How Coastal Communities Are Protecting Ocean Life

Ahead of World Oceans Day and the UN Ocean Conference, this episode of Nature Breaking explores how local communities are leading the charge in ocean conservation. Join host Seth Larson and WWF’s Shauna Mahajan as they dive into the challenges and opportunities facing the Western Indian Ocean seascape—from climate change and overfishing to innovative community-led solutions.

Shauna shares inspiring stories of how coastal communities in places like Tanzania and Madagascar are using tools like microfinance and co-management to protect marine ecosystems, support sustainable development, and build climate resilience. Learn how the open-source tool Elinor is helping track and improve conservation governance, and why community-led conservation is key to achieving global goals like the 30x30 target.

Links for More Info:

• Shauna Mahajan bio

• Southwest Indian Ocean Seascape

• Elinor monitoring tool

TRANSCRIPT:

Seth Larson: Welcome to Nature Breaking a World Wildlife Fund podcast focused on the news and trends affecting our natural world and the people and species who call it home. I'm Seth Larson, and the next few weeks will bring a series of important moments for ocean conservation, beginning with World Oceans Day on June 8th and the UN Ocean Conference from June 9th through 13th.

Just like terrestrial ecosystems, our oceans are facing a range of pressures from development, over exploitation, pollution, and climate change.

These challenges should matter to all of us because food from the oceans also provide a significant source of protein to over 3 billion people and livelihoods to millions of fishers, seaweed farmers, and coastal resource managers. There's no one size fits all approach to ocean conservation. Different strategies matter in different contexts. But if there's one through line that matters across the board, it's the importance of community involvement and leadership. My guest today is an expert on just that. Shauna Mahajan is WWF's Director for the Western Indian Ocean Seascape, and she's gonna share her perspective on some of the biggest challenges in ocean conservation today, as well as some of the biggest opportunities to make a difference for people and species that depend on healthy seascapes.

If you enjoy this episode, please be sure to hit those like and subscribe buttons to help us with the algorithms on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other platforms.

We really appreciate your time and your support for this show. And with that, here's my conversation with Shauna.

All right, Shauna Mahajan welcome to Nature Breaking. It's so great to have you here.

Shauna Mahajan: Thanks for having me today.

Seth Larson: Yeah, it's really my pleasure. I love talking about the oceans because I'm from the Ocean State and this is like my origin story for how I came to care about nature, love diving into this with you today. And before we talk about your work on ocean conservation, I wanted to hear about your origin story and how you came to love the ocean so much. So I'd love for you to just speak a little bit about that.

Shauna Mahajan: Yeah, I think you and I and many people who care about the ocean share, often share a similar origin story in that we grew up near the coast, loving the coast. I grew up in Massachusetts just north of Boston. My mom's side of the family came from the Azore Islands around 150 years ago following the...

Seth Larson: Oh yeah.

Shauna Mahajan: The codfish.

Seth Larson: Yeah.

Shauna Mahajan: And so I think that cultural connection, family history, always led me to be really curious about the connection between us and nature, our dependence on nature. But at the same time, I grew up in a multicultural family. My dad immigrated to the US from India much more recently. And those, I think the intersection of those two cultures also made me really curious about the global challenges that we all face across the world and how to really solve things like the degradation of nature and poverty alleviation. We really do need connected and more holistic solutions. So that led me into the path of science and so I spent a long time studying how systems change, how people, ecosystems, communities are more resilient to change all that kind of brought me back here to WWF and focusing on ocean conservation today.

Seth Larson: That's awesome. Yeah, I feel like you and I can probably talk a lot more over coffee sometime about New England and the fishing communities there, there's just so much rich history. And we're really grateful to have your expertise here at WWF now. Far from those New England fisheries that you grew up around your work now focuses on the Western Indian Ocean seascape, which I don't really know anything about. So I'd love for you to just tell our listeners a little bit more about that seascape and what some of the particular pressures are that affect your work and dictate some of the, some of the initiatives that we've striven to put in place there.

Shauna Mahajan: Yeah, so the Western Indian Ocean is a really incredible body of water that hugs the coastline. We, the seascape we work in, we focus on the coastline from Kenya all the way down to South Africa, and it is an incredible place, just rich in both cultural and biological diversity. You have almost 11,000 square kilometers of coral reefs, over 7,000 square kilometers of mangroves.

Seth Larson: Wow.

