REEF SUSTAIN

I am a marine biologist, globally-recognised as a research leader of how the environment and climate shapes coral reefs. I lead the Future Reefs Program (University of Technology Sydney), and recently appointed Vice President of the Australian Coral Reef Society. My research – spanning coral reefs across the world – is at the forefront of the rapidly developing field of “reef restoration”. I am leading this field - applying knowledge of how corals grow - to develop new coral propagation tools and workflows to rebuild degraded areas of the Great Barrier Reef. I developed and lead a world-first reef research-industry partnership to facilitate new tourism-driven reef management – the Coral Nature Program – and also co-lead the field-based reef restoration working group of the international Coral Restoration Consortium. My scientific passion for problem-solving is driven by the need to secure and rebuild healthy reef ecosystems whilst preserving the “reef economy”.

Globally, coral reefs have drastically deteriorated in the last 5 years via global climate change and local stressors, leaving key economic stakeholders – the tourism industry – with a highly uncertain future.

In 2018 I implemented a world-first research-tourism partnership, supporting tourism operators to rebuild their “high value” sites on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) using coral propagation. The impacts of this partnership are two-fold: 1) rapidly rehabilitation of the reef and 2) allowed an industry in demise to develop a more sustainable operating model.

Our proof of concept overwhelmingly illustrated the benefits of the partnership on the GBR. I seek support to scale this impact, reaching new sections of the GBR and applying to other countries reliant on reef tourism (e.g. USA, Japan, small island states).

This project will implement a framework for scalable adoption of the research-tourism model. It will transform tourism sustainability and rehabilitate reef sites globally.

Catastrophic loss of coral globally, including the GBR, following repeat marine heat waves since 2016 has catalysed the need for new reef management tools to aid reef resilience. Whilst the primary goal remains to mitigate climate change, meeting the most optimistic CO2 emission reduction targets will leave coral reefs close to their survival limits, and at risk from irreversible loss, for the next three decades. Over 0.5 billion people worldwide rely on healthy reefs, many though a tourism-driven ‘reef economy’; for example, tourism on the GBR alone yields >$6.5B annually through >60,000 employees. Many innovative approaches to “restore” reefs are being developed, but most remain disconnected from the actual needs of these primary stakeholders; i.e. approaches that can simultaneously build ecological and social resilience. We recently solved this fundamental problem by developing a research-tourism partnership to invent and implement novel tools and workflows for tourism to rebuild their reefs (and so build capacity a more resilient industry). We have developed this model partnership as proof of concept over the past two years (the “Coral Nurture Program”), propagating and re-planting thousands of corals via a handful of tourism businesses – but now need to scale to entire reef systems and industries.

Our proof of concept has built new capacity for GBR tour industry stakeholders, who have deep motivation and willingness, to conduct more active management (stewardship) of their reef sites. In doing so, we have solidified how research-industry (tourism) partnerships embed novel management support of GBR sites, and at a time when both GBR stakeholders and ecosystems need to adapt to the increasing new norms under climate change. Based on these outcomes, the current project would deliver four key activities: 

1. Broader operator (stakeholder) buy-in: Ensuring that tools and workflows, including permitting, auditing and data deposition, are openly available for regional adoption and coordination.

2. Optimisation of decision-making (what to plant, where and when): Fully tracking the ecological trajectories of existing and new coral planting activities, and improving coral donor selection to ensure resilience to future stress.

3. Integration into regional management programs: Establishing the role of tourism stewardship in supporting and developing existing management approaches and associated policy frameworks.

4. Sustainable financing: Developing novel means for operators to sustainably conduct reef site coral propagation and out-planting activities – including emergency funding during tourism downturns - without resorting to “adopt a coral” type models.

