Indonesia has the most coral reef restoration projects of any nation (Razak et al. 2022). Located in the heart of the CT, its status as home to the world’s most biologically diverse coral reefs makes Indonesia one of the most important countries for coral reef conservation and restoration. This is supported by the “50 Reefs Initiative”, which identified an optimum portfolio of 50 bioclimatic units (BCUs) – areas within which reefs have a higher potential to survive climate change impacts and the ability to repopulate neighbouring reefs over time. Almost one quarter of these BCUs are located in Indonesia (Beyer et al. 2018).
Many Indonesian reefs have suffered severe, long-term declines in diversity, habitat structure, and key species abundance, with 71.2% classified as having less than 50% healthy hard coral (Hadi et al. 2020). The widespread implementation of MPAs and restrictions on reef ecosystem utilisation has not been enough to halt ongoing reef degradation in the face of persistent threats; the combination of high biodiversity and high prevalence of localised threats means that effective coral reef restoration is widely perceived as valuable and important (Lamont et al. 2022). As such, ongoing attempts to support, improve, and scale up active coral reef restoration efforts are imperative, with a particular focus on identifying reefs with a higher potential for resilience and survival.
Restoration efforts in Indonesia encompass various methods across a wide range of geographies, organisation types, and project sizes (Razak et al. 2022). A focus on re-establishing a self-sustaining, functioning reef ecosystem implies an understanding that restoration must take a holistic approach encompassing the reef community, while the promotion of conservation stewardship and provision of alternative livelihoods acknowledge the importance of involving local communities and fostering a sense of ownership over restoration projects. The need to accelerate reef recovery post-disturbance and reduce degradation reflects the impacts of local and global stressors, while scientific research is an important aspect of refining reef restoration techniques and outcomes.
Lamont et al. (2022) offer insights learnt from Indonesian case studies to inform reef restoration management and policy interventions, recommending multi-dimensional approaches that include ecological, social, and economic processes. The study highlights success stories, including the incorporation of threat reduction involving local communities into restoration initiatives in Raja Ampat by two NGOs, strategic project placement in Bali to aid job creation in tourist areas heavily affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, and site selection guided by a mix of ecological and social factors, allowing efficient scale-up of restoration efforts in areas of the Spermonde Archipelago where future success was most likely. Projects in north Bali led by former cyanide and dynamite fishermen have been exemplars of engaging diverse local community participants; the youth-driven nature of initiatives have made them particularly impactful in achieving societal change. Restoration at Gili Trawangan island involves a collaboration of foreign businesses, academics, NGOs, and local government; local leadership is maintained through the institutionalisation of traditional customary laws for regulating marine activities, which all stakeholders work together to uphold and implement. The success of this venture highlights prioritising within-community leadership as a key enabling principle of scalable restoration success.
Indonesia is an attractive location for international funding, NGOs, eco-tourism, and scientific study. The government has established a commendable framework for coral reef restoration, with legislation specifically requiring, for example, that local communities and stakeholders be directly involved in both the planning and implementation of restoration activities (Razak et al. 2022). The legislature contains a prevailing sentiment of community-driven restoration management and the management of fisheries resources. Razak et al. (2022) highlight Presidential Regulation No. 121/2012 Article 12.1 (“Rehabilitation can be conducted through cooperation between government, regional government, person or community”) and Article 15.1 (“Community or persons can participate in the implementation and maintenance of rehabilitation voluntarily”), as well as MMAF Ministerial Regulation No. 26/2021, Article 67.1 (“Each person can participate in the rehabilitation of fisheries resources and their environment”). While the legislative frameworks are in place and there is an abundance of restoration activity, there is now a needs to bring these efforts together and focus coral reef restoration across the country through a lens of CBP to deliver meaningful restoration at scale. The shortcomings in nationwide reef restoration efforts that require attention also provide opportunities to learn, consolidate, and create a lasting legacy of sustainable reef restoration projects on a national scale. Greater efficacy in meeting target-driven outcomes, consistency in ecological monitoring, and intentionality in global knowledge exchange can help to reposition Indonesia’s restoration projects as a transformative resource for the region and an example for the world to follow (Razak et al. 2022).
