SWOT Analysis When Strengthening Marine Conservation

to resource productivity. The health of coastal habitats is directly related to the intensity and type of resource exploitation activities. Authors Rodney V. Salm and collaborator John R. Clark have identified five basic roles of marine protected areas in protecting marine and coastal resources as follows:

- Maintaining ecological processes and life support systems

- Preserving genetic diversity

- Sustainable use

- Maintaining natural areas for education and research

- Social and economic benefits

It is understood that: Protecting marine and coastal resources will help:

- Maintain ecological processes and life support systems

- Preserve genetic diversity

- Sustainable use

- Maintain natural areas for education and research

- Economic and social benefits

As of 2015, Vietnam has established a network of 16 marine protected areas and plans to have over 20 established and operational by 2020. Establishing marine protected areas and strengthening the protection of marine and coastal resources will help maintain ecological processes and life support systems, including effectively responding to climate change by protecting transit stations and aquatic species migrating to colder regions in the North. In addition, it also has environmental, economic and social benefits.

For Giao Hai, a coastal locality located in the buffer zone of the Nature Reserve, marine conservation is of great importance, especially in response to climate change. However, to achieve the highest efficiency, when implementing marine conservation locally, it is necessary to consider many aspects to promote the existing potential of the locality and limit weaknesses and challenges {Table 3.8}.

Strengths (S)

Opportunity (O)

S1: Located in an area with high biodiversity

S2: Located in the buffer zone of Xuan Thuy National Nature Reserve;

S3: People live happily, harmoniously, and actively participate in activities;

S4: Human resources in working age

abundant local movement;

O1: Biodiversity and buffer zones of national parks should be of interest to many scientists;

O2: Sustainable development, green growth

economic stability in a sustainable direction;

O3: Minimize the impacts of natural disasters such as storms and storm surges. Respond to the impacts of climate change;

O4: Take advantage of international projects and programs with conservation purposes such as the Small Projects Fund (SFG), the Mangroves for the Future Program (MFF) or the Global Environment Facility, etc.

O5: Cooperation with the Center for Biological Conservation

Marine & Community Development (MCD)

SO Strategy

- Strongly promote programs and projects with community participation;

- Establish small-scale projects suitable for poor women to reduce pressure on exploiting aquatic resources;

WO Strategy

- Strengthen biodiversity conservation activities, environmental protection, and mangrove forest protection to minimize risks from natural disasters;

- Take advantage of projects, programs, and organizations at home and abroad to promote awareness of natural resource protection to contribute to changing resource exploitation habits and improving the lives of coastal fishermen;

- Building incentive policy mechanisms

encourage and attract organizations, individuals, and special

Maybe you are interested!

especially the community participating in protection

marine resources

ST Strategy

- Mobilize and guide communities to convert to sustainable livelihood activities that do not depend on coastal resources;

WT Strategy

- Raise awareness of local communities so that they understand the benefits of marine conservation;

- Have a plan to gradually change the exploitation habits of local communities to harmonize conservation and development issues.

- Training a team of staff working in marine conservation with management capacity, expertise and enthusiasm.

Weakness (W)

Challenge (T)

W1: Located in an area affected by risks from natural disasters;

W2: Awareness and capacity of biodiversity conservation among the community is not high;

W2: The community's habit of exploiting resources has existed for a long time;

W3: Coastal resources play an important role in people's income W4: Local government policies and management are not consistent W5: Lack of funding for implementation

W6: Lack of specialized staff

T1: Activities related to coastal resource exploitation tightened;

T2: Impact on livelihoods of people in coastal estuary areas;

T3: Conflict between conservation and development;

Table 3.8: SWOT analysis table when enhancing marine conservation

Strengthening marine conservation to adapt to climate change is a problem that must successfully solve both challenges: climate change and poverty for coastal fishing communities. In particular, Giao Hai is a coastal locality located in the buffer zone of Xuan Thuy National Park. Marine conservation in Giao Hai is to protect the coastal estuary environment, protect the mangrove forest of Xuan Thuy National Park, exploit and conserve aquatic resources. Protected mangrove forests will be an important shield in adapting to climate change, contributing to minimizing the impact of natural disasters, storms and floods, stabilizing the coast, providing food and habitat for aquatic species, while contributing to ensuring the environment and maintaining ecological balance for the area. In fact, the management of local authorities is still loose, leading to a situation where some households still exploit under the mangrove canopy, exploitation does not go hand in hand with protection and everyone does it their own way. Therefore, marine conservation work needs to be widely disseminated to the people so that they can join hands with the government and other organizations to conserve the sea.

3.3.4 Alternative livelihood models

Shift from inshore to offshore fishing

Currently, most of the local population is engaged in coastal fishing with small-capacity boats that return and forth during the day, with diverse fishing gear and not ensuring sustainable development of aquatic resources. To reduce the pressure on exploitation of coastal estuary resources, the transition from coastal fishing to offshore fishing is the right direction. It is necessary to gradually reduce the number of small-capacity boats and fishing boats operating in coastal areas. The State has policies to support fishermen in borrowing capital to build, repair, and convert small fishing boats into large-capacity fishing boats (from 90CV or more) or policies to support fuel prices for fishing boats operating offshore. However, through the interview results, it shows that many households are still hesitant to invest in borrowing capital to build new large-capacity fishing boats. Because they think that building new large-capacity boats requires a large amount of capital, while the seafaring profession has many potential risks that can easily lead to debt or bankruptcy. To solve this problem, in addition to state capital support, there needs to be consensus from fishermen. The co-management model according to

The method of contributing shares to invest in offshore fishing vessels is quite feasible. It is possible to establish a group of 3-5 households to contribute shares to build the vessel and human resources to participate. In which, elect a group leader and make agreements and regulations on the group's operations in a transparent manner.

