About This Report

This is the third ‘State of the Fishery’ report on the Indonesian blue swimming crab (BSC, locally referred to as rajungan) fishery covering the years 2019-2021, produced as part of the Indonesia Blue Swimming Crab Initiative of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation (Packard Foundation) and Walton Family Foundation (WFF) for 2020-2023. It presents a summary of data covering January-December 2021, collected from secondary sources (government statistics and interviews) and provided by the following Indonesia Blue Swimming Crab Consortium partners: Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP), Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Marine Change, Starling Resources (SR), and Coral Triangle Center (CTC). It is primarily aimed as a discussion piece for a complex fishery to provide opportunities for learning for donors and implementers. Partners were provided with the full set of indicators, and group feedback sessions were conducted in March 2022 to validate and discuss the initial findings in this report. We would like to thank the partners who shared data and provided generous feedback.

BSC fishery catch. Source: Adobe Stock under Standard License

Both the Packard Foundation and WFF had close to 20 years of investments in Indonesia before shifting their focus towards capture fisheries. Recognizing the complexity of Indonesia’s fisheries, they have opted to prioritize archetypal fisheries of particular economic and social significance. These fisheries include the blue swimming crab fishery, which is of primary importance to many fishers, pickers, and processors that rely on it for livelihood, social, cultural, and economic benefits.

In 2018, the blue swimming crab was Indonesia’s third biggest export commodity after tuna and shrimp. That year, the Indonesian BSC Consortium’s data showed that the fisheries provided livelihood for around 90,000 fishers and employed at least 185,000 women in fisheries processing units and mini-plants across the country.

Fourteen indicators, developed by the Consortium partners over the course of close to 12 months from 2019-2020 are used to measure key economic, social and environmental performance of the fishery and to track, over time, how the fishery is progressing towards sustainability 1,2 . The indicators A through to N fall within four key categories:

1. Fishery Health – A, B

2. Fishery Economic Status – D, K, L, M, N

3. National Governance – F, J, G

4. Local Governance – C, E, H, I

The intent of these indicators is:

• To develop annual proxies to track progress, evaluate effectiveness, and capture learnings from work across four provinces within WPP 712 (Figure 1 and Figure 2);

• To align on methods used for monitoring and evaluation, and to capture and integrate learnings into strategies of both implementers and the donors; and

• To track outputs from grants made in 2019 through to the end of 2023.

The tracking of these indicators is not meant to ‘audit’ the Consortium’s work, but is a genuine attempt to identify proxies to track its impact and integrate that back into the TOC.

BLUE SWIMMING CRAB CONSORTIUM MEMBERS: