Supporting A Green/Blue Economy: Liberia Blue Ocean Program

Conservation International (CI) has applied to the Embassy of Sweden support of 20 million SEK to carry out a 4-year intervention, the “Blue Ocean Program”. The program was assessed by the Embassy as weak in terms of scope, design, ownership and sustainability. To address these weaknesses CI will be conducting an inception phase, December 2019 to December 2020 with a budget of 4 800 000 SEK. The inception phase is motivated to allow for improvement in the project design and for CI to have the possibility to better assess the scope of the project. The inception phase also gives the Embassy the possibility to assess ownership and sustainability of the program in terms of long-term support beyond the inception phase. The intervention builds on the mandate from Blue Ocean Conference (BoC), which was held in March 2019 and was supported by the Embassy of Sweden. The purpose of the intervention is to maintain the moment generated during the BOC and sustain its outcomes. The goal of the Blue Oceans Program is to promote sustainable management of Liberia’s coastal and marine ecosystems through conservation and restoration of marine and coastal ecosystem services to alleviate poverty, protect biodiversity, and mitigate and adapt to climate change. The intervention has four objectives: (1) Enhancing science-based understanding of drivers impacting coastal and marine ecosystem health and services; (2) Enhancing circular economy approaches addressing marine pollution; (3) To promote effective governance and integrated management of coastal and marine ecosystems; and (4) Enhancing education and outreach /public awareness on the topic of coastal and marine ecosystem health and preservation. The program has four main components – blue economy, marine pollution, sustainable fishery, and climate change. The Embassy’s priority areas regarding the four thematic areas will be clarified after the inception phase. During the inception phase, the geographical scope of the program will be specified and narrowed down from the entire coastal line, (Cape Mount to Cape Palmas) to concentrated areas. Furthermore, CI will focus on conducting coastal and marine contextual analysis to inform the” Blue Ocean Program” programming, as well as refine the program design, the Theory of Change and the Results Framework and seek to achieve ownership among national stakeholders. Key activities that will be implemented during the inception phase are: conflict and gender sensitivity analysis on the role of women in the blue economy, including fishery; stakeholder analysis; a study on plastic waste pollution; assessment of current state of poverty, blue economy, sustainable fisheries, marine pollution, and climate change; marine rapid assessment; and training of Embassy of Sweden partners in mainstreaming environment and climate change. Established in 1987, CI is a US based international nongovernmental organization that has been working in global conservation for over three decades. In Liberia, CI has been active since 1999, and established an office in 2002. CI has nearly two decades of experience engaging stakeholders in the marine and environment domain at all levels in Liberia. CI is a Sida partner, having implemented the 2019 Liberia Blue Ocean Conference.