Shauna Mahajan: That region is really a, it's a migratory hotspot for a lot of species that we care about too. And in addition to all the biological diversity, that region is home to over 60 million people who live close to the coastline and many of those people have long histories, similar to the histories that maybe we share around the world, that are really connected to the sea, to maritime trade and are dependent on the health of the ecosystem for the health of their communities and their economies. Unfortunately, there are a lot of challenges facing that region. Some of the coastal communities that you find in the Western Indian Ocean are some of the poorest in the world. So poverty is a huge challenge. People depend on the sea for their livelihoods as fishers, on the mangrove forest for fuel wood, for the protections that the coastline provides. When more and more storms start to hit that region, we're seeing more and more cyclones hitting the region, largely driven by climate change. And so climate change, we know is also a big driver of change in the region, and it will have direct impacts on those ecosystems we care about, as well as changing the demographics of the area.

So we're seeing more and more drought in the region. We're seeing that more and more people are moving to the coastlines because they provide this critical lifeline to people. That is causing challenges in how we govern marine resources. And it's also destabilizing communities which can leave those that are most vulnerable in communities like women and girls in a more threatened and vulnerable situation. Finally, there's just more and more competition over resources. We still see a lot of illegal, unregulated, unreported fishing happening. We also know, we've done some research recently that shows that a lot of the growing economies that depend on the oceans, we call it the blue economy, don't have the necessary safeguards in place that can ensure that, that the ecosystem can still flourish and be maintained through time providing those benefits to community. So we've got a lot on our plate to work on.

Yeah. You know the things I'm hearing you talk about from climate change, to lots of people moving to coastal areas and putting pressure on places that are just seeing an influx of new people looking for livelihoods, to overfishing... lots of different things. These are pressures that I think are present all over the world when we talk about seascapes.

But those pressures play out in different, unique ways in every single place. And that kind of leads me to my next question for you, which is that I know your work really in addition to focusing on that region, is also really heavily focused on community-led initiatives for ocean conservation. And I'd love for you to talk a little about what that means. My understanding is when we talk about the different ways these same pressures can play out in different places, it's about knowing and respecting the specific cultural context that you're working with and involving local communities. But I'd love for you to just define that a little more for us and talk about what the difference is between a community-led initiative for ocean conservation versus something else. And what are some of the key ingredients that make those community-led initiatives successful?

Yeah, so there's a lot of evolution in how we talk about community conservation. For a long time we used the term community-based conservation, and increasingly we're using the word community-led conservation, which I think is a really important distinction because it means, it's truly led by communities. So the decisions about where and how we protect areas and importantly how we do those is really owned and led by communities...

Seth Larson: yep.

Shauna Mahajan: ...who depend on and living in these areas. And to give a little context as to why community-led conservation is such a cornerstone of our regional strategy, I'll take us back, to explore a bit the history of the region.

Seth Larson: Please.

Shauna Mahajan: So for centuries, communities have really been at the forefront of protecting and making decisions on how marine resources have been used and managed. Fast forward a little bit more recently. In the 1990s, there was a huge resurgence of interest around the world, to protect marine resources. Largely, globalization was increasing pressure on our seas. So we saw, particularly international organizations, national governments, really invest in marine conservation. Often through these more kind of top-down area-based approaches, marine protected areas, which are a vital tool in our toolbox, for protecting areas became really common along the East African coast.

Seth Larson: And marine protected areas. Basically, that's when a government comes in and, says that this area of the ocean or this area of the coast is gonna be protected from development, from over extraction, et cetera.

Shauna Mahajan: Yeah, and we use the term marine protected area in lots of ways, but often when we use it, we're referring to those areas that are often designated by a government, largely with the focus of protecting that area. There are often different rules and regulations that apply in different MPAs around the world that help them be suited to context. But in, in the East African context, these were very much kind of government led protected areas that were about closing areas off to fishing. And in an area where you have so much of the population dependent on fish for their wellbeing, for their livelihoods, you can imagine that might not have worked in...

Seth Larson: Yeah. Yeah.

Shauna Mahajan: And there was a lot of pushback in certain marine protected areas. They just didn't work because communities needed access to those resources to survive. And so there was a real shift in the early, late 90s, early 2000s, many governments in the region started to create new regulations, we call them co-management regulations that formally devolved the rights to management to communities, recognizing that those who live and depend on the resources will really be the best stewards of those resources. And so really since that time, in the early 2000s, WWF and many of our conservation peers in the region have really focused our efforts on ensuring communities have the capacity, the knowledge, the skills, the funding and resources they need to deliver on that mandate. And it's a journey, but it's one that we've been on for some time and we've really, we've, we've learned a lot. Would say a great story that I think exemplifies this really well is Tanzania. So you have...

Seth Larson: Yeah.

