A Preliminary Political Feasibility Analysis of the Coral Triangle Initiative:

A Short Report

DallasElgin

Chris Weible

University of ColoradoDenver

9.10.10

Acknowledgements: Funding for this preliminary report was provided in part by the Faculty Development Grant Award from The Center for Faculty Development and the Office of Research Development and Education, University of Colorado Denver. We also want to express our appreciation for the feedback on the content of this document from Pedro Fidelman, Louisa Evans, and Simon Foale.

Introduction

This political feasibility analysis of the Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI) provides a cursory assessment of obstacles for achieving the goals of the CTI. Our analysis seeks to identify and describe the actors involved in the CTI process.

Methods

Our methods for conducting the political feasibility analysis involved asystematic search and examination of relevant media articles and the websites of relevant actor categories involved in the CTI policy subsystem. The CTI policy subsystem is defined by (1) the actors involved in the CTI policy processes and (2) the territorial region in Southeast Asia and part of Melanesia Southwest Pacific that touches parts of Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Timor Leste.

Using the search term ‘Coral Triangle Initiative’ our search produced 1,200 articles related to the CTI over a three and a half period from June, 2006 to July, 2010. Our search of websites focused on identifying major categories of actors based on their involvement in the CTI process. By searching the official and secondary websites of these actors, we were able to identify and analyze their values, problem-related beliefs, and policy preferences. Given time and financial constraints, we did not read all the 1,200 articles; instead, we relied upon mechanisms for clustering the articles provided by Google News.

Given limited resources and time, this preliminary political feasibility analysis is incomplete. It does not include surveys, interviews, or lengthy content analysis. This short report does, nonetheless, serve as a briefing of the political landscape of the CTI as gleaned from websites, newspapers, and government reports.

Official Partners

The official partners of the CTI are identified on the website of the CTI Secretariat and in official documents produced by the CTI (CTI Secretariat, 2008). This list of official partners is comprised of governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and aid organizations. For each category, we attempted to identify their perceptions of problems, causes, and perceived preferences in relation to the CTI.[i]

  • The governments of the Coral Triangle Initiative –Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Timor Leste. The CTI Secretariat, currently held by Indonesia, is responsible for coordinating the CTI and the individual efforts of the six CTI countries. Without interviews or other sources of documentation, we assume that the beliefs and perceptions of the CTI governments are based upon regional and national level policy goals. At the regional level,the CTI countries are committed to multilateral action in support of the five policy goals outlined in the regional plan of action: (1) designating and effectively managing ‘priority seascapes’; (2) employing an ecosystem approach to management of fisheries and other marine resources; (3) establishing and effectively managing Marine Protected Areas; (4) implementing climate change adaptation measures; (5) improving measures to protect threatened species (Coral Triangle Initiative Secretariat, 2009). At the national level, each of the CTI countries has identified a list of specific national actions that the country will take in support of the regional targets outlined in the Regional Plan of Action (Coral Triangle Initiative Secretariat, 2009, p.12). While the national goals for each country are designed to support the regional goals, these goals can often differ from the national goals, as seen in the case of the Solomon Islands National Plan of Action (Ministry of Environment, Conservation & Meteorology, and Ministry of Fisheries & Marine Resources, 2009).
  • World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The WWF views the problems of the Coral Triangle as threatening both the region’s marine biodiversity and the human populations living in the area, with an emphasis on the threats against the populations dependent upon the seas for their livelihood (World Wildlife Fund, n.d.). The organization views the causes of the problem as fast economic growth, poor marine management, a lack of political will, poverty and a high market demand and disregard for threatened species (ibid.). Part of their policy preferences includes the promotion and support of sustainable business in the region. In support of these preferences, the WWF organized the CTI Business Summit in January of 2010 (World Wildlife Fund, 2010). The organization’s other policy preferences include financing and establishing MPAs in the region (World Wildlife Fund, n.d.).
  • The Nature Conservancy (TNC). TNC sees overfishing, destructive fishing and coral bleaching caused by climate change as the sources of the problems in the Coral Triangle (The Nature Conservancy, n.d.). The organization’s policy preferences are to develop and support marine conservation through the use of MPAs (ibid).
  • Conservation International (CI). The problem causes identified by Conservation International are unsustainable fishing, pollution, climate change and habitat destruction (Conservation International, 2010). The policy preferences of the organization are marine conservation activities and policies, promoting seascapes, developing MPAs, supporting Global Marine Species Assessment and improving fisheries management (ibid.).
  • Global Environment Facility (GEF). The GEF acts primarily as a financier for the CTI, contributing $63 million of its own finances to the project and working to secure an additional $300 million in co-financing (Global Environment Facility, 2010). The beliefs and preferences of the GEF tend to focus on the region’s rich concentration of biodiversity, the protection of five species of tuna that are responsible for 90% of the world’s catch and the multibillion-dollar fishing industry that depends on the species, and ensuring the livelihoods of the 120 billion people that depend on the region (ibid.).
  • USAID/US Department of State. The US Department of State works together with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to provide support to the CTI. The agencies’ reasons for supporting the initiative include the region’s biological diversity, its marine and coastal natural resources and the goods that they produce, and the negative impacts that destruction of the region would have on food security, employment and standards for those living in the region (USAID, 2009). The agencies view unsustainable fishing, land-based sources of pollution and climate change as the causes of the problem (ibid.). The preferences of the agencies have been to offer support in the form of implementation assistance for the CTI governments and stakeholders, providing access to science and research capabilities, sharing best practices with the CTI countries, and providing $40 million in support for the initiative (ibid.).
  • Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries of Indonesia (MMAF). Information on the beliefs, perceptions and policy preferences of MMAF is limited. Our analysis indicates that as a government organization within a CTI country, MMAF shares the same beliefs as the CTI Secretariat (CTI Secretariat within the Government of Indonesia Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, 2007), and its primary actions have been to promote the CTI to stakeholders in Indonesia (Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, n.d.).