Our project serves all reef stakeholders – anyone that places some value on healthy reefs. Specifically, the project targets the reef tourism industry and reef research communities, but is inherently tied to reef management sectors (e.g. Great Barrier Reef Marine Parks Authority, Queensland Parks & Wildlife Service) and Traditional Owners. In achieving our goals, the impact is one of securing a future (GBR) tourism industry, and the associated reef economy, with more resilience in the face of climate change. However, by capacity building this industry with resilience through new tools and approaches for reef restoration, we are building new reef stewardship that carries impact to the way in which entire reef systems are managed. 

A fundamental aspect of this process has been renewed hope for the reef. In empowering the reef industries with cost-effective means to rebuild reefs, we have catalyzed optimism following the recent wave of “ecological grief” that followed mass coral mortality events. The huge appetite for ‘doing something’ for the GBR has resonated with the millions of tourists who visit the reef annually, where the visible demonstration of coral nurseries and out-planting to tourists has become a key draw in how society can adapt to climate change.

Reef research has long been pre-occupied on observing and reporting climate change impacts, using this to passively lobby for CO2 emission reductions. Whilst this stance is vital, it is also entirely disconnected from social dependency of the reef, and how climate change is already catastrophically impacting those that rely on healthy reefs.

Traditional research has neglected the transformative power of tourism operators to enhance reef resilience whilst securing the “reef economy”. Our innovative research-tourism partnership works with the industry’s overwhelming desire to proactively improve reef health, deep local knowledge and unprecedented operational capacity, to embed effective and scalable reef restoration.

I was involved in earlier reef restoration initiatives in the Seychelles where local stakeholders, subsistence fishing communities, tourism and management, needed a novel solution to regenerate degraded reefs. By listening to the needs of stakeholders, our research was transformed from being one that was largely academic in nature (to understand the impacts of climate change) to one that instead worked in partnership with local knowledge to develop community-led site-targeted solutions. Such a step was critically important where the Seychelles has extremely low CO2 emissions but yet disproportionately impacted by climate change – Seychellois had no choice but to develop innovative solutions beyond tackling climate change to secure the immediate future of their reefs. When moving to Australia several years ago, I asked the same question to the key stakeholders (tourism industry and traditional owners): what do you need solved and why? Astonishingly, this was the first time this question had been asked but led to novel dialogue with the tourism industry as to how research could re-orientate to support industry. The desperate need by tourism to rehabilitate their “high value reef sites” following unprecedented coral loss in 2016/17 (and again in 2020) from heat waves led to the project.

Whilst the project goals center on environmental adaptation in the face of climate change, they are inherently driven from the need to secure livelihoods and way-of-life that represent the culture and iconic status of Australia and the Great Barrier Reef (and of course reefs worldwide). The project is as much about social transformation and community empowerment and sustainability, as it is about science. This social dimension has given my research a new purpose: questions driven by those who actually need the answers to survive the next decade as our climates continue to change. 

As an academic, establishing the project has been exceptionally rewarding. It’s caused me to re-orientate my perspective solely from answering gaps in knowledge I feel are important, to problem solving real-world immediate needs. I still do much of the same science it is just how the problem is identified and specifically addressed. 

This shift in perspective has also reset my perspective on impact in research, fundamentally changing my philosophy as a researcher. I want to share these values with incoming generations of coral reef researchers, in my capacity as a leader of the Future Reefs Program, and in-coming leader of the Australian Coral Reef Society.

My research on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) has partnered with the tourism industry from the start, leading to novel coral propagation-based active management for the GBR. Establishing, and leading, the project has required developing novel workflows and governance steps to implement. I understand the vast complexities from stakeholder to management in delivering this project in a World Heritage Site with unique biodiversity and cultural legacy, but also ensuring the scientific rigour to identify whether and how these activities have been successful. I lead the Future Reefs program (published >125 research papers in last 15 years), where we specialize in diverse research, from molecular biology to ecology, to understand how corals grow, and in particular under more harsh reef environments predicted under climate change. This research directly supports (and is supported by) the Coral Nurture Program. However, our Future Reefs program provides alignment to other restoration activities in Australia (such as our work developing innovative symbiont uptake by coral larvae as part of the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program, “RRAP”). Through pioneering the unique restoration activities on the GBR, I was recently appointed onto the Coral Restoration Consortium leadership team – the international body coordinating global reef restoration efforts. Therefore, I am also well placed to understand the pulse of global movement in reef restoration and how the Coral Nurture Program can benefit broader adoption bottlenecks, capacity and tools. This role has already created opportunities via the UN and IUCN to showcase our tourism-research partnership solution to reef restoration.

