An integrative framework for sustainable coral reef restoration

Cost‐effectiveness of tourism‐led coral planting at scale on the northern Great Barrier Reef

“…In other reef restoration programs, costs of capacity-building reef stakeholders through training are unclear, yet undoubtedly deliver immense benefit for reef-dependent communities via enhanced employment opportunities, income diversification, and community education (e.g., projects in the Caribbean and Eastern Tropical Pacific, Israel, and the Seychelles; Bayraktarov et al 2020;Vaughan 2021). Indeed, for several tourism operators in the CNP, such capacity provided industry resilience during tourism downturns in 2020-2021 where tourism operators received funding for site stewardship activities, including restoration, thereby assisting staff retention (Howlett et al 2022;Suggett et al 2023). Furthermore, the near doubling of mean PC on "dedicated days" via the additional cost of vessel charters demonstrates how cost-effective planting on the GBR-as with other restoration programs globally (e.g., dela Cruz et al 2014;Toh et al 2017;Bayraktarov et al 2020)-hinges upon stakeholder involvement.…”

“…As global necessity and investment for coral restoration grows, it is increasingly time-sensitive to resolve a framework for transparent cost accounting and evaluation that can feasibly be adopted across stakeholder-led restoration programs. Implementing such a framework will require sufficient and realistic program budgeting and funding horizons to implement, measure and report on activity (e.g., >3 years; Hein & Staub 2021;Suggett et al 2023). Our approach identifies how opportunistic activity reporting can be exploited to examine costs, and in turn identify factors (e.g., staff time quantification, longer monitoring periods) needed to more robustly leverage this valuable data source to further improve resource allocation within restoration practice.…”

“…Current efforts are rapidly accelerating as in-water nurseries (e.g., Howlett et al 2021) and coral planting methods (e.g., Suggett et al 2020;Unsworth et al 2021) become cheaper and more efficient and as practitioners network to learn collectively (Vardi et al 2021;Quigley et al 2022). Furthermore, recent declarations of decadal priorities in restoration and ocean science have catalyzed new financing mechanisms geared toward advancing the scale, equity, and sustainability of reef restoration efforts (Hein & Staub 2021;Suggett et al 2023).…”

Sea‐weeding: Manual removal of macroalgae facilitates rapid coral recovery

“…To accomplish this study, volunteer citizen scientists engaged through Earthwatch Institute contributed to macroalgal removal with one team (two people) clearing 25 m 2 of reef benthos in approximately 30 min (removal only, not including monitoring tasks). Because the approach requires low-technology and minimal training, this manual macroalgae removal method may be feasible to scale up through volunteer citizen science initiatives, and would provide benefits not only to local reefs, but also to local tourism and community groups (Hesley et al, 2017;Suggett et al, 2023). The total actual operational cost of this study, which resulted in the doubling of coral cover over 300 m 2 of reef (i.e.…”

“…Because the cost of materials and particularly labour varies significantly worldwide (The World Bank, 2023b), and the starting condition of the reef will dictate the magnitude of efforts required, it is difficult to extrapolate costs for other reef regions. Nonetheless, labour costs can be reduced and socio-ecological benefit maximised through the use of ecotourism, volunteers, citizen scientists and/or community action groups (Suggett et al, 2023), though some paid labour is likely required to provide initial training and ensure perverse impacts of removal events are avoided.…”