Limitations
Social desirability bias (SDB) was considered as a potential skewing factor on survey responses. This is the tendency to present oneself and one’s social context in a way perceived to be socially acceptable, but not wholly reflective of one’s reality (Bergen and Labonté 2020). In some situations, people may tend to portray themselves in a more favourable light (Podsakoff et al. 2003). While measuring potential discrepancies is outside the scope of this study, measures were taken to minimise SDB, including conducting interviews face-to-face (online) whenever possible to allow additional questioning and clarifications (Mooney et al. 2018). An introductory discussion helped to establish rapport with participants, put them at ease, and display appropriate respect (Bergen and Labonté 2020) for the high standing of certain academics and government officials. It also allowed the interviewers to contextualise their own involvement in marine research in Indonesia and explain the study’s focus, purpose and how data would be used (Bergen and Labonté 2020).
This study encompasses roughly 8% of all documented Indonesian coral reef restoration projects from the last three decades. An opportunity exists to engage with a higher proportion of ongoing active projects to develop sound, agreed frameworks within which projects should focus their efforts.
Recommendations and Opportunities
There is significant potential to standardise the setting of quantifiable, iterative goals that are integral to the restoration process (Hobbs and Harris 2001), as well as to consolidate the overarching objectives of Indonesian reef restoration and how these objectives are achieved, to deliver more efficient and effective collective reef restoration actions that provide balanced benefits to reefs and communities.
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More projects should set quantifiable goals during the planning phases, incorporating assessments of how relevant and realistic these goals are and considering the specific context and characteristics of each individual case. Nevertheless, a set of simple standards could be applied for determining desired aspects, including the size of the area to be rehabilitated, increases in coral cover and biodiversity, and socio-economic project functions.
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Long-term objectives can be consolidated by increasing the focus on the most pressing needs, including conducting restoration resilient to future climate change; reducing or eliminating the most harmful local stressors, including destructive fishing; better integrating socio-economic and cultural concerns into restoration objectives; and producing quantified outcomes to inform and evolve best practice. Strengthening ties between reef restoration projects and regulatory agencies may also increase the implementation of management measures to address ongoing stressors to restoration areas (c.f., Ferse et al. 2021) and deliver large-scale coral reef restoration.
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A national database of reef restoration projects, where reports can be submitted and stored in a repository, could be a potential vehicle for improved project outcome reporting. This will, however, need to be linked to a wide coalition or network of projects willing and able to ascribe to a set of project management, scientific monitoring, and outcome reporting best practice requirements. It must also allow for the inclusion of already-established projects, factoring in diverse goals and approaches, as well as disparate levels of financial and logistical support.
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The SCORES online community of scientists and reef restoration practitioners, although still in its infancy, is an excellent example of the potential of centralised training hubs to substantially accelerate the establishment and scaling up of successful projects through knowledge sharing (Lamont et al. 2022). While the creation of a national framework for coral reef restoration would add a significant administrative burden for projects, it would provide significant value, so long as projects can realistically meet logistical, financial, administrative, scientific, and reporting standards.
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There remain opportunities to improve how restoration sites are selected. Ecological considerations were by far the main driver of site selection in the current study, while tourism value was another predictably important factor.
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The utilisation of local knowledge in initial site selection could be better extended through the planning phases to include further discussions with local stakeholders prior to final site selection, a step lacking in one-third of projects. One in ten projects did not consider the potential to improve site condition during planning, while just under a quarter of projects did not employ ecological or social surveys to aid site selection. This largely reflected logistical and/or budgetary priorities or constraints (cited by over half the projects surveyed), limitations in scientific training, and a reliance on local knowledge about reef areas and conditions prior to disturbance, and the location of degraded areas of reef.
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Logistical, financial, and site accessibility considerations will remain critical, including minimising maintenance and long-term monitoring costs. It is worth considering the development and implementation of a national training element encompassing not only how to select areas for restoration, but also other elements of project design and implementation. A standardised and more structured approach to assessing and prioritising sites, as per international CBP, can help to bolster holistic restoration that includes ecological, operational, and societal aspects.