Implementing the Coral Nurture Program research-tourism partnership rested on overcoming two core and persistent problems. Firstly, historical perceptions and push back of coral propagation as a feasible management aid. Conservative but influential research sectors have long lobbied that coral propagation is a waste of time and resources, and a distraction from tackling climate change. However, this argument rests on ‘old technologies’ that indeed made propagation practices cost-ineffective (and the convenience of “armchair” lobbying to tackle climate change whilst in effect doing nothing). We have shown that new technologies (e.g. our low-cost Coralclip®) and approaches (e.g. targeting “high value tourism sites”, and smart decision-making through selective coral propagation) overcome these arguments, and importantly have created social licensing for reef restoration and rehabilitation alongside CO2 emission reduction strategies. Secondly, the conservative view that research and the tourism industry were incompatible as a result of divergent goals. Historically, the industry has been considered only as passive beneficiaries of scientific knowledge to support tourism-driven public education. We have overcome this by recognising mutual benefit in sharing our respective unique resources and knowledge as a partnership, and in doing so building trust across the industry as well as powerful new capacity for GBR-wide research.

Whilst I have led a number of national and international programs, recently establishing and coordinating the GBR’s Coral Nurture Program has particularly demonstrated my capacity for innovative leadership. Formation of the Coral Nurture Program required integrating a number of stakeholders with often different views for the first time towards a common voice – business, conservationists, governance, and science. Importantly, meeting the Coral Nurture Program goals from such diverse stakeholders changed how I invested my time toward more talking and listening, and de-prioritising my own agenda as a scientist. Adapting quickly to the fast-moving space of opportunity for restoration on the Great Barrier Reef (and worldwide), and demonstrating how the Coral Nurture Program is already well positioned towards new Federal and State initiatives has only been possible through strategic networking with funders and policy makers. Communicating the realities of the program success – which have been many – and avoiding sensationalist profiling that other restoration programs have sought has been critical to maintain integrity of leadership. Such actions have together been central in building and maintaining trust amongst the broad partnership, and instilling a sense of pride in the Coral Nurture Program and its outcomes.

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Our Project rests on several innovative steps that together drive ecological- and social adaption to climate change. We have created and implemented novel low-cost coral nurseries and a coral out-planting device (Coralclip®), which are integrated into existing diverse tourism operation models. Our innovative methodology has transformed the scale, and hence cost effectiveness, of coral propagation and re-planting by 1-2 orders of magnitude. Our nurseries also appear to fast-track adult colony growth and so reduce the time taken to reach sexual maturity. Our social innovation rests on empowering stakeholders – the tourism industry – who already frequent the reef, with greater custody (stewardship) over reef health. However, by training several key operators to rapidly re-plant over 20,000 corals onto the Great Barrier reef over 1 year (a globally unique “ecological experiment” in itself), we have boosted coral cover at degraded reef sites whilst empowering and capacity building the reef tourism industry. In the latter case, we recently showed during COVID19 driven tourism downturn that the industry could be ‘re-purposed’ to drive reef stewardship activities (coral out-planting) and so demonstrate industry (social) resilience during tourism downturns. We have recently begun to explore novel genetic approaches to also identify more stress resilient corals, and so ensure re-planted corals are more tolerant of climate change conditions. Such steps have shown that coral propagation can be scalable and cost-effective, overcoming conservative views that it has no role in future reef management.

