Govt to protect larger coastal area

Govt to protect larger coastal area

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia plans to extend its coastal protected zones to 20 million hectares within the next five years, up from 2.6 million at present, a government official says.

Triono Soendoro, Chief of the Marine, Aerospace, Environment, Science and Technology Department at the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas) said yesterday that the proposed extension of protection was a crucial part of the National Biodiversity Program.

In order to achieve this ambitious goal, the government would need the support of groups within the community, as well as that of both non-government and government agencies, Triono told a joint Australia-Indonesia workshop on coastal management.

Currently, the total marine conservation and marine park areas in Indonesia cover 2,605,785 hectares, according to official figures.

The three-day Australia-Indonesia Integrated Coastal Zone Management Workshop was opened yesterday by Australian Charge d'Affaires Ian Porter and First Assistant to the State Minister for Environment Surna Djajadiningrat.

The aim of the workshop, Porter said, was to identify the issues faced by coastal zone planners and managers and to discuss viable options on the basis of the Australian experience in coastal zone environmental and resource management.

Triono said Indonesia hoped to learn from Australia about marine conservation, which has been implemented there for the past 25 years.

"But coming from different social and cultural backgrounds, they will also learn a lot from what we have been doing here in that field," he said.

Richard Kenchington, Director of the External Services Section of Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, said that a sound, integrated coastal management system was needed to solve problems occurring in coastal zones.

He said that problems in these areas were linked to each other and conflicts of interests were common.

Problems occurring in coastal zones were not only linked to fisheries, he said, but were also related to ecological, social, economic, geological, judicial, cultural, bureaucratic and political factors.

Chris Crossland, Director of the Cooperative Research Centre for the Sustainable Development of the Great Barrier Reef, said that, in designing an integrated management scheme, it was necessary to take into account the impact of urbanization, tourism, agriculture, industrialization, fishing and natural disasters, such as tsunamis and storms.

Graham Harris of the CSIRO's INRE coastal management project office stressed the need for policy-makers to "understand how things work," so that they can link policies with the ecological requirements of coastal zones. (pwn)