Oceans,
Building coastal
community knowledge
and skills
© WWF-Canon / Peter DENTON
E
ducation is a powerful driver of development.
With training and education come new skills,
new knowledge, and new possibilities for indi-
viduals and their communities.
While their indigenous knowledge and expertise
may be high, coastal communities in developing coun-
tries often have poor access to schools and schooling,
let alone higher education opportunities. Such commu-
nities are therefore missing technical or scientific learn-
ing essential to addressing threats at a larger scale or
from new sources.
Conservation efforts have long recognized the value
in building knowledge and skills within such communi-
ties to help them find more sustainable means of making
a living. Benefits from these efforts accrue both in the
protection of marine and coastal resources and in im-
proving people’s livelihoods. Learning is best viewed as
a two-way street, where local knowledge adds greatly
to science and the combination of the two brings pow-
erful results.
WWF has found that such efforts have a positive
feedback on education: governments are more likely to
provide schools to economically growing communities
than to declining ones. Communities that regain control
over their natural resources and strengthen and diver-
sify their economic base also become more assertive
Coasts & People
in asking governments and other agencies to provide
public facilities such as new schools or extended op-
eration of existing schools. In addition, families with
improved incomes are more able to send their children
to school.
Thus, while education may not be widely recog-
nized as being within the mandate of conservation or-
ganizations, many conservation efforts either implicitly
or explicitly contribute towards – and benefit from – im-
proved education. In this context, partnerships based
around education between development agencies,
conservation organizations, and local stakeholders are
extremely valuable to achieve broader sustainable de-
velopment goals.
Education, training, and marine
conservation
Many marine conservation projects in which WWF
is involved support education of different kinds and at
different levels.
Improving environmental knowledge
Broad environmental awareness is low in many coastal
communities, so there are great returns to both com-
munities and ecosystems in building systemic general
 Building capacity for marine resource
management

Even greater benefits are possible through training com-

munity members, project staff, and even government
officials on marine resource management and related
skills. This training is usually conducted as two-way
learning process where outside and local knowledge
is shared. It can cover a range of topics, including the
biology of economically and environmentally important

© WWF-Canon / Tanya PETERSEN

Bazaruto Island,
Mozambique. environmental knowledge. This can include through
formal education by helping students attend school,
and providing curriculum support, teacher training, and
educational equipment.
• Working with schools
In the Semporna Islands off the coast of Sabah
in Malaysia, WWF and partners Sabah Parks, the
UK Marine Conservation Society, and Nature Link
of Belgium are working with teachers and schools
to increase conservation awareness. As part of the
project, two island communities’ schools have been
provided with solar powered laptop computers and
“IT corners” stocked with awareness materials.
As part of work to improve girls’ access to school
(see “Empowering women in coastal communities”
fact sheet), WWF is helping girls in Kiunga National
Marine Reserve, Kenya, to attend holiday camps
where they learn about conservation, tagging
marine turtles, and beach cleanups. Girls attending
the camps have taken their new knowledge home
with them, and persuaded their families to protect
marine turtles.1
species, the effects of fishing regimes and restrictions,
sustainable fishing practices, and better processes for
landing, storing, processing, and marketing catches.
Training is also often provided in resource monitoring
and evaluation methods, such as catch and population
measurement and the use of community wellbeing in-
dicators. Such training and information dissemination
sessions are sometimes the most sustained exposure
communities have had to formal education.
• A learning network for a region
The East Africa Marine Ecoregion (EAME) Marine
Protected Area learning network is an ambitious,
region-wide project seeking to establish a national
marine forum for Mozambique to parallel existing
forums in Kenya and Tanzania, and to establish a
similar general forum and a specific marine protect-
ed area management forum at the ecoregion level.
The network, which is being established by WWF,
IUCN, UNEP, and other partner organizations, will
Designing a logo for the proposed Tun Mustapha Marine Park.
Sabah, Malaysia, Coral Triangle.

• Fishers go legal after sustainable fishing edu-

cation
A group of Tanzanian youths who used to earn
their living by fishing with prohibited nets and acting
as sales agents for other illegal fishers are now
going legal – and crediting environmental education
programmes on sustainable fishing with influencing
© WWF-Malaysia / Eric Madeja

their decision.

MacDonald, M. (2003) Education

1

for girls: Seeding the future in Kenya.

Satya magazine September 15, 2003
 © WWF- Philippines
Donsol whale shark festival. Donsol, The Philippines, Coral Triangle.
support key individuals to attend relevant confer-
ences, as well as run a ‘best practice’ exchange
programme involving leading community members,
and members of partner organizations, scientists,
government decision-makers, and politicians. The
network is also supporting the development of ma-
rine and environment curricula at universities and
other tertiary-level institutions.
Providing new opportunities
One reason it is especially important to improve educa-
tional opportunities early on in development initiatives is
that employment opportunities readily ‘leak’ to outsid-
ers if educational levels in a community are low. This is
particularly an issue with outside tourism development,
as hotel and resort proprietors often bring in new people
from elsewhere and commonly relegate local commu-
nity members to the more menial employment. While
the preferred strategy is to develop locally owned and
operated tourism facilities, many conservation projects
also provide training to enable local people to secure
jobs in outsider-owned establishments.
Many conservation projects also provide training to
support the creation of other new livelihoods such as
sustainable aquaculture (see “Boosting coastal liveli-
hoods” fact sheet). This can involve practical training
for these activities, as well as training in the operation of
community organizations and credit schemes.
• New livelihoods
In the Solomon Islands, WWF helped train local
people in aquarium culture of specimens as part
of work to establish alternative livelihoods based
on supplying fish and ornaments for the aquarium
trade.
• Learning by example
In the Philippines, the mayor, local leaders, and
community members from Roxas, Palawan Island,
visited sites on other islands where improved live-
lihood and conservation approaches were being
promoted. They then started to implement the
same approaches in their own district, including
establishing marine sanctuaries to promote fish
production and improved livelihoods.
In East Africa, exchange visits between marine
protected area managers from Tanzania, Kenya,
and Mozambique enabled them to learn about and
discuss participatory approaches and livelihood ac-
tivities in different parts of the region, and provided
new ideas to apply in their own areas.
• Financial training
In Fiji, WWF staff has gained experience in facili-
tating community development of natural resource
management plans, and undergone Financial
Literacy Training run by the United Nations Develop-
ment Programme (UNDP) and the National Centre
for Small and Micro-Enterprises Development (NC-
SMED) in order to improve the financial literacy and
management skills of 1,524 households of Macuata
Province. Financial literacy training will give commu-
nity members the tools to identify their needs and
increase their potential in terms of savings and pos-
sible personal investments. This will stabilize the
security and livelihood of households and lead to
more sustainable fishing and land use practices.

• Helping with tertiary education

The Meso-American Reef Education for Nature
(EFN) programme recently provided scholarships

© WWF-Canon / Soh Koon CHNG

® “WWF” & “ living planet” are WWF Registered Trademarks – 12.07

for five Mexican and two Honduran young profes-
sionals to undertake postgraduate studies in the
key fields of coral reef science, coastal zone man-
agement, coastal geography, and offshore and
ocean technology.

Honiara, Solomon Islands.

© 1986 Panda symbol WWF – World Wide Fund For Nature (  Formerly World Wildlife Fund  )
© WWF-Canon / Jason RUBENS

Mangrove monitoring. Mafia Island, Tanzania.

Global Marine Programme

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