Coral reef monitoring lias been an on-going activity in Samoa since 1997. In 1998. a pilot Village Level Coral Reef Monitoring Project (VLCRMP) was initiated in collaboration between The Fisheries Division, the Division of Environment & Conservation and the International Ocean Institute Pacific Islands. The pilot project provided monitoring equipment and assisted in training the trainers that, in nuns trained 46 villagers from six villages selected from around the country ( Mulipola 2001 ).
Originating in a French political commitment to contributing to the development of the Pacific Island states, the Initiative for the Protection and Sustainable Management of Coral Reefs in the South Pacific was prepared by the French Development Agency as part of an inter-ministerial arrangement as from 2002, in
The monitoring and evaluation system of CRISP programme is semester based with 2 reports describing activities from the 1st of January to the 30th of June and the 1st of July to the 31st of December respectively. Actions occurring on the field are classified according to the type of activities, which are explained according to projects comprised into different compo-
The Millennium Assessment for the Ecosystems was another big step towards the development of studies relative to reef economic value. Chapter 2, thus, offers a standard method to assess ecological services and goods provided by ecosystems that will allow the multiplication of this kind of studies (Millennium Ecological Assessment, 2003). At this time, first semester 2008, economic or socio-economic valuation of coral reefs has become a priority issue for many funding agencies and