Climate-Resilient Reefs Learning Exchange – Virtual, 2025

Map of countries and territories reached with RRN training

In early November 2025, 18 staff members from local The Nature Conservancy and Yayasan Konservasi Alam Nusantara offices in Belize, Hawai’i, Indonesia, Palau, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands met for a series of virtual meetings, facilitated by the Reef Resilience Network, to share successes and lessons learned from the  Climate Resilient Reefs projects they have been conducting since 2023. 

Participants from Belize, Hawai’i, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands were part of the Super Reefs collaboration with Stanford University and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Palau and Indonesia used different partners and approaches for the modeling part of the project. All five sites followed a similar predict-prove-protect framework for modeling the potential location of climate-resilient coral species in their areas (predict), using land-based experiments on samples from those reefs to gauge their thermal tolerance (prove), and then taking that information to local communities, governments, and organizational partners to prioritize protection of these critical, resilient reefs (protect). 

The main topics covered were: 

  • Lessons learned from these pilot sites 
  • The integration of the results in policy and management 
  • The importance of community engagement and capacity strengthening 
  • Using thermal tolerance information for Climate-Smart restoration planning 
  • The importance of validating thermal tests 
  • Next steps for building on this work 

Attendees left the exchange with a stronger sense for how similar processes were implemented in different regions and contexts, ideas for how to advance their own work, and valuable connections to other practitioners in this evolving field of work. 

This learning exchange was funded through The Nature Conservancy’s Super Reefs project.