The Jakarta Post 26 Sep 16;
Greenpeace Indonesia is set to hold the Festival Laut (Sea Festival) on Oct. 8 in Krida Loka Park, Senayan, to highlight shark fin, plastic garbage and overfishing issues.
On its website, festivallaut.org, Greenpeace said Indonesia was among the largest shark-hunting countries with 13 percent of the shark catch globally. “More than 100 million sharks caught in the world every year,” it said. The high figure stems from the strong international demand for shark fin soup.
The international environmental organization is also set to bring up the issue of plastic garbage.
“Indonesia is in second place after China as the contributor of the most plastic garbage polluting the sea every year. If reducing and managing plastic garbage is not taken seriously globally, sea pollution will be much greater and in 2050 it is estimated that plastic garbage will exceed the mass of fish in the sea,” Greenpeace said.
The third issue Greenpeace plans to address at the festival is overfishing.
“The fishing industry in the world, like Thai Union, a canned tuna company, is closely related to overfishing and implicated in human rights violations,” Greenpeace said on the website.
The festival will also feature a meme-making contest to raise awareness about the three issues. (evi)
