Establishment of Guidelines for Marine Protected Areas in Timor-Leste 2025: The Case Study for Community Based Marine Sanctuary of Beloi-Ataúro and Com-Lautem

Management guidelines for Community-Marine Protected Areas have a variety of terms in Timor-Leste. However, the term of Community Based-Marine Sanctuary (CB-MS) is a characteristic of participatory approach. It is necessary to establish guidelines for determining the type of Marine Protected Area (MPA), includes measuring the effectiveness of MPA performance. The objectives of this research are a) to define guidelines and build marine protected areas; b) to assess the effectiveness of Community Based-Marine Sanctuary in Suco Beloi-Atauro and Com-Lautem; c) to define the potential typology of MPA (marine national park, aquatic reserve, and fishery resource recovery) in Suco Beloi-Atauro and Com-Lautem. Those objectives are essential because up to date after 2 decades more since 2004, the Government of Timor-leste (GoTL) is not implementing yet the MPA typology-based of Fishery Decree Law No. 6/2004 that stipulated on Article 96 Alinea 2. During the survey, research team were conducting the combination of qualitative data (20 categories and its formula for MPA typologies including the METT scores), and the qualitative data were used for framing questionnaires and to support the various options when deciding to respond upon 34 questions of METT score. In another perspective, site selection and number of sample unit was applying purposive sampling method. Based on the research objectives, the results indicated that both MPA typologies in Beloi-Atauro and Com-Lautem were respectively categorized as Aquatic Reserves. Similarly, the METT score showed that in Beloi-Atauro was 35.1(moderate effectiveness), whereas in Com-Lautem was indicated 21.4 (low effectiveness)