The overall project vision is for new models of reef stewardship that create long term outcomes of sustainable (and resilient) industries that underpin the reef economy. At present tourism has a deep motivation to secure their livelihoods through being empowered to actively rehabilitate (or maintain) healthy reefs. In doing, ensuring a ‘brand’ that aligns with the global move towards sustainable development, and in the case of tourism, preventing further need of the industry to adopt gimmicks that do not require healthy reefs (e.g. underwater art, ‘water fun parks’ at degrade reef sites). To address this, my objectives - and the key activities described for this application -  has been to create innovative research-industry partnership (Coral Nurture Program), with wide expressions of interest to participate from across the tourism and management community. Reef tourism industries, and other reef stakeholders of the economy and cultural heritage, do not have time to wait until climate change is “solved”.

Addressing this vision requires a number of key outcomes: providing the industry with the tools and licensing to responsibly rehabilitate reefs with meaningful positive impacts to reef health, but also integrated into the core philosophy of the entire industry in a way that can retain competitiveness of individual businesses. Ensuring social licensing and public trust that the industry can rigorously ‘repair reefs’, with measurable returns to both environment and industry, will also be central to ensure tourists seamlessly seek a more sustainable tourism experience. These factors in turn create long lasting impact built on evolved management and policy (including State and Federal funding) frameworks that place greater capacity in stakeholders to steward the individual reef sites to return a ‘collective good’, as well as a research framework that can collate individual outputs into collective decision making. This will require behavioral change where local infrastructure and communities – including future generations – that comprise a ‘reef economy’ are built around central practices that continually retain healthy reefs.

Our project serves primary stakeholders of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) – and of other reef systems such as the USA, Japan, Seychelles – are tourism and management industries, which comprise a diversity of career stage/age (school leavers, University graduates, established business owners and innovators) and cultural diversity. The Coral Nurture Program specifically targets small- to mid-size business both on the reef, but also through the manufacture and supply of our novel tools for coral gardening. At present ca. 700 individuals are employed through organisations involved in the Coral Nurture Program through the proof-of-concept phases; however, in the short term (1-2 years), launching this Program region-wide will serve the >60,000 people employed through the tourism and management industries on the Great Barrier reef alone. The ultimate scale achievable will depend on how practices can be sustainably financed within and across the tourism sector. This industry reaches >1M tourists per year on the GBR; therefore, the project will inevitably indirectly serve an even higher number of visitors compared to the reef industry itself, although it is conceivable that increasing restoration practices may promote new tourism where tourists themselves directly participate in the stewardship practices. Adoption of this program model in national management portfolios beyond Australia in the longer term (3-5 years) will clearly scale this impact and reach: over 70 countries have reefs that generate $1M per km of reef, most of which have large tourism industries. 

Within the next 5 years, the goals are to transform the philosophy of reef tourism worldwide into a sustainable and resilient industry, acknowledging that their survival rests on collectively playing an active role in securing healthy reefs. In doing so, transforming the public facing ‘brand’ of reef tourism that will be critical to building public-private partnerships (and a vehicle for impact investment). Moving the industry towards ‘reef stewardship’ will similarly rest on embedding the tools, practices and philosophy education and training into all generational levels – delivered through a central hub for reef stewardship as a core pillar of regional reef management frameworks – thereby ensuring a generational shift in perceptions of the asset value of the reef and how it is managed. 

Delivering these high level goals will require meeting shorter term goals whereby (1) the majority of tourism adopt reef stewardship practices, individually tailored to their business model(s), and (2) demonstration of adoption in other countries outside of Australia that rely on reef tourism; importantly, fine-tuning the model to encompass developing versus developed nations with different weighting of reef value to tourism versus other stakeholders. Implementing these shorter-term goals can leverage from the recent profiling (case study) of our industry-research partnership model in a high-profile document to governments on reef restoration by UNEP (via the international Coral Restoration Consortium and our growing links to The Nature Conservancy). This is further supported by the deep integration with research to rigorously validate benefits delivered through tourism reef stewardship. 

