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MARCH 2016

@Jeff Yonover

@ Shawn Heinrichs

Understanding the current state of our oceans is the first step toward ensuring the ocean can continue to provide benefits to humans. By offering a means to both advance comprehensive ocean policy and measure future

progress, the Ocean Health Index informs decisions about how to use and protect marine ecosystems.

A healthy ocean sustainably delivers a range of benefits to people both now and in the future.

THANK YOUTHANK YOU

We gratefully acknowledge the following people and organizations for their support and instrumental partnership in making the Ocean Health Index a continued success:

Akiko Shiraki Dynner Fund for Ocean Exploration and Conservation

Global Environmental Facility

Thomas W. Haas Fund of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation

Jayne and Hans Hufschmid

Mr. Jonathan Kaplan and Ms. Marci Glazer

Betty and Gordon Moore Foundation

Oak Foundation

Dan Sten Olsson

Pacific Life Foundation

Ms. Carol L. Realini

Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Charitable Trust

Swedish Resiliency Institute

Beau and Heather Wrigley

Our contributors go above and beyond with their generous intellectual and financial support. Without these forward-thinking leaders, the Ocean Health Index would not be a reality.

© Rodolphe Holler

A special thank you to the Pacific Life Foundation, its Board of Directors, leadership, and employeesfor five years of extraordinary support as the Founding Presenting Sponsor of the Ocean Health Index.

The Pacific Life Foundation has a strong tradition of creating positive societal change through its grant making program. Your commitment is making the world a more sustainable and prosperous place.

© Rod Mast

Executive Summary 1

Highlights 3

2015 In Context 5

Results 7

Budget 17

Going Forward 19

Appendices 23

Table of Contents

2015 ANNUAL REPORT

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In 2012, the Pacific Life Foundation made a bold and lasting commitment to people and the planet as the Founding Presenting Sponsor of the Ocean Health Index. Now, in just four years, we are realizing our shared vision to create a new way to improve ocean health by raising public awareness, guiding resource management, improving policy and prioritizing scientific research. The Ocean Health Index is now on the ground on all six populated continents, in more than 28 countries and is on track for exponential growth in 2016 and beyond.

The Ocean Health Index (OHI) offers an unprecedented system for comprehensively assessing ocean health and then guiding and measuring improvement over time. By defining ocean health holistically across all sectors, the OHI process fosters and facilitates collaboration among government agencies, management authorities, scientific disciplines and concerned stakeholders, which results in increased attention, effort and resources for the marine environment.

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The Ocean Health Index measures 10 benefits of healthy oceans

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The OHI, which in October 2015 reported its fourth annual global assessment, measures how sustainably our species is managing the human-ocean ecosystem, i.e., how successfully societies gain maximum benefits from the ocean now without jeopardizing future benefits. Since opportunities toimprove the system rest mainly with individual countries, the project takes global data and results and uses them to help countries tailor the framework to their own local circumstances. At the outset, many countries rely upon the global dataset but, over time, the Index’s well-defined process helps identify available information and prioritize data collection. We are very pleased to report notable successes to date at both the global and local scales.

As a leading example, Ecuador was the first country in the world to carry out two independent assessments (also known as “OHI+ assessments”), at both the national and subnational scales. After completing a first OHI+ assessment for the Bay of Guayaquil, which hosts the highest coastal biodiversity in continental Ecuador as well as its main port and most populous and economically diverse city, Ecuador saw the great value in the framework and launched a national-scale OHI+. Multi-institutional collaboration fostered in the initial work allowed Ecuador to organize and systematize their ocean-and coastal-related data for that critically important subnational region and transform that learning to the national scale.

Now CI is working with Ecuador’s newly-created Technical Secretariat for the Sea, helping them integrate the results of their national-scale OHI+ assessment into the establishment of a new National Ocean Statistics System. The OHI+ is also being used to guide their National Ocean Health working group, part of the country’s Plan Nacional del Buen Vivir (National Plan for Good Living), which will set rigorous governance principles for fostering sustainable development, including guaranteeing the rights of nature as well as fair and equitable access to the ocean’s benefits.

In October 2015, China’s State Oceanic Administration announced the completion of their national-scale OHI+ assessment. During the initial assessment, research groups throughout the country started testing the OHI at smaller scales. As a result, the Index was directly incorporated into China’s 13th Five-Year Plan, through which it will guide development and decision making toward the government’s stated goal of fostering a Marine Ecological Civilization. Specifically, this government program will use OHI+ assessments to determine the carrying capacity, or the degree to which development can sustainably proceed, for five coastal cities in China that are home to more than 10.5 million people. Adoption of the Ocean Health Index by China was a key strategic goal for our team, and we continue to engage actively with environmental managers and scientists from across the country.