Status of the CTI

As of July 2010, the Coral Triangle Initiative was still in the early part of the implementation stage of the policy process. In May of 2009, the six CTI countries adopted a 10 year policy plan known as the Regional Plan of Action (Indonesian Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, 2009). This non-binding document outlines the priorities and commitments of each of the CTI countries for improving the management of marine resources in the Coral Triangle. The majority of the actions under this plan have not been implemented and a substantial number of the proposed implementation deadlines for the actions are between 2010 and 2020.

Portrayal in the Media and Peer-review Journals

Using the search term ‘Coral Triangle Initiative’ our searches in LexisNexis and Google Scholar produced 1,200 articles related to the CTI. Our analysis can be broken into three sections[1]: January of 2006 to December of 2007, January of 2008 to December of 2009, and January through July of 2010. During the first period of January of 2006 to December of 2007 (when the CTI countries agreed to the Regional Plan of Action), a total of 42 articles were written. The majority of media attention during this time, twenty one of the forty two articles, focused on reporting the signing of the Regional Plan of Action and the announcements of funding from the official partners. Other than the reporting of events related to the CTI, the other significant themes within the media were conservation of the region (18 articles) and climate change’s threat to the region (3 articles).

During the next time period of January 2008 to December of 2009, media coverage of the CTI picked up considerably with over 1,000 articles being written on the subject. Similar to the previous period, the bulk of the media coverage focused on reporting CTI developments (405 articles) such as diplomatic efforts by the CTI countries to foster support, and funding commitments from the GEF, ADB, and USAID. At 361 articles, climate change was the most dominant theme during this time period, followed by conservation with forty nine articles. Other themes with less intensity included protecting the livelihoods of populations dependent upon the region (8 articles), marine protected areas (5 articles), and protecting threatened species (3 articles).

The final period of our analysis from January to July of 2010, showed a considerable drop off in the intensity of CTI media coverage, with a total of 135 articles written. As with the two previous periods, conservation and climate change were the most dominant themes, with nine articles each. The theme of government and the private sector working together (6 articles) was an emerging issues on a smaller scale.

Relatively little scholarly work on the CTI has been published as of this time. A search for CTI-focused articles in peer-reviewed journals yielded a total of two articles. The focus of both articles was the potential implementation difficulties for marine protected areas (MPAs) under the CTI. In a commentary article in the journal Environmental Conservation (Clifton, 2009), Julian Clifton of the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Western Australia, argued that the large-scale system of networked MPAs set forth in the CTI are deficient in science, overemphasize the ability of individuals MPAs to become self-financing, and that efforts by the CTI to limit and manage stakeholder participation will lead to problems of dissent and/or noncompliance (Clifton, 2009, p. 94). In an article in the journal Conservation Letters, a group of researchers at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University focused on the challenges between regional planning and local action for MPAs in the CTI (Mills, Pressey, Weeks, Foale, Ban, n.d.). The authors pointed to disparities between the founding documents and subsequent institutional structure of the CTI that call for a regional-scale plan, while the social, political and economic factors of the CTI countries has led many implementation decisions to focus on local perspectives (Mills, et al., 2010, p.17).

