Since the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries (MMAF) of the Republic of Indonesia published the use of the Conservation Area Management Effectiveness Evaluation (EVIKA) as a new tool in marine protected area (MPA) management earlier this year, CTC has played an active role in ensuring that the EVIKA mechanism is implemented properly. Recently, CTC participated in a collaborative workshop with the MMAF and WCS to write the EVIKA competency-based module and curriculum that will support the implementation of EVIKA in the future.

The workshop took place at the Papyrus Hotel Bogor, West Java, on April 8-9, 2021. The event was attended by 15 authors from CTC, WCS and the Directorate of Marine Biodiversity and Conservation (KKHL) and the Center of Training and Extensions (Puslatluh) MMAF. By working in pairs, these authors successfully delivered four outcomes, namely the presentation of training materials, tools for activities, a detailed training agenda and a drafted module using templates from the MMAF Puslatluh.

The Government of Indonesia has targeted 26.9 million hectares of MPA by 2024 and 32.5 million hectares by 2030. Moreover, these MPAs are expected to be managed effectively by 2030. To evaluate the effectiveness of each MPA in Indonesia, MMAF had developed an evaluation tool to measure management effectiveness and serve as a reference for achieving management effectiveness called E-KKP3K in 2012. Later, it was transformed into the EVIKA mechanism by Decree of the Directorate General of Marine Spatial Management No.28 of 2020, before being officially introduced this year.

In addition to some physical distancing obstacles during the discussion, writing and drafting processes, due to the COVID-19 protocol, authors also encountered other issues such as the lack of references available to develop materials and the readiness of module’s template. As a new tool, preliminary studies on EVIKA and other similar evaluation mechanisms are still limited. Nevertheless, participants managed to address those challenges and follow the overall process accordingly. Compared to the evaluation tool developed earlier (E-KKP3K), EVIKA focuses more on conservation targets (e.g. species and objectives) and input, process, output, and outcome instead of only assessing the conservation area. The results of EVIKA will identify the needs to be followed up as an action plan.

With the new EVIKA mechanism, the MMAF will be able to measure management effectiveness performance for each MPA in Indonesia. Eventually, MMAF will also be able to provide a comprehensive report to the provincial government on the MPA progress and recommendations for adaptive management, which will be able to help the local government in getting more funding from the Ministry of Home Affairs in the form of Local Incentives Funding (Dana Insentif Daerah).  To follow up the workshop, CTC will be joining more activities such as the internal training for authors and the National Center for Marine Conservation (BKKPN) staff on May 24-25, 2021, the finalization of training materials and modules on May 27-28, 2021, the training for the assessment team in June 2021 and the verification of 61 MPAs by the assessment team also in the same month.

Photos by Aulia/CTC