Saving Indonesia’s Coral

By Barrie | September 13th, 2007 | No Comments

Indonesia has invited countries in the Asia Pacific region to help safeguard its marine and coastal resources — and the move is expected to bring good things, politically and ecologically, an Indonesian NGO said.

“We’re glad our government addressed the issue of preserving our marine biological resources at the APEC meeting,” U.S.-based The Nature Conservancy Indonesia program said.

“And we hope this initiative will be followed with concrete measures,” the NGO’s country director Rili Djohani said.

During APEC, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono invited the Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and East Timor to establish a multilateral partnership called the Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI).

The initiative would involve a marine area stretching from the middle part of Indonesia to the Solomon Islands and up to the Philippines. The area includes the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

The CTI is aimed at protecting marine biological resources in the triangular shaped region, which is home to 76 percent of the world’s coral species and 50 percent of its reef fish species.

The 5.7-million-square-kilometer area is the global center of marine biodiversity, with more than 600 coral species and 3,000 fish species, many of which are endemic.

The marine area, with an estimated total per annum value of around US$2.3 billion in resources, supports the livelihood of 126 million people and provides food for millions more.

Rili said she was optimistic CTI would be successful. She said she was sure the program would help recover the marine area, parts of which were being degraded by destructive fishing and coastal developments.

Desy Nurhayati