Panorama actual

In order to allow informed planning of reef rehabilitation projects, it is necessary to have estimates of personnel, equipment and consumables needed to implement and monitor a particular type of project. The nature of reef rehabilitation means that, in most projects, boats and SCUBA diving are likely to be involved. Both can entail considerable expenditure; thus in the example costings we

present below, the numbers of boat-days and numbers of tanks of air for diving are central to estimating the required inputs. To allow a monetary cost per transplant to be calculated and compared, we have used various

assumptions on local wage rates and expressed the results in US dollars to standardise.

Scaling up costs based on specific times required to perform particular tasks underwater can be misleading

because all the peripheral activities (e.g. preparation of equipment, loading of boats, travel time to and from sites, etc.) tend to be overlooked. As an example, in one case-study featured in Chapter 8, the total time actually spent on a set of tasks was ~170 person-days (based on a 5-day week). However, using the stated times to undertake the activities (preparation of colonies for transplantation at 10 per hour assuming 6-hour working days, transplantation at 30 per hour assuming 4-hours diving per day), the tasks should have taken no more than 25 person-days. Even if one allows that half of the time spent was related to scientific documentation of the project, the tasks still took over 3 times as long as predicted from the deconstructed rates for individual focused activities. A manager who planned a restoration project based on the highly optimistic estimate of 25 person-days for these tasks would be justifiably upset if they actually took 85 person-days or longer. Underestimating costs benefits nobody and ultimately is likely to jeopardise projects by promoting adoption of unrealistic budgets.

Costing effort

Wage rates differ dramatically between countries so actual costs of employing people to do certain tasks are not readily transferable between projects. However, the time (person-hours) taken to do specific tasks is likely to be approximately the same from place to place. If you know how long it will take to carry out a task, then you can cost it based on local wage rates (or availability of volunteer labour). To allow comparisons between projects you need to standardise how you calculate time inputs. Table 7.1 provides one way of doing this so that, for example, one project’s person-month is equivalent to another’s. For example, just because one person on your project works 12 hours a day and seven days a week (i.e. 84 hours a week), does not mean that his/her working-week output can be emulated by everyone else, thus using that person as the basis for a person-week will be misleading to others planning projects; hence the need for some form of standardisation.

For different tasks, people with different skill levels may be needed and in some examples presented in this chapter we have divided person-hours between three skill levels. When planning a rehabilitation project the local wage rate for each skill level can be inserted to derive estimates of local personnel costs. 1 11 1 44 4 1 220 20 5 1 1760 160 40 8 Person-years Person-months Person-weeks Person-days Person-hours

Separating set-up costs and operational (running) costs

Operational or running costs are perhaps more important from the point of view of the sustainability of restoration associated activities than set-up costs, because the latter can often be financed from outside sources as one-off donations, whereas ongoing funding is harder to obtain. Thus set-up costs need to be separated from running costs. Also, equipment and facilities created as part of setting up a project may have a life of three to five years or more, if maintained properly. Thus their costs may need to be treated separately when evaluating cost-effectiveness (e.g. spread or pro-rated over several years). The costs of materials needed to construct a coral nursery would clearly be classed as set-up costs.

If you will need to use SCUBA to collect corals or build and maintain a coral nursery, then you need to make sure that this is understood by stakeholders. You can either cost in the equipment needed for a SCUBA set up (compressor, tanks, etc.) and training (if required), or the estimated cost of necessary tank hire, air, etc. if purchased at local market rates (assuming, of course, that hiring is an option at your location). Since hire costs are likely to vary greatly from place to place, we suggest estimating needs in terms of numbers of air tanks, etc. needed for identified tasks involved in nursery set-up or maintenance, or in

transplantation. The critical thing is to identify all necessary tasks and what equipment and consumables (and level of training) are required for these.

Boat time (or need for boat trips) is a particular issue. When choosing sites for transplantation or nurseries you need to bear in mind the financial implications. If nurseries are offshore then considerable boat costs are likely. If nurseries are more than about 2–3 m deep then it is likely that SCUBA will be needed for maintenance activities (see Chapter 4, section 4.5). Boats dedicated to the restoration project need to either be hired or bought and fuel will be a key operational cost if boat travel is over a significant distance (unless sails are used). Depending on how the boat is to be utilised it will need to have certain

characteristics (deck space, etc). These need to be made clear so practitioners can cost appropriately for their local situation.

The most useful approach to guide other practitioners is to provide a breakdown of cost-items with example rates and costings from a real example.

7

Breaking down costs

To aid in (1) identifying cost-items, (2) estimating costs at each stage of a rehabilitation project and (3) calculating costs in a way that is useful for others, we have broken down the process into six stages. Not all stages may be appropriate for every project, thus for example, for a small project where no nursery rearing was anticipated you would omit stages 2–4. For each stage we pose a series of questions which you need to answer in estimating (if at the planning stage) or evaluating costs (if trying to assess cost-effectiveness). There are additional questions relating to planning and cost-effectiveness, that you should also consider. Previous chapters and the worked examples provided below should give some guidance as to our experience of the time (person-hours) required to perform various tasks.