Involving the local community in planning does not necessarily lead to support for conservation interventions. One survey response noted that local community participation and buy-in remained low despite frequent campaigns and events attempting to address marine degradation caused by terrestrial farming practices and pesticide use. In another response, one of three villages refused to support restoration activities after focus group discussions, due to previous destructive mining activity that had degraded the surrounding environment. Neither was long-term support garnered from the other two villages: while the coral restoration programme started with 10 volunteers, only two remained by the end of the programme. A third response highlighted ongoing destructive fishing practices and a gap in understanding about the sustainable use of coral reefs, despite discussions and attempts to educate the local community on the benefits of eradicating these practices.
There is an opportunity to increase the focus on local community involvement and attempts to gauge the success of these efforts. This is illustrated by the low incidence of reporting and quantification of alternative livelihoods and local stewardship as project objectives comparative to ecological and/or restoration success. Involving local communities from early in the project planning stages should be seen as imperative. Focus group discussions and agreements with local community leaders are important in laying the groundwork, as is ongoing community participation, but it is essential that communities recognise the benefits of this participation. One project trained members of village community groups in Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMAs) to become future project managers, while another reported building long-term relationships and deepening engagement and support over a three-year pilot phase to demonstrate the feasibility of community-based reef restoration, which then continued with the participation of community members. One NGO-run project has a member of the local fishing community as a co-founder and worked with community leaders and fishers to agree on the best project method; it continues to work in close collaboration with fishers and restoration is run in conjunction with various other environmental and social projects.
Another vehicle for community involvement with potential for wider implementation is the creation of community surveillance groups (“pokmaswas”). As part of the CTI, the MPA authorities of Nusa Penida and the Gili Islands consulted with stakeholders and drafted seven standard operating procedures to promulgate these groups, with resounding success, and community members are reportedly benefitting from employment, education, stewardship, recreation, satisfaction, and other social and cultural benefits (ADB 2022).
Establishing and maintaining trust is a complex issue requiring more than simply “providing” alternative livelihoods. For example, an increased focus on the potential for improving local fish stocks and sustaining local fisheries can be a significant driver for community support, but restoration practitioners must be sure to respect, integrate, and actively encourage local customs such as traditional rules on access to certain fishing grounds (Bottema and Bush 2012).
Overall, there remains a need to better quantify local communities’ support for and involvement in coral reef restoration across Indonesia, and this could potentially be achieved via the creation and adoption of standardised socio-economic and reef user satisfaction surveys to inform interactions with community leaders and others.
Quantitative measurements of bleaching, coral health, coral thermal tolerance and/or changes in restoration success relating to temperature and depth were underrepresented in the projects surveyed. There is therefore a decisive opportunity to better integrate and increase the focus on climate smart design considerations and climate change adaptation goals to increase the meaningful and impactful outcomes of Indonesian coral reef restoration efforts in the long-term. This is likely to require updates to legislation, increased funding for scientific studies, and standardised planning structures that incorporate a more detailed approach to climate-based goals. This includes more widespread adoption of innovative climate-smart reef restoration efforts nationwide in the near future (Camp et al. 2018a, 2018b; van Oppen et al. 2017), particularly if significant local threats persist.
Building on work already done by the 50 Reefs Initiative (Beyer et al. 2018), Indonesia can concentrate large-scale restoration efforts on reefs with the greatest potential to survive climate change impacts and repopulate neighbouring reefs, identifying refugia for coral diversity, including thermally resistant corals that have survived numerous mass bleaching events.
As mass bleaching events become increasingly common and severe, a better understanding of which corals will survive best in particular areas and conditions will be vital to restoration success, as will the prioritisation of environmentally buffered core refugia zones. This can be achieved by more stringent scientific selection of viable sites and by adopting innovative management approaches that incorporate restoration in lower light conditions, focus on more resilient corals, and/or experiment with assisted evolution, hybridisation, and other potential solutions (Camp et al. 2018b; Chan et al. 2018; van Oppen et al. 2015, 2017), as well as the proactive integration of emerging technologies in an adaptive process of research and development, learning, consultation, risk management, and staged implementation (Anthony et al. 2017) should be fostered and encouraged. This will likely require financial backing and scientific training from national and/or international partners.
A more structured evaluation of restoration techniques and approaches being used in Indonesia could be beneficial to identify and prioritise a list of broadly standardised interventions. There is scope to increase the use of coral nurseries to produce additional coral biomass for transplantation and reduce reliance on CoPs and parent colonies on the reef. The use of a closed cycle of nursery-reared fragments following an initial collection phase is one approach that has potential for wider implementation, with these corals supplemented or replaced in certain areas by corals sourced from commercial farms.
