The GEF Lessons Learned and Best Practices Toolkit (GEF LL Toolkit) is the place to find information about how to design and implement coral reef management strategies. This toolkit is a "living knowledgebase" - as our knowledge of the issues surrounding coral reef management and how best to approach them improves, revisions of this information can be anticipated.

Updates will be provided on a quarterly basis to provide the latest information available on coral reef management issues. Also available online are an email listserv and a weblog space for coral reef managers to discuss their ideas and experiences.

The purpose of the GEF Lessons Learned Toolkit is to provide good practice guidelines and information resources for use by coral reef managers in developing and implementing their management activities. One of the key impediments to efficient management of coral reefs is the lack of coordination between different projects and the tendency for each new project to re-invent solutions which have been tried in other locations and from which important lessons could be applied if knowledge about these programs and their experiences was readily available. This Toolkit will compile an extremely valuable repository of knowledge and information in one place that can be browsed and searched for specific topics and/or specific locations. Unlike publications, an online repository can undergo frequent updating to reflect the current knowledge and take into account recent experiences and lessons learned.

Although the major focus of the toolkit is on lessons learned from GEF-funded coral reef projects, over 50 key non-GEF projects were reviewed and analyzed to extract lessons learned and best practice information. This makes the GEF Lessons Learned Toolkit the most comprehensive guide to best practices in coral reef management, based on the lessons learned from more than 100 major coral reef projects implemented over the past 10-15 years.

The GEF LL Toolkit is comprised of eight extensive issue streams, each of which are high priorities in coral reef management:

Project Design
Project Management
Community Participation
Partnerships & Linkages
Policy, Legislation & Enforcement
Ecosystem-based Management
Monitoring & Evaluation of Coral Reef Management
Capacity, Education & Knowledge Management