Provincial Conservation Officers update Locally Managed Marine Areas maps for Fiji.

15 May 2024 - The iTaukei Affairs Board (TAB), in partnership with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Blue Prosperity Fiji (BPF), hosted a Locally Managed Marine Area (LMMA) mapping workshop with Provincial Conservation Officers (PCOs) on 15 May 2024.

Coinciding with the PCOs bi-annual meeting in Suva, the Officers mapped current LMMA boundaries in their respective Provinces. The updated maps were consolidated, analyzed and compared to the baseline data from the University of the South Pacific’s Institute of Applied Science 2013 LMMA boundary maps.

The Ministry of iTaukei Affairs requested that LMMA boundaries be updated, and the workshop drew on the expertise of the PCOs who had also highlighted the need to update the LMMA boundaries. Preliminary analysis indicated changes such as scale, proximity to and from villages, and status of the LMMAs. The drivers for this change are still being evaluated, and the PCOs requested additional time to ground truth and verify the LMMA boundaries in their Provinces.

TAB will be engaging further with key government ministries, non-governmental organizations, private industry, and the local communities to further their work on LMMAs.