Conservation plan for the Sulu [Philippines]-Sulawesi [Indonesia] Marine ecoregion

The Conservation Plan of the Sulu-Sulawesi Marine Ecoregion (SSME) expresses the aspiration of the ecoregion's stakeholders to conserve its biodiversity and describes how this can be realized. The Conservation Plan is presented in five chapters. The first part describes the physical, biological and social characteristics of the ecoregion and highlights the role of the ecoregion's biological resources in providing for the economic and cultural needs of the people living along its shores and beyond. It likewise shows that the use of ecoregion as a conservation management unit could provide opportunities for a more comprehensive and coherent management regime, where multiple sources of support could be mobilized in a more efficient manner than when management strategies are in a smaller scale. The second chapter shows the vision and objectives for the SSME as well as the planning principles and process undergone by the stakeholders in coming up with the Conservation Plan. It emphasizes the value of stakeholder's contributions to the Plan. Their contribution is drawn out from 12 workshops where the process on multi-sectoral participation, transparency and consensus building involved 460 stakeholders' representatives. The process brings-in the stakeholders' experience-based knowledge of SSME and their commitment to implement the Plan. Part of the experience-based knowledge are urgent issues that must be added to conserve the SSME. The third chapter discusses the SSME Conservation Plan as well as the SSME national plans for each country. Divided into three sections, the first part discusses issues on biodiversity in the SSME- from uncontrolled land use development, over exploitation of resources to limited management capability: all pinpointing to the root cause which is widespread poverty. The second part presents the Ecoregion Actions needed to address the identified issues. The third part presents the National Plans of the three countries as formulated by the stakeholders. The Plan shall guide the stakeholders on how to take collective and individual actions to manage crosscutting concerns and enhance autonomy while maintaining coherence in implementation and attaining incremental impact amid political variability. The mechanisms for managing implementation, both at the national and ecoregional levels are described in the fourth chapter. At the national level, the plan shall be implemented through the existing government mechanisms as part of relevant national programs. The National Committees, supported by their respective Technical Working Groups, shall oversee the implementation of actions at the national level and shall decide on the institutional arrangements for implementation at the ecoregional level. Non-government Organizations (NGOs) shall be part of both the national and ecoregional mechanisms. The fifth and last chapter contains the conclusion, putting forth in the end a note on the Conservation Plan's collective ownership and a call for a strong commitment for all stakeholders to successfully implement it.