Polycentric coastal and ocean management in the Caribbean Sea Large Marine Ecosystem: harnessing community-based actions to implement regional frameworks

• Coastal and ocean management requires a polycentric approach.
• SIDS environmental protection actions should be locally driven and regionally coordinated.
• There exist successful innovative local solutions in the Caribbean for upscaling.

Over the past several decades, Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have successfully forged a coalition among themselves, and make a strong case for special considerations for their development needs at global level. The unique characteristics of SIDS require environmental protection actions to be local, contextual and small scale under the coordination of regional strategic frameworks, if the overall effort is to be relevant and effective. The article examines the environmental challenges in the Caribbean islands, and discusses the regional inter-governmental approach vis-a-vis community-based local solutions. The paper considers either of these two approaches alone as inadequate, and advocates a polycentric governance approach that focuses on a nested, coordinated and linked set of local actions in the implementation of coherent regional frameworks. The paper draws its findings from community-based experiences of projects in the Caribbean islands supported by the GEF Small Grants Program (SGP) which is implemented by UNDP as a mechanism to undertake a "local action, global impact" approach to achieve sustainable development. The paper presents three examples of local actions in the Caribbean Sea LME region that should be replicated to achieve high local ownership and sustainability, and through linkages with other partners and entities, to generate scaled-up impacts. To ensure the coherence of local actions and their effectiveness in addressing regional issues, the paper advocates strengthened collaboration between programs such as that of the GEF SGP with those that develop and implement regional initiatives and frameworks.