These are just two of the many stories that demonstrate how and why governments and decision makers everywhere are embracing the Ocean Health Index to help ensure for their people the sustainability of the benefits to human well-being that only a healthy ocean can provide. As we move into 2016 and beyond, we will continue to learn from and grow with our users to ensure the Ocean Health Index fosters permanent changes for healthier oceans.

by the numbersOCEAN HEALTH INDEX

21 articles, blog posts and features in 2015 in outlets such as the Huffington Post & GreenBiz and international coverage such as the Korea Observer and El Tiempo (Colombia)

28 countriesutilizing the OHI+ independentassessment framework

14 OHI+ independent assessment workshops:

Americas – 6: British Virgin Islands, Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Mexico; Asia – 3: South Korea, Japan, China; Europe – 3: Spain (Galicia & Basque Country, Andalucía), Baltic Sea; Pacific – 2: Fiji, New Caledonia

550+ workshop attendees and participants trained

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5 new high-impact partnerships and collaborations started in 2015 with the Western Indian Ocean Commission, Pacific Oceanscape and the Caribbean Large Marine Ecosystem as well as with colleague organizations The Nature Conservancy and WWF-International

2 peer-reviewed publications this year 12 peer-reviewed publications since 20122623 citations to date

7 policies influenced in China, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Israel, South Korea and the Pacific Oceanscape

23% of coastal countries using the OHI+ assessment framework

4© World Wildlife Fund, Inc. / Matthew Abbott

The evolution of the Ocean Health Index program

Initial Stage: 2008 - 2012We completed the initial stage, to develop the world’s first measure of global ocean health, from 2008-2012. Our goals then were, first, to develop the conceptual foundation and methodology for a comprehensive indicator for the health of the human-ocean ecosystem and, second, to test its applicability at smaller than global scales, i.e., regional, national and subnational. As a result, the Ocean Health Index comprehensively calculates yet simply describes how well people are gaining the benefits that only healthy oceans can provide.

Second Stage: 2012 - ongoingThe second stage, to measure and track ocean health at the scale at which decisions are made, began in 2012 and is ongoing, with the operational near-term target that by 2020 more than 50% of the world’s human population will live in countries that use the OHI to help manage their marine resources. By the end of 2015, we were approaching 39%. After accounting for the countries who are actively planning to begin OHI+ assessments in 2016, the percentage will grow to 43%. To continue on this trajectory, we are improving OHI methodology to lower the capacity required for countries to do independent assessments. In addition, we are both training regionally-based personnel and creating mechanisms whereby OHI users all over the world can learn from and support each other in order to allow for greater end user autonomy.

Third Stage: 2016 and beyondIn 2016, we will embark fully on the third stage: to drive lasting change. We will work directly with on-the-ground independent assessment teams and their partners to explore all of the ways to use the OHI to better and more holistically understand, track, and communicate the status of local marine ecosystems and to design targeted management actions to improve overall ocean health.

2015 IN CONTEXT

Our definition of success is measurably improved ocean health everywhere in the world. We achieve this success one country at a time by providing decision makers with information about the benefits gained from a healthy ocean, a state-of-the-art assessment system and technical support, policy and management advice, and guidance from a team of internationally recognized scientists and professionals.

Perhaps most importantly, the Ocean Health Index brings people together to discuss their values and perspectives on ocean benefits and to collaborate on achieving more prosperous, healthier oceans for all.

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Ocean Health Index’s project scientist Julia Lowndes and senior manager Erich Pacheco meet with the Technical Secretariat of the Sea in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

OHI senior manager Erich Pacheco facilitating an OHI+ workshop and training in Lima, Peru

Ocean Health Index factsheet produced for discussions with China’s State Oceanic Administration and with the National Marine Environmental Monitoring Center

Ocean Health Index workshop announcement - Bogotá, Colombia

Be Useful The Ocean Health Index’s work, now carried out by practitioners all over the world, improves the health of the world’s oceans by providing a comprehensive multi-sectoral process for marine and coastal management which includes: well-defined targets; the data needed to assess the status of the 10 benefits as well as the pressures and resiliencies affecting them; and an easily-communicated framework designed to call attention to areas that score poorly.

During 2015, we significantly expanded the international recognition of the Ocean Health Index as an effective means to influence policy and practice at regional, national and subnational scales worldwide. Our guiding mission is to make the Index useful for the decision makers, managers and scientists responsible for managing marine and coastal resources everywhere in the world. Success promises a win-win for people, through improved well-being, and for the ocean’s myriad non-human inhabitants, which provide the very services and benefits upon which we depend.

Aspirations

Results

v Firmly establish the Ocean Health Index as an effective framework for ocean governance both globally and at the scales at which decisions are made.

v Facilitate and amplify our outreach to and support of as many potential end-users as possible.

• In 2015, more than eight new countries and regions took the first steps in adopting the OHI, bringing the country total to 28.

• Colombia, Israel, China, and Ecuador, the first four countries to deploy the OHI independent assessment framework, demonstrated direct influence on government efforts toward integrated coastal zone management: o Colombia’s Ocean Commission is collaborating with the National Administrative Department of Statistics to institutionalize the OHI within the various agencies that gather ocean relevant information. o Israel’s OHI team established a working relationship with the National Department of Statistics to share information on ocean health and management. o China has incorporated the OHI into their 13th Five-Year Plan, which outlines their key social and economic priorities. o Ecuador is using the OHI as the framework for numerous national policies, as described in the Executive Summary.

• Specialists at CI and NCEAS guided the training of more than 500 people around the world during 14 workshops held on more than four continents.

• We developed a customizable press kit to help facilitate the generation of in-country and in-region earned media, which we us to amplify CI’s own media channels.

• We created a full suite of tools and instructional manuals to simplify and make accessible the complex, multifaceted scientific and computational underpinnings of the Ocean Health Index.

• Peru created the Multisectoral Commission for Environmental Management of the Ocean and Coastal Domain, which formally adopted the OHI to measure and track ocean health.

• South Korea’s Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries announced a plan to introduce the Ocean Health Index for systematic management of their maritime environments.

