Recipient: OneReef
The Ocean Guardians Project combines Pacific Island traditional stewardship with science and tech to build a nature-based climate solution. This project focuses on remote islands in Micronesia - strongholds of traditional knowledge and places of biological richness. These islands are biocultural powerhouses that produced celestial navigators and people with highly evolved ways of caring for their islands. Communities are the prime actors, deploying radar-based vessel tracking to prevent illegal fishing and visualization technology to monitor reef health. With support from the BCI Community Award for Ocean-Related Climate Solutions, this project integrates centuries of traditional knowledge and culture with modern science and technologies. Communities become master stewards in monitoring and protecting coral reefs from climate change and illegal fishing. This replicable model can be scaled across hundreds of islands. For this project, OneReef is collaborating with community partners in Palau, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Protected Seas.