Blue Ventures rebuilds tropical fisheries with coastal communities. They work alongside fishing communities throughout the tropics to design and implement practical measures to protect oceans for future generations.
Throughout the tropics, the food security, livelihoods and cultural identity of hundreds of millions of people depend on what the ocean provides. Our tropical oceans are under unprecedented pressure from overfishing and habitat destruction, often to supply distant markets. Climate breakdown is exacerbating these threats, jeopardising the futures of coastal communities. Marine conservation initiatives designed from the top down often alienate local people and are costly to implement. Low cost, locally-led approaches that respond to the needs of coastal people show the greatest promise to expand marine conservation to the scale urgently required.
Over the last decade Blue Ventures models have guided national fisheries policy and been replicated by communities, NGOs, businesses, donors, and government agencies along thousands of miles of coastline.Blue Ventures has created the largest locally-managed marine protected areas in the Indian Ocean, catalyzed a sea change in community-led fisheries management, established sustainable livelihood, aquaculture and ecotourism businesses, and developed new approaches to financing and incentivizing marine conservation.
So far their work has impacted the lives of over 490,000 of the world’s poorest coastal people.