Indonesia Should be Proud of Coral Reefs Health Index

NetralNews 20 Nov 17;

JAKARTA, NETRALNEWS.COM – The Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) affirms the Indonesian Coral Reef Health Index is very useful for the management of coral reefs and other related ecosystems.

LIPI through the Center for Oceanographic Research (P2O) launched the Indonesian Coral Reef Health Index as an important standard for managing the world's largest archipelago reefs.

Head of Task Implementer of LIPI Bambang Subiyanto, said this index can determine whether Indonesia’s coral reef ecosystem is healthy or not. Only a few countries in the world already have a coral reef health index so Indonesia as one of the few countries in the world to have such indexe, should be proud of this.

Head of LIPI P2O Dirhamsyah said the index is based on data collected intensively by P2O since more than 20 years ago, at the start of the Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Program (COREMAP) in 1999.

In 2017, LIPI was entrusted to continue the Phase III COREMAP Program which will end in December 2020. The program is financed by the World Bank and the GEF and will be more characterized by institutional capacity building activities in the field of research and monitoring of coastal ecosystems (reefs coral, seagrass and mangrove), as well as data and information management capacity, both nationally and regionally.

"The results achieved from COREMAP activities from phase I to phase III are now being utilized by stakeholders, among others, to update data and information on the health condition of coral reefs and sea grasses throughout Indonesian waters that are conducted annually," said Dirhamsyah, Monday (20/11/2017).

Meanwhile, in addition to the launch of the Indonesian Coral Reef Index, LIPI P2O also released various products, such as the launch of three books entitled Mangrove in Indonesia, Absorbing Carbon, and 5 Decades of LIPI in Jakarta Bay. The books written by the researchers of LIPI P2O are the result of research conducted by LIPI in the last few decades.

For example, the book titled 5 Decades of LIPI in Jakarta Bay is the summation of all LIPI research activities for more than five decades conducted in Jakarta Bay.