Raja Ampat MPA Network context and challenges

Raja Ampat lies within the Bird’s Head Seascape in eastern Indonesia, and is a priority area for conservation in the Coral Triangle marine biodiversity hotspot. It is also important for global coral reef conservation in the context of climate change (Harris et al., 2017; McKenna et al., 2002; Purwanto et al., 2021).

In 2009, the Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security (CTI-CFF) was established. The CTI-CFF is a multilateral partnership involving governments and supporting parties, with five core goals:

1. Strengthening the management of seascapes

2. Promoting an ecosystem approach to fisheries management

3. Establishing and improving effective management of MPAs

4. Improving coastal community resilience to climate change

5. Protecting threatened species.

The relevance of MPAs to climate change is evident in the region-wide action plans for climate change adaptation (CTI-CFF, 2011) and MPAs (CTI-CFF, 2013). In Indonesia, MPAs are a key strategy for attaining many interlinked goals, including maintaining marine biodiversity, fish stocks and food security while also increasing resilience to climate change (Green et al., 2013; Mangubhai et al., 2015).

Most Indonesian MPAs are relatively small and increasingly grouped into networks based on ecological connectivity and/or administrative considerations (Nelson et al., 2019; Yulianto et al., 2013). The Raja Ampat MPA Network (MPAN) currently comprises local and national MPAs within Raja Ampat District in West Papua Province and is zoned for multiple uses including no-take zones, limited use zones, sasi zones (sasi is a traditional form of periodical harvesting (Cohen and Foale, 2013; Purwanto et al., 2016)) and shipping zones.

First established in 2008, the Raja Ampat MPAN is relatively recent. In the early 21st century, many MPAs were established at the district level. In 2014, jurisdiction was transferred to the provincial governments. The ongoing MPA transfer process has been fraught with difficulties (Ambo-Rappe and Moore, 2019; Dirhamsyah, 2016; Purwanto et al., 2021) and Raja Ampat is one of the few to have completed the transition to a new governance regime relatively smoothly. This success is due in part to the strength of multi-stakeholder partnerships and co-management systems in place beforehand.

Unlike the nationwide shift in governance regime, most major threats and challenges faced by Indonesian MPAs are common to many MPAs around the world (Burke et al., 2012; Mangubhai et al., 2012). Explicit policies and actions for climate change adaptation and mitigation are lacking or minimal in many areas of marine governance in Indonesia, including regulations on MPA design, management plans and evaluation criteria.

The prevailing view is that decreasing local stressors can help marine ecosystems recover better following climate impacts. However, climate change considerations are addressed implicitly and often in practice, with increasing attention to the concepts of social and ecological resilience and climate adaptation (Mangubhai et al., 2015). Mass coral bleaching and mortality and other effects of climate change are increasing threats, with the first mass bleaching event in the Raja Ampat MPAN in 2020 being a huge wake-up call.

Marine ecosystems in the Raja Ampat MPAN support both climate mitigation and adaptation. For example, vast mangrove forests and seagrass meadows within and around the Raja Ampat MPAN (Mangubhai et al., 2012) help to reduce GHG emissions. These valuable blue carbon ecosystems sequester CO2 in their biomass and soils, but it can be released when they are disturbed. In addition to their role in fisheries and tourism livelihoods, coral reefs are also vital for adaptation and provide coastal protection against increasing storm surges and sea-level rise (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2009).

Tourism has been the major source of income for the MPA and provides substantial additional income to local communities (Atmodjo et al., 2017; Governor of West Papua, 2021; Phua et al., 2021), but can also be a threat if poorly managed. Destructive and illegal fishing practices, mostly by fishers from outside the province, are still a major challenge, threatening ecosystems and livelihoods (Jaiteh et al., 2016; Varkey et al., 2010).

Approaches and strategies to adapt to and communicate climate change impacts 

Stakeholder communications 

Raja Ampat MPAN is co-managed under a regional public service agency, Badan Layanan Umum Daerah (BLUD), initially under Raja Ampat District (MMAF, 2012) and now under West Papua Province. The BLUD can act as a business entity and collaborates with stakeholders including:

• NGOs

• Academia

• Local and national government agencies

• Philanthropic donors

• Private sector actors (dive and tourism operators, homestay and boat owners, other local businesses)

• Local communities.

The management team recognizes the need for sustained and coordinated efforts involving many stakeholders to maintain socio-ecological resilience, in particular in the context of climate change. This is reflected in the five-year strategic plan (Figure 1), in which climate change is addressed under strategy 1 on climate adaptation through coordination and collaboration with stakeholders.

Figure 1. Summary of the BLUD five-year strategic plan policy directives and strategic programmes. Adapted from Governor of West Papua, 2021. Copyright 2021 by Governor of West Papua. Translated from Bahasa Indonesia.

International NGOs have played an active part in the inception, design and implementation of the Raja Ampat MPAN. Yayasan Konservasi Alan Nusantara (YKAN), the Indonesian branch of The Nature Conservancy (TNC), is an active partner in several management components, including monitoring, community outreach, and promoting climate resilience and adaptation.