The use of ARs relying solely on natural recruitment would benefit greatly from standardised site assessment protocols that include scientific analyses of natural larval supply and recruitment levels. The selection of groups of corals with varying ecological functions can align projects more closely with international CBP for re-establishing a fully functioning reef community.
Ongoing monitoring of restoration efforts was varied, with quantitative data collected ranging from changes in coral growth and cover to a count of the number of artificial structures installed. Data collection on the wider reef ecosystem is currently under-represented, with roughly half the projects collecting fish community data and just over one-third monitoring the benthic community and/or associated biota.
The variable quality of monitoring programmes is one of the multi-faceted challenges facing attempts to characterise the effectiveness of restoration programmes and quantify efforts on regional and national scales. Clearly defined indicators linked to specific objectives and the properties of the entire reef community, as well as appropriate timeframes, are needed (Hein et al. 2017), and monitoring programmes should abide by basic scientific principles and accurately follow standardised procedures. Large scale, long-term restoration efforts while improve understanding of restoration effectiveness in light of environmental trends and/or ecosystem-wide effects (Jokiel et al. 2004, Hein et al. 2017). Ongoing funding will be particularly important to carry out long-term ecological monitoring programmes due to the complexity and expense of systematic monitoring.
There are clear opportunities to position Indonesia at the forefront of international CBP when it comes to identifying reef degradation causes and using environmental assessments to inform reef restoration efforts. As a comparison, in their survey of restoration projects from mostly the Caribbean and Indo-Pacific regions using coral transplantation, Ferse et al. (2021) found that most projects did not conduct environmental assessments prior to transplantation, with no project reporting an assessment of coral recruitment and two-thirds of projects failing to assess the initial causes of reef degradation. The researchers further noted that a lack of monitoring standards and guidelines has impeded the measurement of social and ecological success in coral reef restoration projects.
The creation of standardised national frameworks or guidelines for a) assessing the causes of reef degradation and whether environmental conditions are conducive to restoration, b) levels of natural coral recruitment, c) climate change adaptation metrics to identify high priority restoration areas, and d) long-term reef monitoring protocols would therefore help Indonesia to position itself as a driver of reef restoration initiatives in the CT. Pooling data in a centralised database would facilitate more accurate nationwide assessments of reef restoration and help researchers and decision-makers to more effectively evolve restoration approaches and policies over time. Ferse et al. (2021) posit that consistent minimum standards of accountability and monitoring for reef restoration projects would be highly beneficial; if Indonesia can bolster existing regulations seeking to open restoration up to local communities with complementary mechanisms for improving the overall quality of the projects being created – and the potential to collate their data – it would help to achieve this aim.
Creating a national reef restoration network
The vast scale required of global reef restoration efforts will necessitate collaboration, a variety of approaches, increased capacity, and engaging new actors to assist in restoration efforts and the development of innovative technologies and approaches. In Indonesia, the establishment of a core coral reef restoration network comprising diverse restoration practitioners and decision-makers will help to facilitate knowledge-sharing and accelerate and improve the conservation and rehabilitation of degraded reefs (Fig. 8).
The initial success of the SCORES network, the strengthening of connections forged via the ICRG project, and other initiatives provide a foundation on which to base a standardised, coordinated framework for multi-dimensional, scalable reef restoration efforts. Knowledge and skills sharing, as well as a centralised training hub, can promote a concerted restoration drive based on scientific assessment and monitoring, where successes and failures can be quantified to support approaches that can be adapted in line with CBP and rapidly changing environmental conditions. The mechanisms of such a training hub would need to be worked out, but could include the creation of regional hubs delivering physical workshops, and/or the development of online materials, courses, and workshops, and knowledge-sharing sessions.
