Coral protection pact faces uphill struggle

Straits Times 30 May 09;

A PLEDGE by six countries in the region to protect the iconic Coral Triangle sounds promising on paper but may not work well in practice, experts say.

Earlier this month, the prime ministers of Indonesia, Timor Leste, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia and the Solomon Islands signed up to progressively protect some 20 per cent of the vast area.

The Coral Triangle is home to around 75 per cent of the world's coral species, as well as seagrass beds, mangroves and deep sea fish such as tuna.

The area is a globally significant repository of marine biodiversity and spawning ground for fish, against a background of seriously depleted seas and oceans. �

Thus, the leaders of those countries met in Manado on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi to try to agree on a way to save it.

Most agree that the Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI) is overdue and necessary but the effort has run into criticism.�

At Manado, small or 'artisanal' fishermen from the Philippines, worried about being deprived of their fishing rights, arrived to present demands and were prevented from doing so. �

'The fishermen were forced to leave,' Mr Ephraim Patrick Batungbacal of the Filipino non-government organisation, Tambuyog, told The Straits Times. �

He said their message was 'don't grab fishers' rights; coastal communities should manage their own waters'. �

Scientists and environmentalists acknowledge a possible turning point in the first-ever involvement of prime ministers of the six countries in the CTI. Besides establishing protected areas, it addresses a range of issues, including coastal ecosystem management and adaptation to climate change.

The CTI has reportedly drawn funding pledges of US$5 million (S$7.2million) from Indonesia and the Philippines, US$2 million from Papua New Guinea and US$1 million from Malaysia. �

The United States has pledged US$41.6 million and Australia, US$1.5 million - a figure Canberra is under pressure to raise. The Global Environment Facility will provide US$63 million.

The CTI is backed by three major international non-governmental organisations - the World Wide Fund for Nature, Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy.

This week in Brussels, European fisheries ministers also began work and negotiations on the European Union's fishing Green Paper. The EU has until 2012 to draw up a new Common Fisheries Policy, and looks set to discard the failed quota system.

There is talk of decentralisation, and the involvement of the fishing community and industry itself.

In Asia, the CTI has been hailed but experts involved in the field in marine resources and conservation are not quite breaking out the champagne.

Mr Simon Funge-Smith, a senior fisheries officer with the Food and Agriculture Organisation in Bangkok, said the issue was how to reconcile resource protection with resource use.

'The problem starts when you declare colossal protected areas,' he told The Straits Times in an interview.

The CTI creates meaningfully large protected areas which have a definite role in giving respite to marine species. But legal protection can also exclude a large number of people from their livelihoods.

Trawlers can go somewhere else but locals are not mobile. And an enormous number of people depend on the marine resources of the Coral Triangle.

It is widely accepted that protected areas on land or at sea must have support from local stakeholders if their objectives are to be met.

'We expect the sea to produce but our stewardship is weak and questionable,' said Mr Funge-Smith. 'There is no doubt that some action has to be taken to give fisheries a rest.'

In an e-mail message to The Straits Times from a research station on Heron Island on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the University of Queensland's Centre for Marine Studies, wrote: 'The CTI itself is an extremely important first step in dealing with the enormous problems that the region faces.'

The need to stop the downward spiral of marine resources has sunk in at the level of scientists and governments and even the fishing industry, but only up to a point with the populace.

In one glaring irony, the hosts of the Manado conference served up shark's fin soup for dinner one night.

NIRMAL GHOSH