Shauna Mahajan: ...dynamics play out, protected areas that were not always very well received. So there was this shift to really embracing the role that communities play through co-management regulations. And even as we as an organization started working to try and help communities realize their rights and those, that opportunity they have for management, it still wasn't working. And so we took the time to really learn and listen to what communities wanted. And like I said, many of these places are some of the poorest communities in the world and people wanted to, to prosper and develop. And so we worked with CARE International and started to take some of the tools from their toolbox, from the development world and community microfinance became a cornerstone of approach.

Seth Larson: Tell me what that, what is community microfinance?

Shauna Mahajan: So it's as simple as encouraging communities to come together, often women, to form groups where they pool their savings and they almost act like their own local bank. They issue loans to each other. They're very much built on trusting relationships and with the little bit of interest that they earn on loans to one another, they're able to save more. And we've had stories coming out of some of the seascapes where we work in Tanzania, where people have been able to build not only one house, but a house for their cousin, for their daughter, build four houses.

Seth Larson: Wow.

Shauna Mahajan: And it's really been essential for ensuring that a sustainable development can occur alongside effective natural resource management. So we found using that tool as a way to, not only build trust, which is really critical, but really ensure that people have their needs met, their aspirations realized. And from that place of trust and security, we have then been able to develop really strong relationships over years that have enabled co-management to really take off. And that has really been now scaled across the region. So we saw that starting early days in Tanzania. It's a cornerstone of our program now in Mozambique and Madagascar and is really key for ensuring that those two goals can really thrive alongside one another.

Seth Larson: That sounds amazing and it makes so much sense to me that, when a community has its general economic and livelihood needs met and families are able to have a roof over their head and have a way to derive some income and make sure that they have those basic needs met. Then they're also able to pay more additional attention to the conservation of nature, because they're not worried about where their next meal's gonna come from. Right?

Shauna Mahajan: Yeah, exactly. And I think what's been so inspiring about watching this model evolve is that it's really, yes, it's really been first about making sure people's basic needs are met, and then alongside that, there's been this growing ethos and embrace of locally led conservation. And because there's this deep recognition on how dependent community wellbeing is on the health of the ecosystem, we've seen these community-based organizations that lead on resource management really thrive. And in the last few years we've watched, for example, in, in Northwest Madagascar or one of these community microfinance groups on their own, decided that they needed to have part of their savings in that community microfinance group, we actually use towards resource management. So it's creating also these new bottom-up finance streams that can help support locally led conservation and really kinda keep that community-led momentum alive over, over time.

Seth Larson: Yeah. That's so interesting. So as I was preparing for this conversation and doing some research about some of the work you're doing, I came across one of the tools that you and your colleagues are using to advance these projects. And it's a tool called Elinor, and my understanding it's a, it's an open-source monitoring tool that helps keep an eye on the governance and management of conservation areas around the world. And I just thought it sounded super interesting. It also sounded a little over my head. I was trying to like really picture how this tool gets put to use in the in, in the real world. So I wanted to ask you to just talk a little bit about that tool and how you found it useful, and tell us how it works and why it's been so effective.

Shauna Mahajan: Yeah, and to start that, I'd like to introduce you to our namesake.

Seth Larson: Please do.

Shauna Mahajan: Elinor Ostrom was the first woman to, to win the Noble Prize in economics and she has been an inspiration to many who work across the conservation community because her theory of common pool resource governance basically proved that people can come together, to protect nature and to govern nature effectively.

Seth Larson: Huh.

Shauna Mahajan: She disproved the sort of tragedy of the commons that just assumed that any resources left for shared public good would not be sustainably managed. So it's for me, such an inspirational story that shows that communities do protect nature.

Seth Larson: Yeah.

Common pool resource governance?

Shauna Mahajan: Common pool resource governance.

Seth Larson: A new term to me today, but that's, that's so interesting.

Shauna Mahajan: Yeah. And that theory, it's a, it comes from the social sciences is a, is the, basis of which we built the Elinor tool on. So her research, her colleagues' research over decades helped show that there are principles that we see play out in different corners of the world, that when enacted, actually lead to that successful collaborative management of resources. So things like, are effective monitoring systems in place? Are there good forums in which we can actually resolve conflict so that we can, as a group continue to, manage areas and work together? Are the systems of governance nested? So is there a strong sort of community network that's managing the area that's then backed up by a national government? So there's a range of these principles that we now know, thanks to science and research, that are really essential for these areas once they're designated, be it as an MPA or a community managed area that are key for their success in delivering the benefits that we wanna see both for people and nature. So we developed this tool to track those elements.

Seth Larson: Yeah.

