How a handful of fishing villages sparked a marine conservation revolution

We need a radically new approach to ocean conservation, says marine biologist and TED Fellow Alasdair Harris. In a visionary talk, he lays out a surprising solution to the problem of overfishing that could both revive marine life and rebuild local fisheries -- all by taking less from the ocean. "When we design it right, marine conservation reaps dividends that go far beyond protecting nature," he says.

I'm a marine biologist

here to talk to you
about the crisis in our oceans,

but this time perhaps not
with a message you've heard before,

because I want to tell you
that if the survival of the oceans

depended only on people like me,

scientists trading in publications,

we'd be in even worse trouble than we are.

Because, as a scientist,

the most important things
that I've learned

about keeping our oceans
healthy and productive

have come not from academia,
but from fishermen and women

living in some of the poorest
countries on earth.

I've learned that as a conservationist,

the most important question is not,
"How do we keep people out?"

but rather, "How do we make sure
that coastal people throughout the world

have enough to eat?"

Our oceans are every bit as critical
to our own survival

as our atmosphere,
our forests or our soils.

Their staggering productivity
ranks fisheries with farming

as a mainstay of food production

for humanity.

Yet something's gone badly wrong.

We're accelerating
into an extinction emergency,

one that my field has so far
failed abysmally to tackle.

At its core is a very human
and humanitarian crisis.

The most devastating blow
we've so far dealt our oceans

is through overfishing.

Every year, we fish harder,
deeper, further afield.

Every year, we chase ever fewer fish.

Yet the crisis of overfishing
is a great paradox:

unnecessary, avoidable
and entirely reversible,

because fisheries are one of the most
productive resources on the planet.

With the right strategies,
we can reverse overfishing.

That we've not yet done so is, to my mind,

one of humanity's greatest failures.

Nowhere is this failure more apparent

than in the warm waters
on either side of our equator.

Our tropics are home to most
of the species in our ocean,

most of the people whose existence
depends on our seas.

We call these coastal fishermen and women
"small-scale fishers,"

but "small-scale" is a misnomer

for a fleet comprising over 90 percent
of the world's fishermen and women.

Their fishing is generally
more selective and sustainable

than the indiscriminate destruction

too often wrought
by bigger industrial boats.

These coastal people have the most
to gain from conservation

because, for many of them,

fishing is all that keeps them
from poverty, hunger or forced migration,

in countries where the state
is often unable to help.

We know that the outlook is grim:

stocks collapsing
on the front lines of climate change,

warming seas, dying reefs,
catastrophic storms,

trawlers, factory fleets,

rapacious ships from richer countries
taking more than their share.

Extreme vulnerability is the new normal.

I first landed on the island
of Madagascar two decades ago,

on a mission to document
its marine natural history.

I was mesmerized
by the coral reefs I explored,

and certain I knew how to protect them,

because science provided all the answers:

close areas of the reef permanently.

Coastal fishers
simply needed to fish less.

I approached elders here
in the village of Andavadoaka

and recommended that they close off

the healthiest and most diverse
coral reefs to all forms of fishing

to form a refuge to help stocks recover

because, as the science tells us,
after five or so years,

fish populations inside those refuges
would be much bigger,

replenishing the fished areas outside,

making everybody better off.

That conversation didn't go so well.

(Laughter)

Three-quarters of Madagascar's
27 million people

live on less than two dollars a day.

My earnest appeal to fish less
took no account

of what that might actually mean

for people who depend
on fishing for survival.

It was just another squeeze from outside,

a restriction rather than a solution.

What does protecting a long list
of Latin species names mean to Resaxx,

a woman from Andavadoaka
who fishes every day

to put food on the table

and send her grandchildren to school?

That initial rejection taught me
that conservation is, at its core,

a journey in listening deeply,

to understand the pressures
and realities that communities face

through their dependence on nature.

This idea became
the founding principle for my work

and grew into an organization
that brought a new approach

to ocean conservation

by working to rebuild fisheries
with coastal communities.

Then, as now, the work
started by listening,

and what we learned astonished us.

Back in the dry south of Madagascar,

we learned that one species
was immensely important for villagers:

this remarkable octopus.

We learned that soaring demand
was depleting an economic lifeline.

But we also learned that this animal
grows astonishingly fast,

doubling in weight
every one or two months.

We reasoned that protecting
just a small area of fishing ground

for just a few months

might lead to dramatic
increases in catches,

enough to make a difference
to this community's bottom line

in a time frame that might
just be acceptable.