A key step towards our goal of even broader adoption, be it across more operators regionally or by any one industry over time, is ensuring sustainable financing of restoration activities. Whilst nursery propagation and out-planting have little material cost, they do require staff time. We have begun exploring options amongst operators (but also with NGOs such as The Nature Conservancy who are already building sustainable financing into other reef management approaches) to develop sustainable financing models. For example, adding a small surcharge to tourist trip prices (or adding a small surcharge to the existing “Environment Management Charge” that all tourists currently have to pay to GBRMPA), which would serve as central fund to offset restoration costs of the operators. Similarly, adding a small profit to sale of Coralclip®; whilst the intention of this device was not to make profit or commercial gain, an approach where funds were channeled back to the operators would maintain not-for-profit status. Similarly, capitalising on use of the brand for more conventional fund-raising streams (e.g. merchandise) or aligning with other brands who may wish to sponsor community programs, although these are unlikely sustainable in their own right long term. Whilst we do not currently have a model in place, we will continue to work with operators and the Government to translate these ideas into tangible operations. At present, this factor does not influence the impact/outputs of this current proposal, but may dictate the time and pace with which we reach the ambitions for the project legacy.

Developing further novel partnerships with innovators in diverse sectors will be essential to overcome these barriers: Communicators who can broadly deliver the sustainable reef tourism branding, and how this is achieved. For example, we have begun working with Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef, a regional organisation promoting conservation and management of the GBR, to explore how a ‘local cooperative’ of industries can connect activities across the region, but also align a more sustainable reef tourism brand within the directives of Tourism Australia (the Government Organisation for tourism) will be critical to their goals of a resilient growth economy. Also, we have begun exploring partnering with a core global NGO, The Nature Conservancy (TNC),  and specifically experts in reef socio-economics to explore sustainable financing. TNC have already implemented a ‘reef insurance’ sustainable financing model for Mexican reefs where tourism pays into a bond that supports reef restoration to ensure coastal protection of tourism assets (e.g. hotels). Adding $1 to the GBR Environment Management Charge (all tourists entering the GBR) could yield $1M per year into a fund to support operators in reef rehabilitation exercises as part of their stewardship – and offsetting tourism impacts – but require stewardship as a core pillar of regional management activities (see “goals”). Such steps can deliver the sustainable tourism-research model for the Great Barrier Reef and serve as a template for how other organisation must inter-connect in other countries to deliver similar outcomes. 

Success of our program has been based on several key partnerships. First and foremost is the core Coral Nurture Program partnership with key tourism operators in the Cairns-Port Douglas tourism hub (Wavelength, Quicksilver, Passions of Paradise, Sailaway, Ocean Freedom, Reef Magic) and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA), as well as local Queensland businesses in the manufacture of the low-cost tools (e.g. Coralclip®). This has benefitted from wider regional partnerships with Citizen of the Great Barrier Reef for visibility, media and citizen engagement, as well as additional research links with James Cook University in ensuring coordination with Australia’s’ Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program (RRAP) activities. We have formed additional research partnership with many NGOs and research institutions overseas (e.g. NOAA, “CoralAssist”) who are independently trialling our low-cost technologies. Perhaps the most central partnership has been with the Coral Restoration Consortium, the global coordination body ensuring our activities are aligned, but also disseminated, to international coral restoration programs, as well as NGOs in reef management, education and training (The Nature Conservancy, Reef Resilience Network). This has resulted in critical opportunities showcasing our program on the Great Barrier Reef as “case studies” to the UNEP and IUCN. These bodies will be particularly central to support international adoption of the Coral Nurture Program model through recommended workflows, best-practice, and existing training platforms. 

