Compliance Management Workshop great success

Compliance management in the Great Barrier Reef has matured over more than 30 years and is currently one of the most advanced worldwide. Still today, over 30% of all marine World Heritage sites are suffering serious pressure from fishing activities, most of which is illegal and unreported. Monitoring and evaluation of these sites is often costly and the need for a clever intelligence system that focuses effort where it is most needed is one of the most pertinent needs in this community.

Preceding the World Parks Congress, the Marine Programme and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority organized a compliance management workshop in Townsville for about 40 conservation practitioners, including 10 World Heritage marine site managers. Representatives of all 13 local management committees involved in the management of the Lagoons of New Caledonia participated. The meeting started with a presentation on how to make the OUV central to the overall management of a World Heritage site and included an extensive visit to the compliance control center at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. Preparations are currently being made to scale up the compliance management system in the Galapagos Islands as follow up to the meeting. A first follow-up activity concerned the revision of the Management Plan of the Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park.

This initiative received support from the French Agency of Marine Protected Areas, the Conservatoire des Espaces Naturels de Nouvelle-Calédonie (France); the French Ministry for Environment, Sustainable Development and Energy; and the Pacific Fund in the framework of the France-UNESCO cooperation agreement.