TIMELINES 

Timelines were co-created with managers in each jurisdiction, encouraging engagement in the assessment process and allowing new thinking and insight to emerge. We have used the timelining process in many different contexts, across cultures and around the world.

Assessing the Capacity to Manage Coral Reefs... from American Samoa to the US Virgin Islands.

For over ten years, partners within the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP), and the seven US flagged states and territories with coral reefs, were concerned by the lack of capacity in those coral jurisdictions to effectively manage coral reefs.

CRCP and the jurisdictions identified key threats to reefs, prioritized what needed to be done to manage and conserve them, and how to show measured results at the national and jurisdictional levels. Each of the seven jurisdictions (American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Florida, Guam, Hawai`i, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands) received Coral Reef Management Priority documents.

Upon completing these plans in 2010, CRCP  decided to follow-up with an assessment of each jurisdiction's capacity to implement these goals and objectives, and has selected a partnership consultant team led by SustainaMetrix.

The assessment identifies gaps and persistent barriers in coral reef management capacity in each jurisdiction, and provides recommendations to address them. We produced a series of seven separate reports, one for each jurisdiction, designed to support the jurisdictional organizations that manage coral reefs, their partners, the All Islands Committee (AIC) of the US Coral Reef Task Force, and other stakeholders. The reports document what is needed to improve coral reef management capacity, with particular focus on the capacities needed to implement the goals and objectives set forth in the Coral Reef Management Priority documents completed in 2010. A synthesis document (at left) assesses capacity across all seven jurisdictions, the findings of which are primarily intended for NOAA CRCP and other federal partners.

Visit NOAA CRCP's page to learn more about the capacity assessment process and SustainaMetrix's role in it.