The Oak Foundation is providing CLEAR with emergency support for our coral restoration team in St Lucia during the COVID19 pandemic. This funding will allow us to provide an income to our community-based coral gardeners, many of whom come from a vulnerable fishing community in the town of Soufriere. It will also help us expand our restoration programme during this challenging time, maintaining our nurseries and outplanting activities.
The objectives of our restoration work have always been twofold: (1) to strengthen the ecological resilience of the reefs by propagating and outplanting healthy genotypes and (2) to build the socio-economic resilience of vulnerable fishing communities by providing a supplementary income and livelihood opportunity. The financing mechanism that we developed with the Sandals Foundation and GIZ in 2019 depends on the presence of tourists visiting the coral nurseries.
All tourism activities stopped in March 2020 because of the pandemic. The Sandals Foundation and Sandals Resorts International remain active partners with CLEAR and together we will relaunch our PADI Coral Nursery Diver Distinctive Speciality when tourism resumes in St Lucia.