RESULTS

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2012BrazilFijiU.S. West Coast

2013ChinaColombiaIsrael

2014Baltic SeaCanadaEcuadorHawaiiNew CaledoniaPeruVenezuela

2015Arctic British ColumbiaBritish Virgin IslandsChileJapanMexicoNorthern Mozambique ChannelSouth KoreaSpain

2016Caribbean Large Marine Ecosystem (CLME)IndonesiaMadagascarPanama

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Innovate & InspireAnother important ambition of the OHI team is to be a model for and leader toward greater cross-disciplinary collaboration, which is essential for solving the complex, multidimensional environmental problems manifest in today’s world. By first helping identify knowledge gaps and then providing a framework upon which to capture and organize information from disparate fields, the Ocean Health Index uncovers insights, novel solutions and useful synergies. This breaking of old boundaries and creation of new common ground has inspired innovation in science and technology among a broad range of scientific and technological colleagues.

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Aspirations

Results

v Strengthen existing collaborations and create new partnerships, especially to assure interoperability among ecosystem management and valuation tools being used and developed by other NGOs.

v Inspire innovation within the conservation science community by continued and broad-based communication and outreach.

• The ground-breaking OHI+ online portal – www.ohi-science.org – lowers the barrier of entry to the multi-stage, OHI+ independent assessment process with a user-friendly, step-by-step, open-source toolbox and manual. This allows anyone anywhere in the world to learn, plan and conduct an OHI+ independent assessment and then guides them in using the results to inform policy and management decision making.

• OHI is further becoming a leader in the innovation of technological tools for conservation: our OHI Toolbox and ‘WebApp’ are based on software developed by RStudio, which provides open-source statistical tools. RStudio is showcasing the OHI global app on their website, alongside other cutting-edge, open-source tools for applications as wide ranging as enterprise management, genomics and epidemiology.

• OHI peer-reviewed scientific papers have been cited more than 2,500 times - clear evidence of the impact the Ocean Health Index is having on conservation science.

• The lead scientist of the data-poor fisheries working group within the Science for Nature and People multi-organizational collaboration, who was at one time a vocal critic of the OHI methodology, approached OHI scientists in 2015 to collaborate and help refine our approach as well as tailor their own work to provide critical inputs to the OHI itself.

• OHI experts were headline speakers at more than ten national and international conference presentations in 2015, including: o A TED Talk for TED’s Mission Blue series, Papua New Guinea o The First Japanese Symposium on Assessing and Fostering Ocean Health: New Paradigms on Sustainable Use o Global Health Summit: American Association for Veterinary Medicine, Boston o The Conference of the Parties to the Nairobi Convention, the Western Indian Ocean’s United Nations Environment Program’s Regional Seas Program, Republic of Seychelles o Latin American Conference of Ocean Science, Colombia o XXII Mexican National Congress on Ocean Science and Technology o New Caledonian Symposium on Frameworks to Support Ocean and Coastal Management

• CI established collaborations with other major international NGOs, including The Nature Conservancy, the Natural Capital Coalition, and the World Wildlife Fund.

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Ocean Health Index score (inside circle) and individual goal scores (colored petals and noted around the image) for global area-weighted average of all 221 reporting areas un-der national jurisdiction. The outer ring represents the maximum possible score for each goal, and a goal’s score and weight (relative contribution) are represented by the petal’s length and width, respectively. Note that for ‘food provision’ sub-goals are weighted by relative actual yield.

A Fitbit for the oceans? Taking stock of seas’ health

If Earth’s oceans were a man, he would be anemic and feverish, his arteries clogged and his blood chemistry out of whack.

If only some medicine and bed rest could cure the human impacts afflicting our seas: The ocean is warming at a faster rate than previously anticipated; overfishing is likely much worse than we thought; and by 2050, plastics in the ocean could outweigh fish. Meanwhile, the seas’ symptoms vary in intensity and location: invasive species here, habitat destruction there — and acidification everywhere.

Now, a tool recently developed by Conservation International (CI) and partners can accurately isolate the ocean’s ills — and even help prescribe a cure.

“Measuring and understanding the state of our oceans is a first step toward ensuring that they can continue to provide benefits to humans, now and into the future,” said CI’s Johanna Polsenberg, director of the Ocean Health Index (OHI), a global monitor of the state of our seas.

A partnership with the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the OHI provides an essential method for gauging ocean health, enabling its users — including governments, businesses and researchers — to zoom in on problem areas.

“With our own health, most of us have a general sense as to whether we are healthy overall or not,” Polsenberg said. “But, as we might infer from the explosion in the use of personal fitness monitoring devices, such as the Fitbit [fitness tracker], many of us want help understanding more precisely what exactly is going well and where we need to focus our attention.

“The OHI is like a Fitbit for the oceans.”

10 goals for healthy oceansJust as a fitness tracker monitors a range of your daily activities — including number of steps taken or calories burned — the OHI measures against 10 goals for a healthy ocean, such as food provision, carbon

storage or coastal livelihoods. By compiling the best available global data from multiple sources — satellites, habitat surveys, economic reports, tourism studies, U.N. fishery reports and many more — the OHI generates “scores” for 221 Exclusive Economic Zones (countries’ coastal waters) and 15 territories, including Antarctica.

A turnaround in Colombia A perfect bill of health is 100. In 2015, the OHI gave the oceans an overall global score of 70. While this score offers a snapshot of the health of the ocean as a whole, diving into the data can provide a far more revealing portrait — and spur action. The OHI’s first report card in 2012 gave Colombia a low score of 52 — citing its poor performance on coastal protection, tourism and water quality, among other categories — prompting a news outlet in the South American country to proclaim, “Colombia fails in health of its oceans.”

