Fig. 2: Social intervention areas in ocean sustainability initiatives.

Working with the social intervention areas (left) can increase the social benefits and help avoid the harms of ocean sustainability initiatives (right). There are four phases of project collaboration where working with the social intervention areas can improve the likelihood of benefits: (1) Intention, (2) Design, (3) Implementation, and (4) Evaluation. Early social area integration into projects (i.e., Intention, Design) offers the deepest potential for more benefits. Leveraging opportunities at later project stages (i.e., Implementation, Evaluation) offers important reflection, learning and testing of collaborative engagement.