Awaludinnoer, YKAN Bird’s Head Seascape Program Coordinator, considers that “the problem in Indonesia is [that MPA management units] don’t really have an activity focusing on climate change, they really focus on stakeholder and user management in the MPA; in Raja Ampat the programmes on mitigation and adaptation mostly come from the NGOs”. These focus on community-level adaptation and resilience rather than mitigation at this stage.

Awaludinnoer further explains how YKAN and partners have developed outreach videos and village-level assessments of what will happen in the next decade, such as increased storms and changes in seasonal rainfall patterns. These aim to assist local leaders in long-term planning including adaptation to climate change.

The pandemic has influenced the tools used; YKAN has developed multimedia climate change materials that have been disseminated through social media (e.g. on the YKAN YouTube channel). The success of this social media campaign will depend on the trust and networks built through long-term groundwork at the grassroots level as well as staff capacity to develop content and support from multi-stakeholder livelihood-related programmes, especially in tourism and fisheries. The COVID-19 pandemic has also brought challenges and tested the ingenuity and resilience of the managers and communities of Raja Ampat.

Monitoring climate change impacts

Monitoring and evaluation are vital for adaptive management (see Module 4 MPA monitoring in the face of climate change Q&A).

Awaludinnoer of YKAN coordinates the multi-stakeholder collaborative and multidisciplinary monitoring “super team”. By involving government, academia and NGOs, this system enables regular and reliable monitoring of ecological, socioeconomic and cultural aspects.

The outputs and indicators that are monitored are available to all, in many cases in both Bahasa Indonesia and English (see Related tools and resources – S4C). With respect to climate change, most indicators are relevant to resilience and capacity to resist or adapt, while the inclusion of coral bleaching in coral ecosystem monitoring is explicitly relevant.

Awaludinnoer explains that “the ‘super team’ links with the global Coral Reef Watch data from NOAA and can respond to bleaching risk warnings based on degree heating weeks data. In 2020 our rapid response team received a warning and we were able to document the first significant mass coral bleaching in Raja Ampat.”

The rapid ecological survey was deployed by the provincial government and the BLUD with support from non-state partners. The data was collated and analysed to estimate the bleaching coverage and the projected impacts. Due to the pandemic, this did not result in direct management interventions. However, this event tested the bleaching quick response system, which can be used to guide measures during future bleaching episodes.

Pak Syafrie Tuharea, Head of the Raja Ampat MPAN BLUD, stresses that, in order to manage the MPAN effectively in a changing environment, he needs data in real-time for individual sites – e.g. for each MPA in the network down to specific dive sites. “We also need guidelines for taking action when there is bleaching [such as] temporarily closing a dive site or restricting activities on a bleached reef,” he adds.

Local community climate change adaptation 

Adaptation to and mitigation of climate change impacts can buy time for coral reefs while wider climate change issues (hopefully) are addressed. This means reducing local stressors and building local resilience, which both depend on strong local support.

The Raja Ampat MPAN has prioritized the involvement of local communities from the earliest stages of MPA initiation. Apart from involvement in MPAN policy and implementation, community outreach has adopted innovative tools such as the Kalabia education boat. Innovations in community engagement in tourism include a portal enabling homestay owners to manage bookings from anywhere in the world.

YKAN is concentrating on climate adaptation for MPA communities rather than mitigation or a deep understanding of climate change. Social media and communications technology have been harnessed to maintain and develop initiatives to build community awareness and resilience, with a special focus on adaptation to climate change.

For general resilience and MPA effectiveness, four pilot villages are spearheading a novel integrated community empowerment approach. One complex and as yet unresolved issue is waste management, with burying or burning used as stop-gap measures to reduce marine pollution and soakaways (improperly referred to as “septic tanks”) as an alternative to direct discharge of sewage.

Practical tips 

The Raja Ampat experience of a large and diverse MPAN operating within multilevel governance systems highlights the need to address conservation – and climate change – at a range of practical management scales. Some practical tips for success with potential for replication/adaptation include:

Limitations

• Resources are needed to extend to village-level empowerment programmes, including those that cover climate adaptation and resilience.

• Running a social media campaign alone can’t guarantee local action on climate adaptation – local trust based on earlier groundwork is important for messages to be heard, whatever the communication format.

• The rapid response and routine coral bleaching monitoring provide valuable data, but more data is needed to support management on the ground. In particular, there’s a need for monitoring of dive sites and studies on other impacts of climate change and factors affecting resilience (e.g. larval dispersal and recruitment/settlement patterns of corals and associated organisms) at fine scale.

• Indonesian government-mandated MPA assessment tools lack an explicit climate change focus, in contrast to the ecosystems approach to fisheries management assessment. Managers and scientists are likely to support the inclusion of similar indicators (studies on climate impacts/mitigation/adaptation, and action plans to address climate impacts and adaptation) in future revisions of the assessment manual.

• Innovative waste management solutions are urgently needed, as this is a clear and growing threat to ecosystem health, especially coral reef resilience.