Film “Jejak Wallacea” Highlights Community-Based Coastal Conservation

Jakarta (ANTARA) - Community-based coastal conservation practices in eastern Indonesia are highlighted through the documentary film “Jejak Wallacea”, which records local communities’ efforts to safeguard marine ecosystems using indigenous wisdom and customary laws.

The 45-minute documentary is part of the documentation for the Wallacea Partnership Programme II, implemented by the non-profit organisation Burung Indonesia along with several partners, and produced by ARISE! Communication with support from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF).

Co-Founder of ARISE! Indonesia, Dian Sunardi, in a written statement received in Jakarta on Friday, said the film was created to document conservation practices carried out by communities together with Burung Indonesia in several coastal areas.

“Our main task was to document coastal area conservation in those four regions. From there, we proposed an approach in the format of a documentary film so that the stories and practices in the field can be more easily understood by the public,” said Dian.

Through a visual approach close to the daily lives of the communities, he said, the film shows how coastal communities maintain their living spaces amid threats from environmentally destructive fishing practices.

In addition, the documentary illustrates various community-based marine resource management practices, from strengthening customary laws and managing fishing areas to efforts to preserve coastal ecosystems as a source of livelihood for communities.

Meanwhile, a representative from Burung Indonesia, Wahyu Teguh Prawira, assessed that the community-based approach is an important part of conservation efforts in the Wallacea region because communities possess local knowledge passed down through generations.

“Many resource management practices are actually already running at the community level. This approach is important because communities are not just beneficiaries, but the main part of efforts to maintain ecosystems,” he said.

It is known that the Wallacea Partnership Programme II is a continuation of the previous phase, which focused on strengthening natural resource governance and community-based conservation in the Wallacea region, covering several priority areas in Sulawesi, Nusa Tenggara, and Maluku.

Through the screening of this film, Burung Indonesia hopes that the conservation practices already running at the community level can become better known to the public while opening up wider collaboration opportunities to support the preservation of Indonesia’s coastal ecosystems.