there are encouraging signs that it really is.
The evidence comes from the independent evaluation of 20 years of Indonesia 250 million $ US coral reef rehabilitation and management program (COREMAP), which will enter its sixth year and last, Phase III, in 2014 .
Indonesia is the world's center of marine biodiversity. There are three reasons for this.
He (i) the largest area interconnected tropical coral reefs in the world, (ii) the temperature range is reasonably constant due to being on the equator and there are deep ocean floor next to these areas rich with streams ensuring that surface temperature thermoclines not form or if they do, do not persist for long (iii) allowing many other species - coral fish -. evolve
Recent Indonesian government initiatives in marine conservation of its rich coral reef resources were positive. This twenty-year program is based on the concept that coastal communities are the best managers of their reef resources and has been shown to have largely worked. What we can say with confidence that without the program, the situation would have been much worse today.
Some of the key results of the program are given here to illustrate the point that there is now a new ethic in Indonesia. Coral reefs count and they need to be protected -. and the government is doing its part in creating the conditions for that to happen through a series of innovative local and national initiatives
The overall objective of COREMAP program is to protect, rehabilitate, and achieve sustainable use of coral reefs and associated ecosystems in Indonesia.
The fish are free. . .
The fish, like water in rural communities are considered a free resource. The water comes from the sky, the fish of the sea.
But most of us know it is not. . . and why we know? Over the last twenty years, the amount of food (fish) we take in the oceans and seas of the world was at best static. What we got here is the idea that everyone can take to the sea. Seen from the perspective of individual fish stocks, all grandparents and most parents are gone. Why? Because we ate them.
surviving today's generation of fish are mostly immature young. They adapted quickly after only 70 years of industrial fishing to grow faster (less competition equals more food per fish), so that the mature earlier, but individually, that adults produce fewer eggs than Parents older because more energy is still ongoing in is growing.
Overall, about a third of our fish stocks are overexploited and their individual value to fishermen who go out to catch them, the more they are caught.
Southern blue fin tuna have been severely overfished for a quarter century. And its governing body, short of Canberra, Australia, must share some blame. Locally, in Indonesia and the rest of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, home to more than fifty percent of the coral reefs of the planet and its valuable fish stocks, the story is the same. Here, their high economic value can not be measured in dollars, but in life itself. Supply tomorrow is not an option for the desperately poor and hungry. Reef fish are a rich free resource that can provide money loan or a meal to fill an empty stomach.
Here lies the rub.
unregulated fishing fleets and desperate people were left to plunder the rich fishery resources of the seas at will. Laws and regulations in the comfort of world parliaments by fatty lawyers not hold taken on the high seas or for the poor and illiterate fishermen seeking food for themselves and their families.
Sustainability is the mantra
They need education, of course. But more than that, they need to provide alternatives to go fishing to provide nafkah - the basics - for their families. high penalties if caught, are not a deterrent. stocks of fish rich in protected areas are threatened by dynamite fishing by outside desperate fishermen in the region.
So if three of the richest, most regulated, the nations of the earth, Australia, Japan and New Zealand, took more than a quarter century of rule in their number relatively low SBT fishing, what chance the government of Indonesia have to reign in his desperately poor fishermen widely scattered reefs? Not much!
However, after embarking on a very ambitious project there are fifteen, Indonesia, its citizens, its directors, fishermen have seen a remarkable transformation in his system of national belief. They get it. And it was the younger generation who got the first.
Throughout the world today, ask anyone under thirty What are the main challenges facing our home, the earth, the planet on which we live? And the majority will say sustainability of our resources. Reverse their continuing decline and providing them, and us all, a healthy environment to live and we live off.
The legacy of COREMAP -. A job well done
On remote islands of Raja Ampat, Wakatobi Padaido and the response of their youth is the same
Do not take too much. Take just enough to live. To waste. And certainly not bomb the reefs provide food for reef fish or ever using fish poisons that make catching fish so much easier.
Fifteen years after pledging to fight against the problem of the threats to coral reefs, began in the middle of the worst financial crisis this country has seen since the days of its first president Soekarno, the dashboard of the Indonesian government in this area is "satisfactory". On all but one of the seven key performance indicators for this project, he has reached or exceeded the specified objective (Table 1).
Table 1 - KPI assessment COREMAP after 6 years of project implementation
In districts where the project works, some seventy-five percent of the population are aware of the importance of coral reefs, and this awareness extends beyond the communities of the project to the public because of awareness and multi-media campaigns, including ten songs in the charts Indonesians.
With these opinion leaders and President, SBY himself repeatedly stressing the importance to the nation's coral reefs for food production, tourism and coastal protection, the project - and the people who designed and implemented - can legitimately claim as their heritage in their country.
The advantages of the direct and indirect use of coral reefs are considerable, measured in billions of dollars a year, but it is the other values that are considered of greater value to billions of people who do not live next to the tropical coast. It is existence itself. The value of life on coral reefs of Indonesia in the marine ecosystem of the earth so small as a percentage of the surface of the sea in the world, is immeasurable.
A job well done!