Demonstration Project of Community Participatory Coral Reef Conservation and Sustainable Island Tourism in Weizhou Island, Guangxi

【Rationale】 Combining the characteristics of Weizhou Island, and on the basis of ensuring scientificity, carry out marine conservation that combines both community cooperation and external intervention, enrich tourism products with diversified public welfare experiences, and explore the combined model of Weizhou Island’s marine conservation projects and tourism development. 【Solutions】 1. Under the guidance of scientists, develop and promote specialized conservation courses on coral reef survey and planting, train more divers to participate in citizen science activities of coral reef restoration and planting, and support Guangxi coral reef survey and restoration work sustainable. 2. Carry out public education and dissemination by designing marine eco-tourism maps, training intertidal zone exploration guides and guides of Weizhou Island Coral Museum, creating ecologically sustainable homestay space cases with strong marine culture, etc. while enhancing the tourism experience, create a unique business card for Weizhou Island's eco-friendly tourism, to balance the development of marine ecological protection and tourism development.  Anticipated results/outcomes预期成果 During the project period, directly repair the original damaged coral reef ecology and expand new coral reefs with the support of the Coral Reef Research Base of Guangxi University, and cultivate a professional team that can continuously maintain the coral reef ecology in the local area; to train core staffs responsible for the propagation of ecologic science education to master the course tools, and drive more local residents to understand the necessity and scienfiticity of marine conservation; to guide the eco-friendly travel behaviour of tourists on the island through diversified ecological travel experience and build the eco-travel business card of Weizhou Island, and let tourists and residents to sense the benefits of protecting the marine environment. In terms of long-term strategy, form a positive cycle of the mutual promotion between ecological protection and tourism development, so that the local community can transform from a problem maker to one of the problem solvers. The community involved in the project will include scientific institutions, tourism industry, diving resorts, local residents, and tourists, etc. 1) Ocean College of Guangxi University has been as the local scientific research cooperation institution with Better Blue since 2018. The lasting support of Reef survey in Guangxi, coral planting and repairing from Better Blue shows the cooperation. 2) The strategic cooperation between Better Blue and Xinyi group in tourism development of Weizhou Island has confirmed. Xinyi group operates the ferry of Weizhou island (Beihai) and invests in commercial ecosystems such as B&B’s, Marine sports base, restaurant on the island. In 2021, Better Blue has carried out the scene design of Marine educational space for one of the ferries. In the future, Xinyi group hopes to cooperate with Better Blue to carry out the transformation and upgrading of the Marine research base of self-operational B&B which include enrich tourist experience by coral planting and adopting through cooperation with Guangxi University.