For a rehabilitation project, costs might be broken down as follows:

1. Collection of source material(corals of opportunity, fragments from donor colonies, mature colonies/ colony-segments about to spawn, spawning slicks).

• How many person-hours are required to collect x corals of opportunity, x fragments from donor colonies,

x mature colonies/colony-segments about to spawn,

an amount of spawning slick necessary to generate x competent embryos, etc.?

• What is approximate cost (US$) of any equipment needed for collecting and holding the coral source material? [This cost needs to be expressed per amount of material so that costs can be scaled.]

Good Practice Checklist

Try to break down your costs in a way that will be helpful to others.

Try to cost all inputs to a project, even if some are “free” in your project.

Express labour costs as person-hours (or person-day/week/month/year multiples) taken to accomplish each defined task, so that they can be converted to any currency using local wage rates.

Separate capital/set-up/one-off costs from operational running costs so that these can be spread over a number of years (amortised/pro-rated) if appropriate.

Express diving needs in terms of estimated number of air-tanks required to accomplish each task.

Express boat needs in terms of number of days of boat support required to accomplish each task.

• Is SCUBA needed or can work be done efficiently using snorkelling?

• Is boat transport needed? (What primarily determines need? Can this be minimised?)

• Which factors are likely to contribute most to costs (in terms of both time and money)? [For example, costs will depend on location (e.g. distance of donor sites from nursery or restoration sites) and local costs of purchasing or renting a boat and scuba equipment.]

2. Setting up coral culture/nursery/hatchery facilities(in situ or ex situ nurseries, tanks, etc.)

If only a very small area (e.g. 100s m2_{or less) is being}

rehabilitated and direct transplantation of fragments is proposed, or corals are being translocated from a site threatened by development (e.g. construction or dredging) to a safer site, then material may just be held temporarily in the field, but there may be some equipment/consumable/ person-hour costs associated with this.

• What are costs of equipment/consumables/staff time (person-hours) to set up nurseries/tanks? [These costs need to be expressed per amount of material which facilities can handle (e.g. per 1000 or 10,000 fragments/nubbins or per 10,000 or 100,000 newly settled coral spat) so that costs can be scaled to size of operation planned.]

• How long are these facilities likely to last and what annual inputs (on average) are likely to be required to keep facilities functional and in a good state of repair? [If a facility will last for 5 years, then costs can be spread over 5 years.]

3. Establishing collected coral material in culture/nurseries. • What are time and consumable costs involved in

setting up x amount of coral material (e.g. 1000 fragments or 100,000 settled coral spat) in culture? [For asexual fragments, this might include plastic pins/wall-plugs/hose-pipe/other rearing substrates, glue, cutters, etc. and person-hours to set up x amount of coral in an in situ nursery.]

4. Maintenance of corals in culture.

• What maintenance activities are required to ensure good survival of corals?

• How many person-hours are required per month/year/ culture cycle to maintain material?

• What are consumable/equipment/boat/SCUBA costs involved?

• What is likely outcome if no maintenance is carried out? Is some basic level of maintenance mandatory to avoid high mortality; are some activities discretionary (i.e. their cost-effectiveness is marginal)?

5. Transfer of corals from culture/nursery/farm or source reef and attachment at the rehabilitation site.

• How many person-hours are required per x amount of material to transfer cultured/farmed/collected corals from nursery site or source reef to the rehabilitation site?

• What are consumable/equipment/boat/SCUBA costs per x amount of material?

• What factors primarily determine these costs? (e.g. distance to restoration site)

6. Maintenance and monitoring of transplants at the rehabilitation site.

• What maintenance activities and at what frequency are recommended to enhance survival of transplants? [What types of maintenance are likely to be most cost-effective? How does need for maintenance vary with environmental conditions (e.g. water quality, herbivory)?]

• How many person-hours are needed for these activities per unit area restored?

• What are likely associated consumable/boat/SCUBA costs?

Monitoring is needed both to evaluate the success/failure of your project (Chapter 2) and to allow adaptive management if things do not go according to plan (Chapter 3). More elaborate forms of monitoring are largely scientific exercises which should be separated from maintenance in costing. Maintenance contributes directly to the success of restoration and necessarily involves an element of basic “monitoring” to allow adaptive management (e.g. survival of

transplants, % coral cover, presence of disease, presence of predators such as Crown-of-thorns starfish). However, more detailed scientific monitoring such as measurement of individual coral colony growth, although highly

recommended, can be regarded as a separate overhead. It does not contribute directly to restoration success although it may ultimately contribute to a better understanding of reef recovery processes and thus better adaptive management of restoration projects.

• What monitoring is needed (frequency and type of monitoring) to allow (a) adaptive management (in the event that problems arise) and (b) evaluation of your reef restoration project?

• For how long does monitoring need to be carried out post-transplantation? [This will depend on the aims and objectives and the criteria adopted for evaluating the success of the project (Chapter 2).]

• What are likely costs in person-hours, boat, SCUBA, consumables per year to achieve this for x area of rehabilitated reef?

We now attempt to apply our 6-step procedure to a few experimental trials of reef restoration techniques with a focus on comparing the cost-effectiveness of different methods and identifying which stages are most costly.

7.3 Cost-analysis of an example reef rehabilitation