develop ecosystem service models to support the Caribbean Regional Oceanscape Project (CROP) in the Eastern Caribbean. We will refine and adapt existing coral reef tourism and fisheries models, while developing novel methodologies to characterize recreational fishing and nature-dependent tourism values in participating Eastern Caribbean countries (Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines). These data will support these countries in ongoing and future marine spatial planning through the direct provision of spatially explicit information on their ecosystem service values, particularly relating to fisheries and nature-based tourism. The MOW team held a stakeholder workshop in May 2019 and is currently finalizing data collection and beginning the modeling process. This project has also successfully incorporated the use of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) methodologies to evaluate the footprint of various tourism activities from crowd-sourced data. In March 2020, the MOW team has also recently secured a contract with WWF Madagascar to evaluate the impact of four hypothetical planning and development scenarios on coastal and ocean ecosystem services in the Northern Mozambique Channel. This will result in analyses for up to six countries in Eastern Africa.Challenges faced in implementation
Obtaining appropriate data for model inputs is a primary challenge. In many cases, data must be obtained from multiple government agencies, translated into the appropriate format for analyses, and, when evaluating multiple countries, cross-walked to ensure that data are comparable across the region. In the case of the Eastern Caribbean, data availability was not always consistent among participating countries. Analysing the spatial footprint of some tourism activities such as recreational fishing and whale/dolphin tourism is also challenging due to a lack of data, and industry input can be difficult and time-consuming to obtain. The CROP project also is employing novel AI/ML approaches into several of the models. While the initial results have been promising, there is a potential for bias and data gaps that can arise from using a combination of experimental techniques and crowd-sourced data, and the team is currently identifying approaches for mitigating these issues.Beneficiaries
We anticipate that the immediate beneficiaries of this work are decision-makers, who, as a result of this work, will have better access to information, resulting in a more comprehensive planning process with better outcomes for multiple stakeholder groups, especially those that rely on coastal and ocean resources for their livelihoods
Actions
In May 2019, the MOW team held a workshop in St. Lucia as part of the CROP project. The three day workshop was designed to build participants understanding of ecosystem services, emphasizing coastal and marine ecosystems, and how to integrate ecosystem services into policy, coastal master planning, and marine spatial planning.<br>
<br>The primary audience for the workshop was marine and coastal master planners from each CROP country, and/or representatives of the agencies that will be tasked with carrying out marine spatial planning activities under CROP. The majority of respondents expressed agreement or strong agreement that the workshop increased their understanding of data and methodologies around MOW models, as well as strengthening their understanding of their role in meeting the objectives for the MOW/CROP project.