Shauna Mahajan: We know by looking at, if these things are present or not, where we might be able to channel our effort to strengthen the capacity of that area to actually meet its goal. And we were really envisioning a world in which we could do this in a much more collaborative and open way. The vision behind Elinor is to really promote more transparency in how we govern areas. So it's an open-source platform where anybody can go create a profile and assess areas. So you, you do these assessments in a really collaborative way. So it might mean that, we meet together with a community based organization that manages an area or we meet with a group of marine protected area managers who manage an area, and we go through the questions one by one, have really great discussion about these principles and points, and then all that data is stored in this open source platform that we can use to track the trends over time and how these areas are managed, which gives us really important clues as to what it will take to improve those areas. And we've used this. This is a new tool that we're really piloting in the Western Indian Ocean. And together with partners, we've assessed over 50 community managed areas across the Western Indian Ocean. The only way we can reach that scale is by doing it together. It really helped uncover not only useful trends for those areas themselves. So for example, in Mozambique, we're trying to use that data to really inform how we're managing those areas, how we're supporting those areas going forward. But it's also helping us learn on a regional and global level. So one of the key findings that came out of it is that while many of these areas have been operational for 10, 20 years, they're still really lacking the critical, operational capacity they need to be successful, and in particular, the funding they need to be able to do their job well. That's pointed to a really important gap that's quite common in the world of conservation today, and that we really need durable finance to support conservation in the long term.

Seth Larson: Yeah. Okay. So this tool, it sounds like it's not only helping guide some of these initial conversations that you're having with resource managers and coastal managers, and communities. But it's also helping you then, interpret that data, keep track of it and draw conclusions from it, that can be applied more broadly.

Shauna Mahajan: Yeah, exactly. And I think there's lots of reasons why that second part is more important. So we know that target three of the Global Biodiversity Framework, which we often refer to as the 30 by 30 target is looking to protect 30% of the world by 2030. A key part of that target is that those areas are effectively and equitably managed. And so we're really hopeful that the tools like Elinor can play a really critical role in helping us actually ensure that those areas that we protect aren't just paper parks.

Seth Larson: Yeah.

Shauna Mahajan: That are designated on paper, but no activity actually happens to protect those areas, but that they're actually meeting their goal of effectively and importantly, equitably protecting those areas so that all people can really benefit from the natural resources.

Seth Larson: Okay. So you said a minute ago that one of the key gaps or issues that Elinor helped to identify was the need for more finance and before I talked to you today, I asked you what you were most excited to talk about in this interview. And you talked about, you said that you were excited to talk about the need for more sustainable finance for community-led conservation in ocean seascapes. And that got me excited because this is a really consistent theme that we like to talk about in this show because like you just said, paper parks are a real issue. It's so easy to draw a line on a map and say, our job's done, that place is protected. But the real work of making that happen is so much more complicated and frankly expensive. So I wanted to hear more from you about what that looks like in the community-led seascape conservation world. What are some of the specific finance challenges that you are seeing and, and what are some of the solutions that you see that might point a way forward?

Shauna Mahajan: Yeah, and I think there's an added challenge in the ocean space in that the oceans are very vast

Seth Larson: Yeah,

Shauna Mahajan: out of sight, out of mind. And the sustainable development goal that's focused on life below water is the most underfunded sustainable development goal.

Seth Larson: Really.

Shauna Mahajan: So there is, first of all just a huge gap in financing for, ocean conservation broadly, but that is even more pertinent for community-led conservation because there's a lot of… And frankly they're just boring reasons as to why it's really hard to get money to the ground for community-led conservation. A lot of it just has to do with the operational structures of how, those who grant money, those who implement projects, how they've been set up over time. Particularly, funding that comes from the public sector, taxpayer dollars. There's a lot of accountability requirements that go into getting that money out the door, for good reason. But what that means is that it's really hard to actually get like really small grants down to the ground and have those accountability metrics met because of just the sheer volume of reporting that's required to, to meet those. And we're seeing the same, that's for more grant funding. But there's also this growing Investment from the private sector in sustainable blue economies. So it's like trying to ensure that our economy is really meeting the needs of people and nature. And similarly, there's more and more funding coming from that community, but at the same challenge applies and that there's a lot of, requirements. If you think about loans that you get and all that you have to do to prove that are on track to deliver what you say you're going to do, it takes a lot of work and for a small community-based organization, it's really hard to meet those requirements. And so this is something that's really been at the heart of how we work. We've been working on community-led conservation for a long time, and so capacity development has been central to our approach for a long time. So we do a lot of technical capacity development on how do you manage areas, but also on how do you organize as a, as a small organization, how do you apply for grants? How do you do reporting on those grants? That's a fundamental part of our programs to ensure that community-based organizations, smaller civil society organizations can actually have the capacities in the long term to be more the direct recipients of conservation funding.