Developing aquaculture, services and seafood logistics

Currently, the whole commune has 205 households participating in fishing, accounting for 83.6% of the total number of households participating in fishing activities. Meanwhile, the number of households participating in aquaculture activities is 25 households, accounting for 10.2% of the total number of households. The percentage of households participating in seafood business and processing accounts for the lowest percentage, at 6.1% of the total number of households.

{Figure 3.19}.

Figure 3.19: Percentage of households participating in fisheries activities

Source: Giao Hai Commune People's Committee, 2014

With the advantage of having a large area of alluvial land, Giao Hai is favorable for aquaculture activities, especially mollusc farming. However, mollusc farming also has many potential risks due to the impact of weather and environmental conditions. Therefore, Giao Hai needs to have policies and solutions to encourage fishermen to increase aquaculture activities such as:

Financial support policies, technical support for farming and product output support. However, the issue of planning farming areas also needs attention.

In addition to aquaculture development activities, Giao Hai should also take advantage of Giao Hai Fishing Port to develop aquatic services such as purchasing aquatic products, providing services for fishing and aquaculture to reduce pressure on coastal and estuarine natural resources.

Developing mushroom growing industry

In addition to the two livelihood models above, developing mushroom growing is also considered an effective direction for people in terms of socio-economics. Developing mushroom growing not only takes advantage of local available materials such as agricultural by-products such as straw, but also ensures the environment, and creates stable jobs for households, especially for female workers in the area. Mushrooms are clean food with high nutritional value, so they are very popular in the market. Currently, in neighboring localities such as Giao An and Giao Thien communes, mushroom growing models have been developed and brought an average economic value of 20 to 25 million VND/year. However, to develop household mushroom growing models, local authorities also need to have policies to support capital, techniques, seeds and techniques for people.

Beekeeping development

In addition to mushroom cultivation, which brings economic benefits to the people, beekeeping for honey from mangrove and parrot flowers is also a right direction that needs to be implemented and expanded in Giao Hai. This livelihood reduces the pressure on exploiting aquatic resources, harmoniously combining the goals of nature conservation and economic development. Beekeeping also does not require too much investment capital while the economic value it brings is quite stable. On average, each liter of honey costs 160,000 VND on the market. In addition, the mangrove forest honey brand is very popular with consumers.

responsible, because honey from mangrove flowers has the effect of supporting the treatment of diseases related to the digestive system. Beekeeping also does not require much labor, so it is very suitable for the local female labor force.

Mangrove restoration according to ecological shrimp pond model

Mangrove forests are an indispensable component of natural ecosystems, helping to protect living species against the effects of tides, storms and providing a suitable habitat for shrimp and fish larvae. Therefore, to protect and sustainably use mangrove forests, the task is to strengthen the restoration, protection and development of mangrove forests in Xuan Thuy National Park. Currently, in the buffer zone of the National Park, there is still a situation where people arbitrarily convert aquaculture purposes and arbitrarily separate shrimp farms in the area, causing significant impacts on the quality of mangrove forests.

The ecological shrimp pond model is a combined forestry and fishery model, contributing to the restoration and protection of mangrove forests while ensuring the goal of economic stability and development for residents in buffer zone communes through shrimp or mollusk farming activities. The outstanding feature of this model is that it contributes to the restoration of wetlands degraded by unsustainable aquaculture (cutting down mangrove forests to build shrimp ponds).

Up to now, 2/5 communes in the buffer zone of the National Park have implemented the ATST model, namely Giao Xuan and Giao Thien. To replicate this model for communes in the buffer zone, functional agencies and local authorities need to study, review and adjust the financial mechanism (loan period) as well as the RNM contract mechanism to suit actual conditions to facilitate residents when implementing this model. In fact, when applying the ATST model, people need support from a long-term credit fund for 8-10 years to have enough time to recover the RNM trees and have income to repay the loan. At the same time, because this is a combined forestry - fishery model, it requires technical support from experts to minimize disease risks for pond owners.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Conclusion

The Red River estuary plays an important role in the socio-economic development strategy as well as biodiversity conservation. Within the scope of the thesis, the author focuses on aquatic resources and solutions to conserve NLTS in the estuary. Through the research, the thesis has achieved some results as follows:

1. The Red River estuary is an area with a unique ecosystem, with the highest biodiversity in the North. Aquatic resources here also play an important role and create momentum for local economic and social development. A large part of the population has lived and been attached to the fishing industry for a long time. Household economies have a large contribution from fishing;

2. However, the estuary's fisheries resources have declined significantly in recent years due to many shortcomings in the management of aquatic resources by local authorities. Legal policies on the exploitation and protection of aquatic resources have not reached the people. In addition, the exploitation activities of local residents are still spontaneous, focusing on economic purposes while the responsibility and awareness of environmental protection and conservation of aquatic resources are still neglected. In addition, causes such as climate change and environmental pollution also contribute to the decline of fisheries resources here;

3. The thesis has proposed solutions to limit and reduce the pressure of exploiting aquatic resources for Giao Hai commune such as community-based conservation management solutions and proposed alternative livelihood models such as: converting from inshore fishing to offshore fishing, developing aquaculture, aquatic logistics services, developing mushroom cultivation, and beekeeping. At the same time, propaganda work to raise public awareness of resource exploitation and protection, activities to enhance marine conservation to respond to climate change also need to be promoted and maintained.

Comment