If existing networks like SCORES and the ICRG can be brought into the fold along with leading academics from Indonesian institutions and national and regional policymakers, it will lend credibility to the concept and assist with gaining buy-in from others to expand the network. Along with bringing onboard local and national government authorities, as well as companies and NGOs with a long-standing presence in the country, this would be a highly complex undertaking. If done well, however, it can increase the effectiveness, accountability, and longevity of restoration projects and facilitate increased funding opportunities for projects by creating links between restoration practitioners and the corporate sector, international and Indonesian NGOs, government agencies, and regional programmes like the CTI-CFF. This would help to ensure funding is channelled into efforts that support the restoration and protection of prioritised reefs on a national scale to maintain Indonesia’s status as a hotspot for global marine biodiversity.
There are certainly hurdles to overcome, not least of which will be the need to align potential competing interests to come to a consensus on a wide range of issues. These may include the best restoration techniques to adopt in different areas, which areas to prioritise for restoration incorporating climate change adaptation goals, the allocation of any funding secured, and what constitutes an acceptable level of scientific and administrative reporting.
A strong emphasis will need to be placed on the value of building stronger partnerships and sharing knowledge, which may at times necessitate compromises from diverse parties. The network should also provide an upliftment and training aspect: by becoming part of the network, restoration projects should be able to gain access to a pool of experts who can provide consultation, feedback, and guidance on various processes, including project administration, monitoring, reporting and community engagement.
Developing a roadmap for Indonesian coral reef restoration
Indonesian reef restoration and the legislation that supports it cover the whole spectrum of expertise levels. International coral reef restoration CBP provides a solid framework on which projects can base their project planning and design, and which can potentially be evolved to suit the specific needs of the wider and highly diverse Indonesian restoration community.
The length and complexity of the NOAA guidelines may be off-putting for some projects, especially in countries where English is not the first language. Indonesia would benefit more from a specific national roadmap for coral reef restoration, incorporating a tiered system for structuring protocols or guidelines for restoration, to make standardisation accessible to a wider range of projects within a formal network of reef restoration practitioners. This could involve using various guidelines and document templates from Shaver et al. (2020) as a starting point to develop standardised documentation and protocols at different expertise levels (e.g., “Standard”, “Expert”, and “Multi-Dimensional”). Putting checks in place to monitor the extent to which guidelines are being followed may help to improve accountability. This should include the formation and implementation of reporting requirements, the provision of feedback from a central board or other restoration network members, and the creation of procedures and channels for submitting project documentation to a central repository. This would also allow the network to identify projects in need of additional training and/or administrative assistance periodically and iteratively (Fig. 8).
Aspects of a potential reef restoration roadmap based on international CBP
1. Set goal & geographic focus: Incorporating SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timebound) goals and objectives, a standardised set of reef restoration goals can be created based on overarching national objectives (e.g., removing local stressors, restoring degraded reef ecosystems, increasing reef biodiversity, providing socio-economic benefits, and an increased focus on coral thermal resilience and natural refugia zones in areas least vulnerable to climate change).
In light of the low numbers of climate change adaptation goals quantified when setting the geographical focus of projects in Indonesia, this should an integral part of a national roadmap. It will also be important to focus on areas of ecological significance, including areas of high biodiversity, endemism, and ecological uniqueness. Priority geographical areas nationwide can be further refined based on the presence, scale, sustainability, and successes of existing restoration projects, particularly if practitioners involved are a part of the restoration network. This should be done in the context of international recommendations to consider the functionality and benefits of conducting restoration in a particular area, including identifying the greatest management challenges, the biophysical context within which these will need to be addressed, the likelihood they can be overcome, and any unique opportunities (Shaver et al. 2020).
The role of a technical advisory group recommended under international CBP could be fulfilled by the national reef restoration network for projects without access to this level of expertise. Alternatively, the network could provide additional technical support for local advisory groups to ensure that restoration standards are met.
2. Identify, prioritise & select sites: Protocols to assess restoration sites within prioritised geographical areas can follow international CBP, ensuring that site selection considers specific restoration goals, the potential to improve site condition, and short- and long-term coral survivorship (including external factors such as local stressors and resilience to climate change). Projects within the restoration network will benefit from a centralised framework for prioritising sites and an agreement on how this framework will be implemented. The use of semi-quantitative or quantitative data could be differentiated within a tiered system, depending on the level of project expertise available.
The site selection process should include identifying areas where restoration will not be conducted, within which natural recovery is possible due to the absence of local stressors and the presence of high larval supply, consolidated substrate for larval settlement, and other favourable conditions.
