Bloomberg Ocean Initiative
Ensuring our oceans survive and thrive in the face of climate change
The initiative uses multiple strategies to protect ocean ecosystems:
Strategic Partnerships: No one entity can eradicate the threats to our oceans alone. The Bloomberg Ocean Initiative forms and fosters partnerships with leading ocean conservation groups, advocates, funders, business leaders, scientists and governments.
- Climate change, overfishing, pollution, and unsustainable development threaten the survival of coral reefs. As part of the Bloomberg Ocean Initiative, WCS works on the ground all over the world with local partners at every level to protect climate-resilient reefs and to restore degraded coral reefs before they are lost entirely.
National policy reform: Taking a data-driven approach, Bloomberg Ocean Initiative supports policy reform on small- and industrial-scale fishing practices in top fishing nations, including Brazil, Chile and the Philippines. This work is imperative to meeting rising seafood demand due to population growth and supporting the livelihoods of billions globally.
- WCS works closely with government and local partners advocating for policies that strengthen the role of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in fisheries management, and catalysing political support for new marine protected areas. Internationally, our coral reef and policy experts are working to ensure actionable and science-based policies for coral reefs are prioritized in the Post-2020 Convention on Biological Diversity, to help safeguard our ocean’s biodiversity centers and the food security and livelihoods of millions.
Local conservation and fisheries management: Bloomberg Ocean Initiative partners with organizations, coastal communities and local governments to manage small-scale fisheries, manage fish and coral resources, and prevent pollution to protect their sources of income and nutrition while ensuring long-term sustainability and resilience of the coastal ecosystems. Empowering local communities with direct control over their resources is a proven way to enhance conservation and safeguard sources of income and nutrition, as well as ensure long-term resilience of coastal ecosystems.
- WCS works to protect climate-resilient reefs all over the world, centering community-led conservation efforts. We identify, mitigate, and monitor the major threats to coral reefs, and track our progress in addressing threats as well as the resulting ecosystem and livelihood gains. We work with local partners to mitigate land-based impacts like pollution, deforestation, and unsustainable development, to combat overfishing and destructive fishing methods, and to strengthen the governance and effectiveness of marine protected areas (MPAs).
By the Numbers
15,134 km2 of ocean protected by policy gains
20 science-based policies launched or passed
109 local leaders we’re working with to protect reefs
24 million people benefiting from coral reef protections in WCS geographies
15 million dollars of additional funds leveraged as a result of Bloomberg Ocean Initiative
Fiji
Healthy watersheds support healthy people. In Fiji, WCS is taking an integrated approach to improving the health of the entire linked ridge-to-reef system, including the human communities that rely on them for food and livelihoods.
There is higher risk of people contracting waterborne bacterial diseases like typhoid and leptospirosis in watersheds with high amounts of deforestation and high density of livestock. We also know that watershed alterations that promote flooding and standing water can accelerate transmission of tropical diseases like dengue fever. As well as hurting human health, these same activities result in harmful runoff as polluting sediments and nutrients enter waterways and wreak havoc on downstream coral reef ecosystems.
To combat rises in waterborne diseases and pollution on coral reefs, WCS and partners launched the WISH Fiji (Watershed Interventions for Systems Health in Fiji) program in 2019. WISH focuses on targeted and integrated upstream catchment management and policy reform to reduce the spread of disease and improve conditions for coral reefs in Fiji.
Indonesia
WCS has made huge strides in protecting Indonesia’s coral reefs by working with key partners to formally establish more than 823,500 km2 of MPAs since the beginning of our work with Bloomberg Ocean Initiative.
Under this project we are focusing primarily on three places:
- In Taka Bonerate National Park, we continue to tackle a major threat to the park’s reefs – blast fishing – through a multi-faceted approach aimed at prevention, building compliance and public awareness, empowering the local government, and improving detection of illegal fishing through field technology.
- In another national park, Karimunjawa, WCS is working with the National Park Authority to create sustainable reef tourism guidelines and practices to help local tourism operators protect the ecosystems that they depend on.
- In Aceh, WCS works hand-in-hand with traditional “Panglima Laot” leaders to implement community-centric marine protection laws and to support local leaders to manage fishing activity in their territories.
Tanzania & Kenya
WCS works along the coast of Eastern Africa to conserve critical marine habitat and species through marine protected Area (MPA) governance, sustainable small-scale fisheries work, and working with communities to build greater knowledge and awareness around key threats facing their fisheries. To protect a globally-important marine climate refuge in the region, the local team has built strong partnerships with marine government institutions and coastal communities. WCS scientists confirmed the presence of a globally important marine climate stronghold on the border of Tanzania and Kenya, and WCS is now facilitating the creation of new MPA management plans, and Marine Spatial Planning, across that trans-boundary conservation area. These plans will be a critical tool to ensure MPAs are effectively managed and incorporate measurable marine conservation targets for what will be the first time in Tanzania. Similarly, we are continuing to build political support for new and expanded protected areas, including a large offshore MPA in Kenya’s Malindi-Watamu seascape.
WCS is also playing a lead role in developing a new national framework for community-based fisheries management in Tanzania and will support rollout in two collaborative fisheries management areas (14 communities) as a model for this new framework.
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