“The headline caused a major stir, and our office in Colombia started getting phone calls from the government first thing in the morning,’ said Sebastian Troëng, the senior vice president of CI’s Americas division. “There was a real sense of concern that our working relationship with the government agencies may have been damaged, but the challenge was turned into an opportunity to work together to improve ocean health.”

The government invited the OHI team for a debriefing. What happened after a two-hour meeting with high-level government officials and NGO representatives epitomizes the ultimate goal of the OHI. The Colombian government pledged to increase their regional score and embraced the OHI approach as a way to do so, aiming to increase the nation’s score by five points by 2018 and, to help get there, launching a “Blue Agenda” that draws on the OHI method to identify priority actions.

The country’s score in 2015 was 61, with major improvements seen in some of its problem areas. To continue improving, Colombia has now strapped on its own “fitness tracker,” taking the monitoring of its oceans into its own hands.

This article first appeared on Conservation International’s (CI) Human Nature blog, written by CI staff writer Cassandra Kane.

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Drilling down t’s all but impossible to manage ocean health at a global level, so the OHI was designed to be most effective in the hands of individual countries, at the scale where actual ocean policy is made.

Enter “OHI+.”

Using free instruction and open-source software available online, any country can conduct its own OHI+ assessment. This way, countries such as Colombia can focus on local goals — and still help advance ocean health globally — by doing their own data collection, analysis and reporting.

Over time, a clearer and more reliable picture of ocean health in specific regions will emerge, with better evidence from which countries and organizations can make policy.

“The ultimate purpose of conducting an assessment is to improve ocean health, with intermediate steps of informing decision-making and tracking changes through time,” Polsenberg said.

Local and global impactsThese assessments have earned hard-won benefits in Colombia, says Erich Pacheco, senior manager of OHI.

“In the case of Colombia, it’s been almost four years in the making: countless meetings, discussions with government officials, hours of gathering data and information, reaching out to key stakeholders and facilitating technical trainings,” he said. “It was a lengthy process, but it has already yielded tangible outcomes such as greater collaboration among sectors in Colombia that previously did not communicate much with each other.”

In addition to informing local and national policies, the OHI+ might also inspire healthy competitions between neighboring regions. Since Colombia spearheaded the OHI process in South America, Peru and Ecuador have followed suit with their own assessments. Ecuador completed an OHI+ assessment of the Gulf of Guayaquil in 2015, which the government is using to develop its National Plan for Well-being.

On the other side of the globe, China recently completed an assessment of 11 coastal provinces; the nation’s State Oceanic Administration then used the results to help inform sections of its current five-year plan. China’s OHI+ likely played a role in spurring Japan and South Korea to begin their own assessments.

On a global scale, the OHI has also been featured as a tool with the U.N. World Ocean Assessment and the Global Environment Facility’s Transboundary Water Assessment Program.

One country at a timeAs of this article’s publication, at least 28 countries are using the OHI+ framework.

By acting one country at a time, Polsenberg and her team envision that the OHI’s independent assessments will accelerate improvement in the health of the world’s oceans. “Our goal is that by 2020, countries that together are home to at least 50% of the world’s coastal population will be using the OHI,” she said.

“No one person or group or even government can do this alone,” she continued. “Not only does the OHI provide a sophisticated framework for working across sectors, it also offers a virtual gathering place around which groups and individuals working on any aspect of the 10 benefits can share and collaborate. That alone may turn out to have been our greatest accomplishment.”

12© Levi Norton

“ No one person or group or even

government can do this alone...”

Guide & InfluenceCountries all over the world are faced with what too often appears to be conflicting choices between development and conservation. As such, we have designed the Ocean Health Index to simplify comprehensive and relevant information to help guide international and national policy and investment decision making targeted toward sustainable development. During 2015, we worked with colleagues in the private sector, NGOs and academia to position the OHI as a tool to assess, manage and mitigate investment risk in order to support countries on their paths toward both sustainable development and increased environmental resilience.

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Aspirations

Results

v Establish the Ocean Health Index as the most reliable and repeatable methodology for assessing, monitoring, and managing the multi-sectoral uses and benefits of coastal and marine resources, wildlife, and habitats.

v Establish the Ocean Health Index as a meaningful contribution to the analyses of country risk used by the private sector.

• The OHI is a Founding Member of the Clinton Climate Initiative’s Blue Guardians partnership, which aims to develop sustainable island economies while increasing resilience to climate change and other large-scale environmental threats. Other founding members include: The World Bank; Esri, a leading international supplier of Geographic Information System software; and GRID-Arendal, a Norwegian government initiative in support of the United Nations Environment Programme.

• OHI’s Lead Scientist is an Expert Member of the United Nations World Oceans Assessment, identified as the global mechanism for reviewing the state of the marine environment.

• The Director of the OHI has been serving on the Steering Committee for the Global Environment Facility’s (GEF) International Waters annual conference in 2016, which will play a major role in setting GEF’s global marine agenda and funding commitments.

• OHI’s Senior Manager is on the Caribbean Large Marine Ecosystem Steering Committee to support establishment of indicators to track ecological and governance performance.

• CI presented the OHI to IPIECA, the global oil and gas industry association for environmental and social issues, which led to the beginning of a what we hope will be a long-term partnership with a major multinational integrated oil and gas company with operations in more than 75 countries.

