Coastal Habitats and Resource Management (CHARM)

Working with Agriconsulting this EU-AID funded project designed and established a coastal habitats co-management framework and procedures in two southern Thailand locations that can serve as models to be replicated elsewhere in the country. Our contribution developed a community-based monitoring system for use by the local community, fishermen and Tambon (local) administrations in order to better manage activities in the coastal zone. The main areas of work were to:

• Develop and test a monitoring system for use by local communities based on biodiversity, production and quality of life indicators.
• Develop set of key indicators of ecosystem health and functioning which have relevance to the local community for sea grass, mangrove and coral reef habitats.
• Build capacity in the local community, school children and teachers, fishermen and local administrations to collect and interpreted monitoring data.

We trailed the approach in 3 target areas to collect resource use and habitat change monitoring data to develop a management plan.