In August 2025, two affiliates of the Centre for Communication for Social Change (CfCSC) presented their experiences in “Designing engagement for coral reef rescue”. CfCSC Director, Associate Professor Elske van de Fliert, and Dr Skye Doherty, the Centre’s Theme Leader for Advocacy and the Public Good, told attendees at the SCA Research Seminar about their role in the GEF7 Coral Reef Rescue (CRR): Resilient Coral Reefs, Resilient Communities Project – a US$7 million initiative funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The CRR initiative is implemented by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and executed by UQ International Development (UQID).
This project in fact builds on an earlier analysis led by The University of Queensland. That research identified resilient coral reef networks which are less exposed to global-heating impacts because of local currents and upwelling. About 70% of these reefs are concentrated in 7 developing countries: Cuba, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Indonesia, Philippines, Madagascar and Tanzania. To maintain and protect these reefs, the Coral Reef Rescue Initiative (CRRI) was formed. It brings together national governments, NGOs, scientists and influential partners to establish working groups for long-term change.
The Centre’s role in this initiative is to bring one of its strengths into play: facilitating meaningful engagement with stakeholders to advance goals of community development, sustainable futures and social change. A/Prof van de Fliert and Dr Doherty were tasked with running co-design workshops to help CRR project teams in 5 of the target countries to develop a National Hub Communication and Engagement Strategy. They facilitated three in-person, 3-day workshops in the first half of 2025. Each workshop hosted 5–8 members of each national team, held in Bogor for the Indonesian team, in Suva for teams from Fiji and the Solomon Islands, and in Dar es Salaam for those from Tanzania and Madagascar.
The two scholars stepped the audience through their workshop design and outcomes. Day 1 was presented by A/Prof van de Fliert as an introduction to key elements of Communication for Social Change (CSC): participatory stakeholder analysis, dialogic engagement rather than one-way communication, and key components of a two-way communication strategy. Day 2 saw Dr Doherty implement her design-led approach to guide participants to consider reef futures they wanted to see, and how they could frame interventions and communicate with “characters” within their stakeholder groups to bring about those futures. The third day allowed both facilitators to guide participants to prepare timelines, communication strategies and draft workplans.
The fact that the events were held in-person allowed genuine sharing and collaboration between participants from different countries and professional fields, strengthening their skill base and networks. Dr Doherty commented how vital it was to learn local, contextual information when developing meaningful solutions. Attendees from the Solomon Islands, for example, spoke of buildings being made from coral – an issue directly linked to the CRR project, but which traced its roots to a desire for children to have safe places to go to school. A/Prof van de Fliert highlighted that even the communication professionals who attended discovered a totally new branch of communication in Communication for Social Change, allowing them to better connect the marine scientists, policymakers and communities within the project activities. Follow-up support and online workshops with the country teams will be made available later in 2025.
This workshop series highlights CSC’s collaborative potential. Not only was effective work conducted by UQID with the Centre’s support, but the events themselves allowed transdisciplinary cross-pollination and effective connections between governments, researchers, practitioners and NGOs. Approaches such as this can be leveraged to address wicked problems of global importance, like the health and future of coral reefs in times of worsening climate crisis.
