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Since 2014, the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) has hosted three interdisciplinary thematic schools on the vulnerability of the reef heritage (VulPaRe) in the Western Indian Ocean. Taking a sustainability science approach, the schools aimed to build capacity, facilitate knowledge transfer, and foster collaboration among a variety of stakeholders involved in research and the governance of coastal resources. The latest VulPaRe school highlighted 1) the need to strengthen the role of social sciences in interdisciplinary studies, 2) the opportunities and threats of market-based mechanisms integrating conservation and ecological restoration, and 3) concerns of justice on the access to common resources. An improvement of this educational process would be to provide more guidance for dialogues with decision makers in these reef areas.