The Coral Nurture Program is a non-profit entity that serves to develop, promote and share coral propagation tools and techniques amongst the tour industry (and ultimately any other interested stakeholders). To date, inception of Coral Nurture Program was seed-funded by Government towards creation of a more sustainable tourism industry via novel solutions to rapidly boost coral biomass on the GBR. Whilst Coral Nurture Program is not a business, it serves a wide range of small- to mid-sized tourism operator businesses, ranging from “eco-tourism” to “mass tourism”. All of these operators have “High Standard Tourism Operator” status, and thus considered to have reef friendly operations with some stewardship activities in place already, and hence strong motivation for additional practices such as coral propagation. The successes in place are centrally communicated through the Coral Nurture Program, resulting in widespread interest from across the industry sector. The tools and techniques are currently open source; however, we are mindful that developing a platform where usage is registered (and future access to e.g. Coralclip® is centralised is slightly above cost price to cover overheads) may be key to maintain consistent quality of product. We have the website, social media and branding, but the key now will be to make the most of this in retaining identity and effectiveness of the network. Until now, the focus has been on ensuring this was not commercialized so that businesses could be empowered through broad adoption and cost-offsetting by the funding that was in place.   

The uniqueness of the Coral Nurture Program is that cost-effectiveness in coral propagation (reef restoration) is achieved from the fact that operators already frequent the reef. However, the initial funding for the program was to evaluate – where staff time is subsidised (enabling them to drive restoration rather than cater solely for tourists) – the extent to which coral restoration can be highly cost effective. In doing so, we were the first ever Program to regularly reach <$1 per coral out-planted. Now that this phase is over and successfully demonstrated easy adoption and cost-effectiveness, any continuing restoration activities need to be self (sustainably) financed: this is not a large cost (some staff time, e.g. typically plant 100-200 corals per person per hour; also Coralclip® is $0.1 per device) to any one operator, but still requires creative funding models that importantly avoid “vanity” programs that are hard to provide any evidence of investment (e.g. “adopt a coral” programs). We have begun to explore sustainable financing streams (above), but creating tangible solutions is a core aim of this proposal. It is likely that credible practices – in part through sustainable financing models – could be tied to accreditation (e.g. for the Great Barrier Reef, a criterion for “High Standard Tourism Operator” status) for industries on the reef. Ensuring and further building credible brand creation/recognition (value) for investors to buy into our social-ecological transformation goals is also a key area of interest.

To date, we have funded the first two phases of the program (a total of US$200,000 in cash and a further US$300,000 in kind through time contributions from the tourism industry sector and University of Technology Sydney) though the Queensland and State Government “Small Business & Innovation Program: Boosting Coral Abundance Challenge”. This enabled us to develop the tools and workflows (including unique permitting and social licensing), and robustly evaluate this through a rigorous research framework. In 2019 we used some of this funding to formally create the Coral Nurture Program with the associated branding and information portals. This funding has now finished (April 2020) but uniquely capacity built the core operator partner network (and we are finalizing the tools and workflows to be open source). This has provided the legacy for implementation at scale, which we propose here. 

Funding from any one source to continue work associated with the Coral Nurture Program is not guaranteed, and therefore we have two grant proposals submitted that target specific research questions, but which would also provide the minimum financing required to at least sustain the current operations (and scale) of the Coral Nurture Program as an entity: development and application of genetic markers for stress resilience within coral populations for targeted propagation at Great Barrier Reef “high value” reef sites (Pure Oceans Foundation, US$30,000; Perpetual Trust, US$40,000) – the outcome for both of the grants is expected third quarter 2020. The capacity for operators to continue will rest on sustainable funding models (see elsewhere in this proposal), where they may themselves fund raise in innovative ways. For example, the reef tourism industry has informally approached the Government (and Australian Tourism Councils) for a post-COVID19 economic stimulus package to enable operators to get out and rehabilitate the reef with our tools and workflows (whilst tourism has ceased). Even so, none of these funding applications cover the goals we propose here towards broader adoption, formalised integration into management tool kits, and optimised decision making.  

