The estimated cost for the initial suite of community workshops is about $3,000 per site in the first year, $1,000 in the second year, and $500 per year thereafter. The FLMMA has established 71 sites at a cost of approximately $400,000 in outside funding. Many of the costs of FLMMA’s work, including workshops, monitoring equipment, and buoys for marking off tabu areas, have been met with funding channeled through local NGOs supported by the U.S.-based Packard and MacArthur Foundations.
Most community management plans also include an income-generating aspect. As part of the conservation initiative in Verata, a bioprospecting arrangement was set up with a pharmaceutical company in which the community was paid licensing fees for samples of medicinal plants and marine invertebrates collected in their district. Efforts have been made to ensure that best practice in bioprospecting as outlined by the Convention on Biological Diversity was followed. These activities earned $30,000, which the community put toward a trust fund to sustain their local fisheries work.
At another site, a hotel pays $2 to a community trust fund for each scuba diver that utilizes the village’s protected area. This provides an income of roughly $1,000 per year. Another village is “planting” artificial live rock in its tabu area to sell to exporters for the aquarium trade after marine life has colonized it. A company makes the artificial live-rock substrate, brings it to the village, and assists in placing it on the reef. Local people need only scrape the rock clean of algae occasionally. Within a year the company harvests the rock with local help. The potential return to the community is $4,000 a year. These sums are not large, but are sufficient to maintain LMMA work once it is established.
In addition, communities are able to charge more for the annual fishing licenses they sell to outsiders. One of the initial LMMA actions in Verata in 1997 was to put a moratorium on issuing such licenses, of which 60 costing $500 each had been given the previous year. In 2003 chiefs agreed to sell a single license for $30,000. Customary practice allows qoliqoli owners to permit outsiders to enter for a specific purpose such as fishing or live-rock harvest. Although issued by the Fisheries Department, the license must be signed by the local chief (Veitayaki, Aalbersberg, and Tawake 2003).
A successful LMMA is, in effect, an alternative income source. The increase in fishery resources not only improves nutrition but also raises household income from market sales. (See “Figure 2: Household income from sale of marine products, Fiji”.) Marine resources, on average, make up more than 50 percent of the household income for these villages, and raise these households far above the median income level of F$4000 a year in Fiji.
FLMMA has been recognized with two international awards for its work: the United Nations 2002 Equator Initiative Award for $30,000, and the 2004 Whitley People and Environment Award of £30,000. The funds from these awards were established as trust funds administered by FLMMA to sustain its work. Today FLMMA is a registered charitable trust in Fiji.
