We have been witnessing the decreasing state of our marine resources due to overexploitation and unsustainable use of our natural resources. With C3 Fiji’s intervention, the village of Qaranivai established an MPA in 2018 to revive and help conserve our marine ecosystems. [The] total area of this MPA is 16.55 hectares. It includes the mangrove forest which has an area of 2.94 hectares. For just over a year, we have seen changes already which are a good sign that our plan was a success and that is to preserve and promote biodiversity, which will make our ecosystems healthier for our future generations.
Vasenai Dibale
Community Member, Qaranivai village, Dogotuki, Macuata
C3 Fiji began in 2010 on Kia island, located on the Great Sea Reef off the north coast of Vanua Levu.
The challenges faced by Kia islanders are representative of communities in remote tropical coastal regions today: deforestation, lack of reliable electricity and water, overfishing, exploitation of endangered species for international trade, coral bleaching, and an increase in storm surges and coastal erosion. In the face of this, C3 Fiji partnered with the Kian community to build awareness, capacity, and inspiration for environmental stewardship.
Today, the majority of houses have solar energy and fuel-efficient stoves. The community is also knowledgeable in habitat and fisheries monitoring, and MPA regulations. Furthermore, sustainable livelihoods have been successful, thanks to great input by local women. Screen printing, apiculture, handicrafts, and the establishment of village stores are all businesses that supplement incomes previously wholly dependent on fisheries.
Following the success on Kia, we extended our efforts to ten other communities across Macuata province. C3 Fiji is currently hard-pressed to keep up with demand, as more new communities request support for rural enterprise development, and MPA establishment and management.
C3 Fiji is truly community centred as its name implies. We’re not a NGO which comes and goes to rural communities in order to implement top-down projects conceived in costly offices in cities by development personnel. We’re grassroots, located in the community and all of our ideas come from the community and complement the country’s overarching sustainable development goals.
We have developed successful environmental stewardship models with proven impact. Our job is to adapt, replicate and upscale what we do to reach more and more communities and areas of critical biological importance.
We only promise to deliver effective, sustainable and impactful conservation and development at the best possible price. C3 Fiji can deliver at much lower cost than most NGOs because we are locally-based, locally-run and have hundreds of community volunteers, well-researched suppliers, and a policy of zero or minimal waste.
The international community must admit that conservation has not been successful to date. We are still losing hundreds of species and swathes of habitat each year. With limited funds and time, we must shift our paradigm away from neocolonial conservation approaches and waiting for data to inform decisions. Instead, we need to capacitate communities to manage and monitor key biodiversity areas with their own drive and commitment before it is too late.
It is also time for donors to take a good, hard look at value for money when it comes to future conservation investments. We must move away from an approach that historically supported short-lived outcomes with high administrative cost–one that, unfortunately, led to corruption and the external dependence of local institutions.
13
communities actively engaged in site-based conservation programmes
15
Locally Managed Marine Areas providing climate change resilience by 2023
15
hectares of native forest replanted by 2023
20
community rangers trained by 2022
25
schools participating in our network by 2023
40
fish wardens trained by 2022
50
school teachers trained by 2022
400
rural households using fuel-efficient stoves by 2022
500
Teacher Training Toolkits on biodiversity and climate change distributed by 2022
1,600sq km
total marine area or qoliqoli of impact by 2022
Over2,000
people reached directly through our community outreach campaigns
2,500
Reef Rangers trained (boys and girls) by 2023
6,200
mangrove trees planted by 2023
Contact
C3 Fiji108 Nasekula Road, Labasa
C3 Fiji (Community Centred Conservation (Fiji) Limited), in accordance with the Companies Act, is registered as a non-profit organization in Fiji under the Registrar of Companies with Company Registration No. RCBS2014G3314.