Conservation International
The Foundation supports Conservation International's Seascapes Program, which contributes to sustainable livelihoods for communities through restoring and maintaining healthy fisheries, providing opportunities for recreation, offering storm protection and flood control, and creating a framework for sustainable tourism, trade and other economic activities. With boundaries strategically drawn to both conserve the diversity and abundance of marine life and also promote human well-being for present and future generations, Seascapes move beyond conserving individual species toward establishing large, multi-use marine management areas. They typically have high biological diversity, as well as aesthetic and cultural value, and they contain diverse interdependent areas needed to conserve marine life and sustain economic activities (for example, beaches where sea turtles nest and the seagrass beds where they forage, or fish spawning grounds, nurseries and the deeper-water habitats of adult fish).
Support from the Walton Family Foundation enabled local authorities to purchase new vessels to enforce conservation laws in Raja Ampat - an underwater paradise of marine biodiversity in the Bird's Head Seascape.
Decisions about where to establish Seascapes are based on the willingness of governments, local communities and non-government and private organizations to commit to them, as well as on the sites' importance for biodiversity conservation. Their boundaries are determined by natural science and socio-economic and political considerations, enabling Seascapes to meet both conservation and human needs. In close collaboration with a variety of partners, government representatives, and local stakeholders, Conservation International works in three Seascapes: the Eastern Tropical Pacific Seascape, nearly 800,000 square miles of marine and coastal waters off Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Panama, as well as the Cocos, Coiba, Galapagos, Gorgona and Malpelo islands; the Papuan Bird's Head Seascape, nearly 70,000 square miles of Indonesian coastal and marine waters; and the Sulu-Sulawesi Seascape, more than 350,000 square miles encompassing national waters of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
The Sulu-Sulawesi Seascape illustrates the program's potential. It inspired Philippine president Gloria Arroyo to convene a biodiversity summit and issue the first presidential decree on conserving biodiversity in the Philippines. In addition to nearly tripling the national park that protects one of the Philippines' most biologically diverse coral reef systems, the Seascape's partnerships with marine law enforcement has curtailed poaching by apprehending illegal fishing vessels and divers. The Bird's Head and Eastern Tropical Pacific Seascapes are also achieving impressive results, spurring a local government in Indonesia to move away from mining and logging toward sustainable economic development such as ecotourism, and prompting the protection of important sea turtle nesting beaches and the massive expansion of an important plant and animal sanctuary in Colombia.
