Marine Conservation Agreement Opportunity

Chumbe Island Coral Park, Tanzania

Opportunity

The private owners of Chumbe Island Coral Park are seeking a long-term, field-level commitment from an NGO that will use the Chumbe Island Coral Park as a vehicle to scale up marine conservation along the southwest coast of Zanzibar.

Background

The Chumbe Island Coral Park (Chumbe) is a privately established and managed island nature reserve recognized by the Zanzibar Government since 1994, and UNEP-WCMC since 1995. The park is located on and around a small formerly uninhabited coral island west of the larger island of Zanzibar off the coast of Tanzania. The park includes a 30-hectare marine reef sanctuary and a 22-hectare coral-rag forest reserve. Founded in 1992 to establish and manage the reserve, Chumbe Island Coral Park Ltd. (CHICOP) acquired management contracts and a lease from the Zanzibar government (GoZ) to create and manage the park, which has become both a successful ecotourism destination and an internationally recognized conservation success. Training and employment of local fishermen as park rangers by volunteers proved cost effective and facilitated direct partnership with local fishing communities. Chumbe is recognised and classified as a Class II protected area under IUCN’s WDPA listings.

A fully self-funded and sustainable MPA

The occupancy rate of the Chumbe Ecolodge on the island has reached 86% over the last two years, making the annual income well above 500.000 US$. About a third of the costs to run Chumbe are associated with park management activities and environmental education programs for local schools. With only 14 beds, Chumbe operates as an exclusive private island for which the present lodge accommodation rates can be considered as comparatively low. Comparable islands used for up-market tourism in the region charge 100-300% more than Chumbe’s rates (e.g., Mnemba Island). Thus, commercial profitability can be increased considerably with no additional investment.

Ownership

CHICOP has been registered in Zanzibar/Tanzania since 1992 and owned by the present Project Director, Sibylle Riedmiller (99%), and Cornelia Krain (1%).

Possibility of scaling up of marine conservation and management

The Chumbe MPA is relatively small in size and has a no-take zone of 30 ha. However, possibilities of scaling up are considerable as Chumbe Island borders the Menai Bay Conservation Area (MBCA) that was designated in 1997 for sustainable management of fisheries and tourism. The MBCA covers an area of 470 sq km south of Chumbe Island to the southern tip of Zanzibar Island. It has an exclusion zone and is an IUCN category VI park bordered by 17 villages (see map).

An opportunity exists to scale up marine conservation and management between the Category II Chumbe MPA and the Category VI MBCA, through cooperation between the management of CHICOP and management structures of the MBCA, once the latter is considerably improved and consolidated. Since 1994, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has supported community-based management in the areas for about 10 years, in co-operation with the Department of Fisheries and working with the Regional and District Administration in Zanzibar. The WWF MBCA program helped establish the Village Conservation Committees in the participating villages. As Menai Bay is a popular destination for beach tourism and boating excursions, the Department of Fisheries collects considerable user fees from tourists visiting the MBCA. It is unclear how much villagers benefit from these collections. In contrast, the popular ‘dolphin tourism’ in one village, Kizimkazi (close to the Southern border of the park), created considerable employment and income for boat owners, operators, tourist guides, guest houses and restaurant owners. There is tension between villages within MBCA and with the government, as most villages do not receive benefits of tourism in their area. The size and diversity of the MBCA also creates problems in terms of patrolling and working with villagers who have wide variation in their resource use and fishing methods1.

There is considerable funding available for further development of participatory community-based management structures as well as for support to income-generating activities for the local population, as the World Bank funded US$ 61 million Marine and Coastal Environmental Management Project (MACEMP) has earmarked 1 million US$ to the MBCA. MACEMP is implemented by the Department of Fisheries of Zanzibar since 2006.

Parks managed by the Government of Zanzibar around Unguja Island

Click map on right for larger image.

Field Project

For more information on Chumbe, see the Chumbe Island Marine Conservation Agreement Field Project within this toolkit.

Contact

For more information about this opportunity, please contact:

Sibylle Riedmiller, Project Director
Chumbe Island Coral Park, Inc.
P.O. Box 3203
Zanzibar/Tanzania
Tel: +255-027-2643557
Email: Sibylle@chumbeisland.com