Seth Larson: Gotcha.

Shauna Mahajan: And another thing that I think is really exciting and across the conservation community is this idea of innovative financing. So trying to find new ways of bringing together capital to, to finance nature. And I think there's a lot of momentum and interest in doing this for community-led conservation. So one example, we've been working over the last couple of years in Madagascar to design what we call the Marine Community Resilience Facility. And so that is basically a fund that's set up that will help target the needs that we've been hearing from decades, over decades from coastal communities in Madagascar to help ensure that their basic needs are met. They can develop and they can help support the management of the areas that they depend on. So under that facility, there'll be funds to support community-based natural resource management, as well as sustainable development and enterprise development to ensure that those development can really exist alongside conservation.

Seth Larson: Yeah, and where are the funds coming from for that? Is that from foundations, from governments? Some mix of both.

Shauna Mahajan: It'll be a mix of both. So this particular facility we're looking at it as an endowment fund. So we will be starting to talk about this with our potential funders over the next year. But it will likely come from different sources. And that's the power of these kind of, these models and that we can leverage investments from different places that get us... it gets us really beyond the project-by-project way of working. One of the big challenges of working through individual projects with individual donors is that those projects happen often on a one year, two years, or if we're lucky, a three-year time cycle. And the kind of problems that we're trying to solve are really hard. We're trying to rewire systems to be fundamentally different from what they are today. And unfortunately, those kinds of changes, they don't happen one or two...

Seth Larson: Yeah.

Shauna Mahajan: So being able to have these more sustainable finance mechanisms that can really get resources to the ground in more efficient ways and work towards that kind of long-term enduring change is really key for, I think, meeting all of our goals.

Seth Larson: Yeah, so I mentioned in my intro that the UN Ocean Conference is coming up soon, starts on June 10th, and I, we've talked a lot about some of the different challenges and some of the different opportunities and solutions that you're working on with your colleagues in the, the seascapes that you are working in. Since this global conference is coming up, I wanted to ask you about what's on the agenda there? How might it help advance some of the work you're doing, and basically, what are you hoping to see happen in that conference?

Shauna Mahajan: Yeah. And this is, it's a really exciting moment and I think this particular conference is key because it's really about going beyond commitments and really getting to implementation, which is really what we've been talking about today. And so the theme is on accelerating action and mobilizing actors to conserve and sustainably use the ocean. This conference brings together the world, it brings together governments, international NGOs, financial institutions, nonprofits, civil society, communities, indigenous led organizations, really to talk together on how we tackle this global challenge. And so there'll be some work on completing the multilateral processes that are linked towards the ocean. So getting some commitments, but really on mobilizing the financial resources needed to get us to implementation. And these conferences are also really great moments to share the knowledge.

Seth Larson: Yeah.

Shauna Mahajan: We are a global community trying to make global change. And so being able to have these moments in times where we can come together and use that knowledge to really drive real action are really key.

Seth Larson: Yep. Shauna, I don't want to keep you too long today, but before I let you go, I wanted to ask if you have any parting thoughts for our listeners, and if there's anything you would want our listeners to know before you head off today.

Shauna Mahajan: I think the first one is that the health of the ocean is all of our business. I know we started our conversation talking about how we're from coastal communities, but the ocean provides the world with so many benefits, be it regulating the climate or providing food and livelihoods for so many of our fellow citizens, inspiring trade and music and art. Turn on the radio, you're likely to hear a water song. So I think just a reminder that we all owe it to the oceans to protect them for now and for generations to come. The second point, we talked a lot about communities today, and I know everyone listening is probably part of a community in some way or another. Be it, your neighborhood ocean conservation community. Communities are really where change happens. And so, I challenge us all to think about how we within our own communities can help start creating change for the ocean. Because we know that when change starts from within ourselves, within our communities, it's really from a place of deep hope and connection. And I think that's the kind of change that we need to drive the lasting impacts that we wanna see.

Seth Larson: Yeah. Shauna, thank you so much for those words of wisdom. I really appreciate it. It was awesome learning about all this great work you're doing and I really appreciate your time today.

Shauna Mahajan: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Seth Larson: That's all for today's episode. Thanks again to Shauna for joining me and sharing her passion for ocean conservation. Community led initiatives are gonna play a critical role in global efforts to halt and reverse nature loss from forests to grasslands and to coastlines. And I loved hearing from Shauna about some of the community led initiatives that are driving progress in the Western Indian Ocean and beyond. To all our listeners, thank you for giving us your time to learn about this important work, and together let's keep building a more sustainable future.