Developing a regional-scale reef restoration activity for the tropics

Participation in the activity of coral reef restoration is growing globally. This is in response to the ongoing loss of corals occurring as a result of warming oceans and local stressors, often from changes to land-uses in reef catchments. Concurrently, efforts to increase the scalability of current restoration practices and develop methods that can be applied at regional scales are ramping up, which, along with reductions in global emissions and changes to catchment land-use practices, are all required to reduce the impacts to reefs. However, new methods alone will not automatically lead to regional-scale restoration. This is because reef restoration activities are implemented by people, and people arrange themselves within organisations of various forms. Such organisations, along with the application of technology, underpin restoration supply chains and therefore restoration activities. Hence, activating the nexus of organisations with technology to apply new methods will be key to unlocking regional restoration capacity, and the area of reefs restored.