• Initiated by our partners in Colombia, CI began planning for the first international OHI conference to be hosted there in late 2016.

• The OHI is collaborating with MIT Sloan School of Management to optimize our messaging and outreach to the private sector and international investment community.

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Some of our global partners

Communicate & Educate

From the very outset, we steadfastly vowed that the Ocean Health Index would never become just another report gathering dust on a shelf. As such, we have made communicating our goals and outcomes a priority at every step of the way. In addition, we also committed to make the OHI as broadly accessible as possible, not only for decision makers at work today but also for the younger generations and students who will soon shoulder the responsibility of caring for their planet’s precious – and limited – resources. Finally, we recognize that what we created in 2012 will have to be relevant in 2022, 2032 and beyond and have therefore always kept a focus on the future, especially in terms of ensuring the diversification of our revenue base.

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Aspirations

Results

v Allow policy makers and scientists to examine and compare elements of every score in the global Index.

v Reach broader and younger audiences.

v Ensure ongoing and sustainable funding mechanisms.

• In 2015, we completely redesigned our main website, oceanhealthindex.org. It is now state-of-the-art, with the uniquely designed “Data Explorer” that graphically presents the individual components of scores for a general audience and interfaces with the scientific portal, ohi-science.org, where all data, methodologies and publications are readily accessible to more interested policy makers and scientists.

• OHI’s lead scientist led the development of Voyage to Ocean Health, a course that will be taught by the world’s top marine scientists using the Ocean Health Index framework to help high school and college-aged students understand and re-imagine their relationship to the ocean.

• OHI was also used as the organizing framework for the college curriculum of Sea Education Association’s worldwide coastal program and incorporated into modules for the core curriculum at the College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, Maine.

• AZTI Tecnalia, a center in Spain for marine and food research technology committed to social and economic development of the fisheries, marine and food sector, is using the OHI in the Bay of Biscay to study the marine environment and natural resources in the context of sustainable development. The Campus Do Mar, a project that brings together socio-economic and marine researchers from the Galicia-Northern Portugal Euroregion, has adopted the OHI to help sustainably optimize available resources for the people living in that region.

• OHI’s communications team worked with the Aquarium of Singapore to design a display highlighting World Ocean Day.

• The OHI was included as a key tool for a $6 million coastal fisheries project in Peru and Ecuador funded by the Global Environment Facility, which is an international partnership of 183 countries, international institutions, and civil society and private sector organizations to address global environmental issues.

Ocean Health Voyage will be a course taught by the world’s top marine scientists that uses the Ocean Health Index framework to help students of high school and college age understand and re-imagine their relationship to the ocean. Ben Halpern, lead scientist for the Ocean Health Index serves as chief scientist for the project. A video trailer is available at https://vimeo.com/142902340. The course is hoping to launch by 2017 or so after funding is completed.

OHI-Science.org

OceanHealthIndex.org

Voyage to Ocean Health

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BUDGET

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY & MANAGEMENT

PersonnelTravelOffice costsNCEAS - key partner funding CI field implementation and personnel

Subtotal

463,48150,00057,000

323,124155,500

$1,049,105

446,90050,00064,490

333,259120,000

$1,014,649

FY16 BudgetFY16

Projections

OUTREACH & COMMUNICATIONS

Website and social media maintenanceWebsite re-design and updateMarketing materials and printingRegional assessment trainings and workshops

Subtotal

FY15 Actual

545,61670,56268,040

330,00152,500

$1,066,719

44,090 174,987

9,4107,601

$236,088

19,00084,0006,500

38,581

$148,081

17,42184,0004,609

32,048

$138,078

IDC 252,353 231,895 223,283

TOTAL $1,555,161 $1,429,081 $1,376,010

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8%0%

29%17%

4%0%

-13%-3% 23%

FY16 Projected Variances

3.7%

Explanation of variances (greater than 10%)

• Office costs will be higher than expected because we hired a full-time intern for 2016.

• CI field implementation and personnel costs are expected to be lower than budgeted due to delays in hiring. However, since increasing the number of staff in the field is a key goal for 2016, all of those funds will remain dedicated to doing so.

• We are spending less than planned on Marketing materials and printing as we place more emphasis and effort on conveying as much information as possible online.

• There has been a steady decrease in the amount we need to spend on Regional assessment training and workshops since we started making more training and preparatory materials accessible online.

Notes

• FY15 Actual include expenses from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015.

• FY16 Projections include projected expenses for the fiscal year, July 1, 2015 - June 30, 2016.

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GOING FORWARD

When we launched the Ocean Health Index in 2012, we strongly believed that the results of the transparent, comparable, and target-driven quantitative assessments would provide great value to ocean management at all scales and that those key characteristics would eventually make the Index an important tool for decision making. At that time, however, we never thought we would be able to demonstrate that in fewer than four years. While we mark 2015 as the year we passed the proof of concept, we also found out this year that we were partially wrong at the beginning ... but in a wonderful way.

Creating common groundAround the start of 2015, after having gained practical experience in more than 20 countries, the OHI team and our partners began to recognize that the scientific results of the assessments, while important, were almost secondary to the collaborations and partnerships we began to see emerging from conducting the assessments. This taught us that OHI is not just a tool to be put down after a task is finished, but a process whose outcomes are continuous, growing and lasting.

