PIF 5 - Sustainable Management of Coastal Resources at Vaiusu Bay

The following GEF-PAS proposal, namely Sustainable Management of Coastal Resources at Vaiusu Bay, attempts to encourage Samoa to sustainably manage its coastal resources at Vaiusu Bay (which was Apia's main household dumpsite until 1997) by addressing the following issues:

(i) ISSUE: The main issue is the ongoing non-sustainable management of government-owned and customary-owned native mangrove forests in Vaiusu Bay causing serious economic, health, social, environmental and cultural impacts. Local communities are continuing to expand their plantations and urban reclamations at the expense of native mangrove regeneration: short-term economic survival has taken precedence over long-term mangrove conservation. Past mangrove conservation efforts have, therefore, been constrained by poor capacity of local communities and the Government of Samoa (GOS) to jointly plan, establish and help manage mangrove forests on a long-term sustainable footing. Samoa's recent experience in mangrove forest management has shown, therefore, that in order to achieve the long-term sustainability of these mangrove forests, it will require additional design and implementation of new economic and governance strategies to address the immediate sustainable livelihood issues of local resource owners and inhabitants. These mangroves in Vaiusu Bay will, therefore, possibly need to be managed by the landowners themselves, but with key indirect capital and financial resources provided jointly by the GOS and the MSP Project. A key barrier, however, to the expansion of Samoa’s Protected Areas (PAs), and to attaining this proposed long-term sustainability of mangrove forests in Samoa, is that approximately 79% of this territory is still under customary tenure, including the vast majority of ecologically important areas that are currently outside Samoa's already designated PAs, including vital mangrove ecosystems. The GOS has, therefore, already committed 7.2% (50,791 acres) of its total land area for PA management, but has recognised that additional support and incentives will need to be given to customary landowners to better protect globally significant ecosystems on customary lands, in this case especially mangroves. The strategic economic development, therefore, of this proposed private sector/public sector PA partnership model for the protection of mangrove forests is essential for the conservation of Samoa's limited and vulnerable mangrove forests. The Project site at Vaiusu Bay covers an area of about 500 hectares of land and sea. It used to be the largest area of mangroves forest in the South Pacific, but, being so close to the central business area, it is now now under on-going threat from land reclamation, housing development and illegal settlements. Until ten years ago, when a new sanitary landfill site was established inland, urban rubbish was all dumped in Vaiusu Bay, and restoration of the old dump site has not yet been done. Three of the main urban rivers flow into Vaiusu Bay and activities at the upstream catchment have greatly affected the conditions downstream: the whole immediate surrounding area is now prone to serious flooding during the rainy periods. In fact the whole area has been identified as a flood hazard zone. (ii) HOW THE PROJECT SEEKS TO ADDRESS THE ISSUE: The proposed MSP Project will, therefore, help to put in place the enabling governance conditions required at the national level for the legal establishment of sustainable mangrove PAs on customary lands and Government lands as part of a more comprehensive joint PAs network. Simultaneously, testing and demonstrating new approaches to PA planning, establishment and management of these ecologically critical demonstration pilot sites is essential in order to address local capacity and governance barriers that have previously prevented earlier customary-owned mangrove PAs from becoming fully sustainable ecologically and financially. This mangrove conservation model for Apia/Vaiusu Bay will be dynamically enhanced through the development of economically-viable plantation forests and agroforests in the nearby lowlands owned by the same coastal villages of Vaiusu Bay, therefore better protecting the nearby coastal mangrove forests from further unnecessary over-exploitation. The key steps to building capacity for sustainable management of mangrove forests are to, therefore, increase governance capacity and financial resources within key mangrove villages, increase understanding and training in mangrove forest resource management, increase economic returns from timber resources through value-adding processes, introduce related income-generating activities (e.g. agroforestry, NTP production, ecotourism development, etc.) and thus subsequently build a stronger partnership between the GOS and mangrove forest resource owners. ……..This Medium-sized Project (MSP) on the Sustainable Management of Coastal Resources at Vaiusu Bay near the capital of Samoa, Apia, therefore, adopts a multi-focal area integrated approach to Biodiversity, International Waters, Land Degradation and Climate Change. It is also firmly based on experience and the lessons learned from key previous projects (e.g. the GEF-funded national MSP on Marine Protected Areas at Safata and Aleipata Districts and the regional full-sized project on the conservation of biodiversity where Samoa dealt with community-based protected areas at Saanapu-Sataoa and Uafato). (iii) GLOBAL BENEFITS: Savaii’s upland forest ecosystems have been identified as globally significant areas of high conservation value in Samoa’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP). Substantial global environmental benefits are, therefore, expected to be generated in the longer-term with regards to the protection of forest genetic resources and protection of Samoa's terrestrial biodiversity. Also, this development of an effective PA model in Samoa will have potential for wider replication nationally and possibly regionally, thus significantly contributing to biodiversity conservation globally.