Findings

The strongest theme from this preliminary political feasibility analysis is the lack of political opposition. Indeed, we did not find a single organization against the goals CTI. We see fourreasons for this lack of political opposition to the CTI.

(1)The CTI is a Collaborative Policy Subsystem. One reason for the lack of conflict is the actual adoption of collaborative rather than adversarial behaviors within the policy subsystem. Collaboration may have emerged from cultural values that promote cooperation, the equal distribution of power among participating CTI countries, and financial support from outside the CTI helps compensate burden-bearing actor categories.

(2)The CTI is a Nascent Policy Subsystem. A nascent policy subsystem is one where there remain uncertain impacts of policy and actors’ beliefs and networks are still in the formative stages. The CTI process is still in its early stages and the impacts of this process on different actor categories may not have materialized. As the majority of the CTI initiatives are implemented over the next decade, interested and affected actors will be given a much clearer picture of how the CTI initiatives will interact with their everyday lives. Given the large number of policies and actions outlined in the Regional Plan of Action and the diverse group of actors involved in the initiative, we anticipate that some of the initiatives will come into conflict with the beliefs and values of some of the populations, resulting in a more visible form of opposition to the CTI. Given the early stage that the CTI is currently in, the potential adverse impacts is unclear.

(3)Presence of Conflict-Mitigating Strategies Operating in the CTI Policy Subsystem. It is possible that the activities of several of the major nongovernment actors have defrayed opposition by building sufficient support among stakeholders. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in particular, has worked to reach out to potential opponents of the CTI, with an emphasis on the business community. As mentioned above, the WWF’s beliefs and perceptions include references to protecting the economic value of the region, promoting and supporting business in the CTI region and creating economic opportunities in the region. One of the most significant actions of the WWF has been the Coral Triangle Initiative Business Summit. Co-hosted by WWF in January of 2010, the summit brought together members of the CTI countries, and leaders of the business community with the purpose of creating “opportunities for sustainability as the future of economic health and profit in the region” (World Wildlife Fund, 2010)[ii].

(4)The CTI provides actors with opportunities to both hide and advance political agendas.The diverse and somewhat vague policy goals of the CTI and the actions and efforts undertaken to support the initiative provide the main actorswith a variety of opportunities to advance their own agendas without having to reveal their individual interests to the public. We anticipate that as the CTI matures, the individual interests of actors will become clearer and conflicts will naturally arise.

Recommendations

The optimal strategy for the Coral Triangle Initiative will be to mitigate the emergence of opposition and circumvent conflict. For example, two specific actions that actors in support of the CTI can undertake would be for people to employ the methods used by the World Wildlife Fund and to subsidize the costs for cost-bearing populations affected by the initiative.

Regardless, a major source of potential problems for the CTI is the extensive number of actions and goals that need to be implemented under the Regional Plan of Action. Our analysis of the regional Plan of Action identified over 250 actions to be taken by the six CTI countries by 2020. Thus, there are a large number of ‘clearance points’ or ‘veto points’ simply from coordination among government and nongovernment entities. Even with high probabilities of implementation for each individual clearance point, the overall probability of implementation decreases significantly as the number of clearance points is increased (Pressman & Wildavsky, 1973). The large number of actions and clearance points associated with the Regional Plan of Action raises concerns over the ability of the CTI to successfully implement all actions.

Our analysis is limited by a number of factors. First, our research was limited to a small number of websites and relevant news articles. Second, our research contained a lack of recorded comments from stakeholders. The lack of stakeholder interviews prevented us from obtaining a more robust view of the policy core beliefs of stakeholders. Finally, there were the occasional language barriers. The CTI countries encompass a multitude of different languages, and during our research we encountered a number of websites and articles that appeared to be relevant to our research but were not able to be analyzed due to these language barriers. To complete this analysis, there needs to be a more effort to interview and survey the people involved in the issue.

1

[1] These sections were created by Google when using the ‘News Archives’ search feature.

End Notes

[i] In addition to the official partners, there are many actors involved with the CTI that despite not being listed as official partners to the CTI, are actively supporting the initiative. We do not have a means of identifying all these actors or of assessing their relative influence compared to main actors. For this preliminary political feasibility analysis, we highlight two additional actors while recognizing that many others also play a role.