NOAA and The Nature Conservancy have entered into an agreement to protect the health of the nation’s valuable but increasingly vulnerable coral reef ecosystems in the Caribbean, Florida, Hawaii and the Pacific Islands.
The four-year agreement will dedicate $3.6 million in NOAA funding and $3.6 million in matching funds from The Nature Conservancy to address the top three threats facing coral reef ecosystems: climate change, overfishing, and land-based sources of pollution. The agreement is the result of a competitive request for proposals issued by NOAA in late 2008.
The 36 projects supported through the four-year partnership agreement will carry out activities related to the following categories:
• Developing place-based management strategies and plans
• Developing resilient marine protected area (MPA) networks
• Measuring the effectiveness of reef management efforts
• Developing sustainable finance plans
• Building capacity among reef managers at the global scale
“The partnership will bring together many individual efforts under a unified front that will improve both organisations' ability to make a real difference for coral reefs and the millions of people who depend upon them, as well as to assess effectiveness, share information, and capture lessons learned,” said Lynne Hale, director of The Nature Conservancy's Global Marine Initiative.