As of this application submission, our continued Program activities are unfunded and therefore with no expenditure (being maintained through in kind contributions of all involved); however, it is possible to forecast bottom-line expenses depending on what activities were funded. Specifically:

• $200,000 would be required for regional expansion of Coral Nurture Program, including staff time for Program management and coordination, centralizing provision of tools and workflows (including coral propagation, ecological monitoring, permitting etc.) through web resource development, workshops with relevant agencies to integrate Program within existing management frameworks, implementation of ‘stakeholder support’ platforms. 
• $150,000 would be required to initiate Program expansion in another region, including workshops with stakeholders, researchers and government (including management agencies), evaluating tourism economy and to locally tailor Program model, develop local inventories of required resources, potentially developing “Coral Nurture Program” brand licensing (see next points).
• $75,000 would be required to solidify data management, sharing and visualization platforms (and where relevant integrating or linking to existing portals), collated research outputs, which together demonstrate what works when, where etc.
• $50,000 would be required to develop the brand of more sustainable tourism (and the reef economy) around reef stewardship, through communication and marketing campaigns, workshops with relevant bodies (e.g. Tourism Australia).
• $50,000 would be required to develop education and training resources, e.g. packages that can be adopted unto school curricula and University courses on reef stewardship, internship pipelines etc.  
• $25,000 would be required to develop commercialisaiotn of the Porgram (branding, fund raising), business modelling, developed sustainable financing models etc. 

Whilst I can – and have – targeted funding schemes that can address specific research elements of the Coral Nurture Program goals, no single funding body exists that enables development goals, in terms of the Coral Nurture Program itself but also in my capacity to lead (and meet the broad vision for) this Program. Delivering the project activities and goals proposed here requires equipping diverse skills including sustainable financing and marketing/brand development, as well as policy development and social licensing to harness the social drive needed to achieve ecological restoration. Such scope does not exist through conventional funding sources. Importantly, the Elevate Prize provides a globally unique opportunity for this, and through the Elevate Prize Foundation’s network of partners, executives and decision makers, to aid the need to think differently and challenge conservative views. Our success to date with the Coral Nurture Program has been to re-orientate the problem-solution space – we have achieved this through kick-starting coupled social-ecological adaptation, and leading new network formations of diverse individuals to solve long standing problems (e.g. the cost-effectiveness of coral propagation). However, it is clear that taking this to the next level will require new skill sets to fully meet our goals and catalyse the rapidly growing global movement for reef (and other ecosystem) restoration. 

Partnership and support is particularly needed to develop feasible economic solutions to support reef tourism industry adaptation to more sustainable stewardship operations; notably (but not exclusively) sustainable funding models but also commericalisation of products and knowledge, which in turn support development of a more sustainable industry ‘brand’ that would similarly would benefit from support in marketing, media and exposure. Support in ensuring adaptation (and associated economic routes) is integrated into governance structures (and constraints) would also be invaluable. As an academic researcher, accessing such support is essential to grow as an international leader that fully understands how (and equipped with the means to) effectively apply core research outcomes into social change, including both grass roots actions and national policy influence.  

I would like to deeply partner with The Nature Conservancy (and other global NGOs) that are world leaders in developing sustainable solutions for conservation, and through empowering community and societal change. TNC in particular have been visionary in brokering novel sustainable financing models through partnerships with diverse funding streams, notably debt buy-back for ocean conservation in the Seychelles (DiCaprio Foundation) and “reef insurance” of Mexican reefs (local business consortia and government). As such, exploring how the Coral Nurture Program can adopt sustainable financing and in turn leverage novel funding streams (e.g. philanthropy, venture capitalists) would be logical given TNC’s record in this space. This will likely be especially important for adopting the model to countries that need disproportionately high external financial support for enhanced reef protection and securing of reef asset value (e.g. small island states with high value tourism, e.g. Seychelles, Maldives). Given the nature of this project that rests on social change through ecological sustainability, aligning with organizations that understand (and well use) the value of brand recognition (e.g. “Virgin”) would similarly be invaluable, simultaneously augmenting the entrepreneurial perspective to developing the model for joint ecological-social resilience under climate change. Finally, empowerment of the approach through the UN (UNEP) to identify countries where the model would be most valuable, and that can be endorsed early at a governance level, would provide a highly targeted sand strategic means to implement and evaluate adoption of the program model outside of Australia.