The community thought so too,

opting to close a small area of reef
to octopus fishing temporarily,

using a customary social code,

invoking blessings from the ancestors
to prevent poaching.

When that reef reopened
to fishing six months later,

none of us were prepared
for what happened next.

Catches soared,

with men and women landing
more and bigger octopus

than anyone had seen for years.

Neighboring villages saw the fishing boom

and drew up their own closures,

spreading the model virally
along hundreds of miles of coastline.

When we ran the numbers,

we saw that these communities,
among the poorest on earth,

had found a way to double their money
in a matter of months, by fishing less.

Imagine a savings account

from which you withdraw
half your balance every year

and your savings keep growing.

There is no investment
opportunity on earth

that can reliably deliver
what fisheries can.

But the real magic went beyond profit,

because a far deeper transformation
was happening in these communities.

Spurred on by rising catches,

leaders from Andavadoaka joined force
with two dozen neighboring communities

to establish a vast conservation area
along dozens of miles of coastline.

They outlawed fishing with poison
and mosquito nets

and set aside permanent refuges

around threatened
coral reefs and mangroves,

including, to my astonishment,

those same sights that I'd flagged
just two years earlier

when my evangelism for marine protection
was so roundly rejected.

They created a community-led
protected area,

a democratic system
for local marine governance

that was totally unimaginable
just a few years earlier.

And they didn't stop there:

within five years, they'd secured
legal rights from the state

to manage over 200 square miles of ocean,

eliminating destructive
industrial trawlers from the waters.

Ten years on, we're seeing
recovery of those critical reefs

within those refuges.

Communities are petitioning
for greater recognition

of the right to fish

and fairer prices
that reward sustainability.

But all that is just
the beginning of the story,

because this handful
of fishing villages taking action

has sparked a marine
conservation revolution

that has spread over thousands of miles,

impacting hundreds of thousands of people.

Today in Madagascar, hundreds of sites
are managed by communities

applying this human rights-based
approach to conservation

to all kinds of fisheries,
from mud crabs to mackerel.

The model has crossed borders
through East Africa and the Indian Ocean

and is now island-hopping
into Southeast Asia.

From Tanzania to Timor-Leste,
from India to Indonesia,

we're seeing the same story unfold:

that when we design it right,

marine conservation reaps dividends
that go far beyond protecting nature,

improving catches

and driving waves of social change
along entire coastlines,

strengthening confidence, cooperation

and the resilience of communities
to face the injustice of poverty

and climate change.

I've been privileged to spend my career

catalyzing and connecting these movements
throughout the tropics,

and I've learned that as conservationists,

our goal must be to win at scale,

not just to lose more slowly.

We need to step up
to this global opportunity

to rebuild fisheries:

with field workers to stand
with communities

and connect them, to support them
to act and learn from one another;

with governments and lawyers
standing with communities

to secure their rights
to manage their fisheries;

prioritizing local food and job security

above all competing interests
in the ocean economy;

ending subsidies for grotesquely
overcapitalized industrial fleets

and keeping those industrial
and foreign vessels

out of coastal waters.

We need agile data systems

that put science
in the hands of communities

to optimize conservation
to the target species or habitat.

We need development agencies,
donors and the conservation establishment

to raise their ambition
to the scale of investment

urgently required to deliver this vision.

And to get there,

we all need to reimagine
marine conservation

as a narrative of abundance
and empowerment,

not of austerity and alienation;

a movement guided by the people who depend
on healthy seas for their survival,

not by abstract scientific values.

Of course, fixing overfishing
is just one step to fixing our oceans.

The horrors of warming,
acidification and pollution grow each day.

But it's a big step.

It's one we can take today,

and it's one that will give
a much-needed boost

to those exploring scalable solutions

to other dimensions
of our ocean emergency.

Our success propels theirs.

If we throw up our hands in despair,

it's game over.

We solve these challenges
by taking them on one by one.

Our overwhelming dependence
on our ocean is the solution

that has been hiding in plain sight,

because there's nothing small
about small-scale fishers.

They're a hundred million strong
and provide nutrition to billions.

It's this army of everyday
conservationists

who have the most at stake.

Only they have the knowledge
and global reach needed

to reshape our relationship
with our oceans.

Helping them achieve this
is the most powerful thing we can do

to keep our oceans alive.

Thank you.

(Applause)