The process of conducting an OHI+ independent assessment brings together disparate groups of decision makers and stakeholders in a very structured way to explore perhaps the most unstructured and intractable driver of environmental problems: how to break down the institutional silos that prevent effectively balancing sustainability with continued economic and infrastructural development. So, while at its core the Index remains a very sophisticated data repository and analytical method using both state-of-the art technology and the best available science, in 2016, our team will place greater emphasis on capturing and optimizing the less tangible but highly productive outcomes generated during the uniquely collaborative process of carrying out an independent OHI+ assessment.

Lowering barriers to adoption and increasing capacity In 2016, we will continue to focus on lowering the barriers to adoption of the Ocean Health Index and also on preventing the capacity limits of the core team from bottlenecking the expanding adoption and use of independent assessments worldwide. To do so, we will further advance the supporting technology and establish both personnel and virtual networks.

Key technological improvements will include: developing tools to help automatize the preparation of data layers for use in independent assessments; improving the architecture of the data repositories; and creating and distributing customizable web application-based templates both to showcase results from independent OHI assessments and, most importantly, to help institutionalize the OHI within the regular competencies and processes of various agencies within a given government.

As of 2015, we currently have eight full- or part-time CI-based OHI practitioners in the field. In 2016, we will further strengthen this personnel network by creating a regional hub structure. By placing highly-trained OHI specialists in regionally-based offices that are more embedded in the cultural context of the end users, we will be better able to guide and support national and subnational processes. We are currently hiring managers for the Pacific Islands and Western Indian Ocean regions and hope to soon add regional capacity in Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.

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Further, we are developing user-friendly tools to empower resource managers and decision makers. In particular, we are aiming toward a Wiki model in which users help develop content and tools and share lessons learned and optimization strategies. In addition, by systematizing feedback and input from users, the core team can be more responsive to designing and optimizing systems to address emerging management or technical problems.

Nurturing the seeds that have already sprouted As previously noted, much of our energy over the past few years has been focused on introducing more and more governments and other end users all over the world to the Ocean Health Index. While that work continues apace, we also know that we must grow with our users to better help them transform the results of OHI assessments into permanent changes for healthier oceans. Successes in Colombia, China, Israel and other early adopter countries, where the OHI has supported policy changes that systematize and institutionalize the concept of ocean health into governance structures, provide both strong motivation and solid lessons.

Governments must constantly evaluate the opportunity costs and trade-offs from different management actions, so better tools for developing and testing realistic management scenarios will be a key contribution. We know that the more efficient – and easier – it is for decision makers to evaluate potential actions, the more effective their decisions will be. Helping them use the OHI for those purposes will increase their success—and ours. We know that conducting technically-sound and scientifically-rigorous assessments achieves a lot, but science can only produce meaningful long-term change when it is nested within systems that want the information and can absorb and translate it into actions.

Finally, we are committed to helping countries meet their obligations under global treaties, such as the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity. To do so, we are incorporating specific insights related to these international treaties into the OHI+ assessment phases, which helps both create the enabling environment for adhering to these treaties and simplifies the reporting required across the various multilateral environmental agreements.

“...the Ocean Health Index has gone from being an initiative to an active tool to systematically monitor oceans and

the sustainability of coastal development. ”Admiral Juan Manuel Soltau

Executive Secretary of the Colombian Ocean Commission

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Achieving financial sustainability From the very start, we made a commitment that the Ocean Health Index would be a living management system--an adaptable framework with a tailored process for driving ocean improvement at all scales and levels. One major aspect of honoring that commitment is by planning now for long-term financial sustainability.

The arch of the OHI program has progressed from initial theory through proof of concept. We are now focused on optimizing the process and framework for OHI+ assessments as well as lowering the bar for country adoption. Ultimately, we aim to transition from supporting individual OHI+ assessments toward institutionalizing the Ocean Health Index system within central governments and major cross-sectoral agencies. Early successes in countries such as Peru, China and Ecuador are very encouraging yet our experience has shown us that there is no single path to institutionalization and no one way that will work in every country or situation. In order to support the institutionalization of the OHI into as many systems of governance as possible, we have to ensure the stability of our core team over the next decade or more. For us, long-term financial sustainability means having the ability to fund the core operational activities within CI and provide support for key partners, such as NCEAS, over that period.

During 2015, grants to the Ocean Health Index core program for research, development and operational costs at both CI and NCEAS were leveraged nearly 1:5 with money spent directly on OHI+ management efforts led by government agencies and more than 1:2 on OHI research programs conducted primarily by academic institutions. As our team becomes more experienced and the OHI becomes more recognized as an important tool for governance, we anticipate that our core funding will be increasingly leveraged with funding directed primarily toward in-country implementation, further amplifying our effectiveness and reach.

On the ground, governments are increasingly allocating their own resources to support their OHI+ independent assessments. Other funding for in-country implementation has so far come from: private philanthropy; the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), which is the world’s largest multinational funder of global environmental projects; and the private sector. As mentioned earlier, our engagements with the GEF and the private sector are strengthening, and we believe there is a significant chance to increase funding from both of these sources, primarily for the expansion in the on-the-ground work of OHI end users and partners but also for some core operational costs. In addition, the core team is becoming more well-positioned to help our end users compete for funding from other multinational funders, such as the European Union and the United Nations. OHI’s successes have also come to the attention of major bilateral funders, such as Germany and Korea. For example, in December 2015, CI participated in an invitation-only round-table on global marine conservation sponsored by the German government. We presented the Ocean Health Index as a key solution for the issues and regions of greatest interest to the German cooperation agencies focused on sustainable development. The Korean Maritime Institute is poised to not only use OHI for domestic management but also to encourage ASEAN countries, particularly those that are recipients of Korean foreign aid, to use the OHI to improve their ocean management.