A template of guidelines for effective community engagement actions can be developed, along with strategies on how to best involve all project stakeholders in the early planning stages (c.f., Shaver et al. 2020). The restoration network can help projects to fulfil this brief via project reporting and expert feedback.
3. Identify, design & select interventions: Over a quarter of the projects surveyed fragmented wild colonies and almost one in 10 projects relied exclusively on wild donor colonies. Considering that under half of the projects incorporated a nursery phase to increase coral biomass production and/or sourced commercially farmed corals, these approaches can be further promoted in certain contexts to provide more broodstock for transplantation, reducing the number of corals required from healthy reef areas.
Because the science of restoration is evolving rapidly (Shaver et al 2020), knowledge and skills sharing potentially supported by a consultation process with restoration experts can help to avoid duplication of effort and reliance on trial and error selections. Overall national objectives defined by the roadmap can be considered within individual contexts to select the intervention(s) that will best marry local and national goals, while access to expert advice will increase the number of projects able to incorporate climate-smart design considerations put forward in international CBP.
4. Develop restoration action plan: Nationwide standardisation and guidance can have a major positive influence in ensuring that restoration practitioners are pulling in the same direction when developing a restoration action plan. The inclusion of a pilot phase to assess the viability of proposed interventions should be standard practice, while detailed documentation of the action plan can greatly aid projects to meet goals and potentially scale up in the future, as this plan serves as a basis for securing funding, communicating with stakeholders, building out a broader strategic plan, and putting theory into practice (Shaver et al. 2020).
Indonesia- or Indo-Pacific-centric versions of document templates proposed by Shaver et al. (2020) could be developed in line with the proposed tiered system for project planning and development to make documentation more widely accessible, whilst maintaining formal administrative standards to assist with effective project management.
There is a need for improved quantification of alternative livelihoods and local stewardship/community buy-in, while less than half of projects set goals within a contextualised timeframe. The restoration action plan will also need to ensure transparency of all decision-making processes, offering all stakeholders the opportunity to provide input and feedback for consideration when implementing restoration.
5. Implement restoration: The implementation of a formal Restoration Action Plan will be critical to standardising and scaling up reef restoration efforts. Currently, more than one in three projects have formally implemented two or fewer of the five action plan elements, while 16% have no formal action plan elements in place. As a minimum, projects should be measuring restoration efforts and defining successes and shortcomings compared to control sites, and outlining an achievable plan for ongoing community involvement to better achieve larger restoration scales, create interest in the project, and promote shared ownership. Survey responses suggest that private sector participants, in particular, should be encouraged to formalise their interactions with local communities to create partnerships in areas where they are conducting restoration. Within a tiered system, projects can iteratively increase their efficacy over the course of several years of implementation through training, support, knowledge sharing, and shared experiences (Fig. 8).
6. Monitor and evaluate progress: The evaluation of restoration progress should switch over time from short-term assessments of restoration interventions to examining reef-scale effects over longer timeframes (Shaver et al. 2020). Using the proposed tiered system of project design, local community members can potentially take part in reef monitoring programmes, while regular meetings help to keep all stakeholders abreast of progress. Within the scope of a national restoration network and roadmap, regular progress meetings should be held with those appointed to represent network members, to assist projects in meeting specific goals and objectives in line with the roadmap.
Just under one quarter of surveyed projects did not conduct quantitative reef monitoring surveys. Over one-third of projects did not quantify coral cover/growth, while almost half the projects did not collect fish community data and just under two-thirds did not collect benthic community/associated biota or coral survival data. Even more strikingly, only 4% of projects quantified coral community composition/diversity data and 11% quantified coral health/bleaching.
Differentiated assessment and monitoring protocols can be developed for projects with varying levels of expertise. At a basic level this should include standard measures of common metrics like coral cover, natural recruitment, mortality rates, bleaching incidence, fish counts, and environmental conditions like water temperature, although assessing ecological functions will also be crucial. Moving towards a multi-dimensional approach could include testing and/or monitoring of coral thermal resilience and other climate change adaptation metrics.
Feedback, recommendations and training from restoration network representatives would increase the potential for project managers to scale up their monitoring programmes over time, including how best to train and involve local community members in monitoring efforts and how to collect useful socio-economic data.