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IN-KINDCOUNTRY

INVESTMENT

PRIVATEPHILANTHROPY

MULTILATERALGRANTS

BILATERAL GRANTS

2015 2020

PRIVATE SECTORPARTNERSHIPS

IN-KINDCOUNTRY

INVESTMENT

MULTILATERALGRANTS

PRIVATEPHILANTHROPY

PRIVATE SECTORPARTNERSHIPS

Through the ongoing development of cutting-edge virtual tools, our core program, i.e., the staff and the operational expenses at both CI and our primary partner NCEAS, has reached a steady state while managing to continuously increase individual performance and productivity. Therefore, all of our programmatic growth will be via increases in the number of OHI+ end users and the establishment of the regional hub structure described earlier. We believe we have shown a strong and precocious ability to diversify our revenue sources. As countries increasingly take ownership and financial responsibility of their OHI processes, we confidently project that over the next four years we will diversify our funding base and significantly diminish our reliance on philanthropic contributions while still growing the reach and impact of the OHI.

CORE FUNDING

APPENDIX AGlobal Ocean Health Index: Overall Results for 2015

What is the overall score for EEZ regions in 2015? The overall score, 70 is unchanged from 2014 and 2013, though improved by one point since 2012. It is not likely that a one point score difference is statistically significant. Studies are underway to quantify the uncertainty associated with scores. Though not as bad as it could be, the score of 70 remains far from 100, sending a strong message that marine life would fare better and we would gain more benefits if we used the ocean in more sustainable ways.

Is this score comparable with scores for previous years? Yes. Directly comparable scores for countries and territories for the years 2012-2015 are shown below.

Have any goal scores improved over the years? Most scores have not changed much from 2012-2015. An up-tick in the score for Livelihoods & Economies between 2012 and 2013 may reflect the beginning of marine sector economic recovery from the recession that began in 2008. Slight increases also occurred for the Mariculture subgoal of Food Provision and for Tourism & Recreation. Rapid change in year-to-year global level scores is not expected, since change in most conditions usually cannot take place that quickly.

What is the range for goal scores in 2015? All Ocean Health Index scores are expressed on a scale of 0 to 100. Global (EEZ) averages and ranges of scores for all goals are shown in the second table to the right.

Please go to oceanhealthindex.org/region-scores for a more complete description of the global scores and methodology from 2012 through 2015.

This summary includes results for the coastlines and Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of 221 countries and territories that were also scored in 2012-2014. Assessments for the High Seas and the Antarctica region were done in 2014 and will be repeated periodically, but were not done in 2015. The 2015 study used improved methods and new data described at ohi-science.org.

In addition to many small improvements to data quality control and goal score calculations, important changes were made to the Carbon Storage and Coastal Protection goal models. New scores were not produced for the Fisheries subgoal of Food Provision; and for the Livelihoods & Economies goal. Explanations are included below with results for those goals.

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SCORE AVG LOW HIGH

INDEX

FOOD PROVISION

OPPORTUNITIES FOR ARTISANAL FISHING

FisheriesMariculture

NATURAL PRODUCTSCARBON STORAGE

COASTAL PROTECTION

TOURISM & RECREATION

LIVELIHOODS & ECONOMIESLivelihoodsEconomies

SENSE OF PLACE

Iconic Species

Lasting Special Places

CLEAN WATERS

70 43 92

58 1 9859 1 98

68 42 10052

790 100

87

10

24

100

59

100

50 0 10082 3 10077 0 10088 0 100

0 100

58 31 88

60 0 100

74 20 100

27 0 100

BIODIVERSITY 88 69 97SpeciesHabitats

86 77 9791 54 100

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Overall scores Overall scores ranged from 43 (Libya) to 92 (Prince Edward Islands). The only other country to score 90 or above was Howland Island and Baker Island (90).

Highest scores As in previous years, remote uninhabited islands scored highest, showing that despite the Ocean Health Index’s emphasis on benefits to people, relatively pristine locations can still score very high. Highest scores were for: Prince Edward Islands (92), Howland Island and Baker Island (90), Macquarie Island (87), Heard and McDonald Islands (87) and Phoenix Group (86). Two French island territories, Northern Saint-Martin (86) (population 38,000) and New Caledonia (85) (population 269,000), scored highest for populated areas.

Lowest scores Ten countries scored 50 or below: North Korea and Lebanon (both 50); Liberia and Nicaragua (both 48); Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Democratic Republic of the Congo (all 47); Dominica (46) and Libya (43). By comparison, 20 countries scored 50 or below in 2014. As in previous years when some of these same countries were among the lowest scoring areas, all are poor and many have a recent history of conflict, dictatorship or natural disasters. Such conditions deplete the capacity to institute resilience actions that could reduce social and environmental pressures. Until those conditions are overcome, rapid increase in scores of such regions is not likely.

Please go to oceanhealthindex.org/region-scores/key-findings for a full description of the Key Findings and Score Highlights for 2015.

Country & Territory Scores for 2015

APPENDIX B

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Halpern et al. (2008) A global map of human impact on marine ecosystems. Science.2274 citations

Samhouri et al. (2012) Sea sick? Setting targets to assess ocean health and ecosystem services. Ecosphere 35 citations

Halpern et al. (2012) An index to assess the health and benefits of the global ocean. Nature.263 citations

Selig et al. (2013) Assessing global marine biodiversity status within a coupled socio-ecological perspective. PloS ONE. *3 citations; 3100+ views (as of 26 February 2016)

Halpern et al. (2013) Elicited preferences for components of ocean health in the California Current. Marine Policy.8 citations

Kleisner et al. (2013) Exploring patterns of seafood provision revealed in the global Ocean Health Index.Ambio.10 citations

Jacobsen, K. Lester, S. Halpern, B. (2014) A global synthesis of the economic multiplier effects of marine sectors. Marine Policy.3 citations

Elfes et al (2014) A regional-scale Ocean Health Index for Brazil. PloS ONE. *16 citations; 4,050 views (from 2 April 2014 - 26 February 2016)

Halpern et al. (2014) Assessing the health of the US West coast with a regional-scale application of the Ocean Health Index. PloS ONE. *8 citations; 3,204 views (from 18 June 2014 – 26 February 2016)

Halpern et al (2015) Patterns and emerging trends in global ocean health. PloS ONE. *7 citations; 4,055 views (from 16 March 2015 – 26 February 2016)

Selig et al. (2015) Measuring Indicators of ocean health for an island nation: the Ocean Health Index for Fiji. Ecosystem Services.2 citations

Lowndes et al. (2015) Best practices for assessing ocean health in multiple contexts using tailorable frameworks. PeerJ. *139 downloads; 896 views (from 10 December 2015 – 26 February 2016)

Total Publication Citations

* depicts an open-access journal or publication group that makes peer-reviewed scientific articles freely available to the public. As such, we have begun to favor these outlets and feel that metrics such as the number of views provide an early and strong indication of the impact of a given publication.

APPENDIX C

26

2015 Publications

APPENDIX D

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28

New Websites Launchedwww.oceanhealthindex.org

APPENDIX E

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www.ohi-science.org

30

Ocean Health Index Team

The Ocean Health Index team develops novel scientific methods, communicates assessment results to governments, marine managers, scientists and the public, and collaborates with partners around the world on the continued development of the Ocean Health Index. Ben Halpern and Steve Katona have been with the project since research began in 2008.

Conservation International (CI)

National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)

APPENDIX F

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In Colombia, the Ocean Health Index has gone from being an initiative to an active tool to systematically monitor oceans and the sustainability of coastal development. The adaptation of OHI in Colombia will facilitate the inter-agency coordination of management required by each of the regions (Pacific, Atlantic, Caribbean Islands). Through the leadership of the Colombian Ocean Commission (COC) and the support of Conservation International, the OHI process has managed to integrate more than 60 national and regional stakeholders from both the public and private sectors.

The main achievement/highlights of this collaboration include/are:

Institutional PolicyThe National Policy for the Ocean and Coastal Areas (NPOCA) is an instrument with an integrated vision, which aims to promote sustainable development of marine resources while considering the maritime interests of the nation. In this context, OHI supports information management (from generation, updating, and unbundling), and it is integrated with sector-specific information systems such as fishing, tourism, environment, etc. Similarly, OHI facilitates liaising with the various sectoral policies in order to support institutional plans.

Information ManagementColombia has made progress identifying the state of the different ocean information systems, in order to gather available information for the OHI. The framework has also facilitated collaborations with the actors responsible for such systems, supporting systematic improvements and making information easily available to various users.

By gathering data and indicators for the development of OHI, Colombia has made progress in defining the data layers through collaborations with various institutions, from management to technical levels. This analysis provided valuable information about the scale and reporting frequency of data for each of the three regions involved, as well as revealed opportunities for optimizing information in each sector and coordinating with national and regional information centers.

Moreover, Colombia has made progress in statistical planning through a newly-established technical process that defines, organizes, and prioritizes statistical

information, according to the OHI. Facilitating the timely and reliable use of such information allows policymakers to improve the process of decision making.

Intervention ActionsUnder the same coordinated inter-agency working scheme, Colombia has made progress in establishing intervention actions necessary to improve ocean health by leaning toward increasing the resilience of the natural and human systems, as well as decreasing pressures. These actions are being designed under the NPOCA and its alignment with various sector-specific policy action plans.

International CooperationThe COC shares its efforts with an international community with the aim of strengthening ties/collaboration both regionally and globally. This is done through a continuous exchange of experiences on managing ocean health, consultations about alignment of conservation strategies, sustainable use of shared marine resources, international cooperation, and adherence to the principles and norms of international environmental agreements ratified by Colombia. These efforts have resulted in collaborations with UNESCO, the International Oceanographic Commission, the Caribbean International Oceanographic Commission, and the Permanent Commission of the Southeast Pacific (CPPS) as well as bilateral partnerships with other countries (Ecuador, Peru, Panama, Brazil) that favor attaining a healthy marine environment by working through programs and initiatives aligned with international development efforts.

Through these efforts, Colombia renews its commitment to ensuring the responsible use of ocean and coastal resources, promoting human well-being and fostering sustainable development.

A Letter from the Executive Secretary of the Colombian Ocean Commission

Admiral Juan Manuel SoltauExecutive Secretary of the Colombian Ocean Commission

APPENDIX G

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(translated from Spanish by OHI Senior Manager Erich Pacheco)

www.oceanhealthindex.org