COREMAP

• Overview
• Activities
• Contact

Overview

Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago, contains within its territorial boundaries 12 to 15 percent of the world's coral reefs. These reefs are an important source of economic opportunity for millions of people in 67,500 coastal villages throughout the country and roughly 60% of Indonesians' dietary protein comes from the sea, much of it from reef fish. Coral reefs in Indonesia are the most biodiverse in the world, yet they are among the most threatened. In the last decade, their condition has declined dramatically. Data from 414 reef monitoring stations throughout Indonesia in 2000 found that only 6 percent of Indonesia's coral reefs are in excellent condition, 24 percent are in good condition, and approximately 70 percent are in poor to fair condition. Human activities bear the greatest blame for this state. Overfishing, including use of cyanide and explosives to catch reef fish; pollution from poorly regulated coastal development; heavy tourist traffic and lack of education in coastal communities about tourism development; mining of coral as building material; sand mining, which disrupts ocean currents and causes heavy sedimentation; lack of clear policies and regulations regarding use of natural resources; inadequate and inconsistent enforcement of existing laws; and a generally low level of public knowledge about the importance of coral reef ecosystems all contribute to the problem. Unless large-scale changes take place soon, the still bountiful resources of Indonesia's reefs could be gone in a generation, with disastrous consequences for the welfare of the nation.

Recognizing the complexity of these issues, the Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Program (COREMAP) was designed as a 15-year program aimed at developing decentralized community-based resource management systems with support from the national and regional governments, enforcement authorities, the private sector, and NGOs. COREMAP is funded by The World Bank, The Asian Development Bank, and the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) and implemented by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI).

Currently, COREMAP works in nine of 32 provinces in Indonesia. Four of these are receiving special attention as pilot sites during Phase I of COREMAP through September 2002. These four provinces are: West Papua (formerly Irian Jaya), Riau, South Sulawesi, and Flores. In all of these areas, COREMAP‘s program elements include efforts to:

1. Heighten law enforcement to protect coral reefs;
2. Establish coral reef monitoring and information systems, in order to conduct research on the status of coral reefs and more effectively disseminate that information to stakeholder groups;
3. Develop community-based management systems and increase public participation in coral reef resource management;
4. Increase institutional capacity and strengthen inter-institutional coordination in planning and implementing policy that affects coral reef management, and;
5. Enhance public knowledge of the importance of coral reef and motivate people to actively participate in the management and sustainable use of coral reefs.

JHU/CCP is responsible for designing and coordinating a public communication campaign in support of COREMAP goals. This integrated campaign uses an orchestrated combination of social marketing, public relations, local entertainment-education events, media advocacy, collaboration with NGOs, and school-based activities in order to:

1. Increase government political and financial support for coral reef management programs;
2. Educate the general public, especially the younger generation, about coral reef issues;
3. Motivate and foster community initiatives in local coral reef management;
4. Increase community and human resources invested in coral reef management; and
5. Create and enhance collaboration among stakeholder groups on coral reef management programs.

Activities

In support of this campaign, several innovative activities are currently underway:

Community-based NGO programs are the heart of COREMAP's outreach strategy. Contracts for community-based communications are in place in South Sulawesi, Riau, and West Papua and will begin soon in Flores. The community-based programs include action-oriented workshops, entertainment-education community motivation events, media advocacy/lobbying, and production and distribution of local promotional materials including original music, informational VCDs, newsletters, and art contests with coral reef themes.

Coral reef school-based educational program: JHU/CCP has produced a new coral reef board game ("Me and My Coral Reef") that teaches elementary school children about coral reef ecosystems and the things that can destroy and protect them. A total of 4,500 copies will be distributed to schools in 9 provinces as part of a teaching materials package. Simultaneously, the project will kick-off a school-based poster drawing contest. Teacher training workshops began in February 2001 to introduce and promote the use of the coral reef education materials for 4th-6th grade classes. A searchable educational database of teaching and reference materials on CD-ROM will also be released on disk and made available on the Internet. JHUCCP and COREMAP worked closely with Sea World/Indonesia and The Nature Conservancy to produce this educational package.

A Coral Reef TV Feature Series is currently in production. This series of six half-hour programs will highlight key coral reef management issues including community involvement in ecotourism development, government and community co-management of national marine parks, effects of decentralization on natural resource management, effects of blast fishing on reef ecosystems, and law enforcement. The series will be broadcast in the third quarter of 2001 on Indonesia's public television station, TVRI.

TV and radio commercials have been used to publicize coral reef issues, in general, and to spread the knowledge that coral reefs are composed of living creatures. These commercials build on the theme "Selamatkan Terumbu Karang - SeKarang!" (Save the Coral Reefs - NOW!). SeKarang! is a play on words combining the Indonesian words for coral (karang) and now (sekarang). A very popular TV spot featuring the project's computer-animated coral and fish mascots, Uka and Iki, achieved 38% recognition with television audiences only three weeks after its launch in February 2000. Another survey in later 2000 shows recall of the SeKarang! logo in excess of 50%. Radio spots feature a coral reef song specially commissioned for the project. The song has been recorded in several different musical styles corresponding to regional tastes. One popular dangdut performer has recorded the song and released it nationally on her latest commercial album.

The National Coral Reef Awards Program has begun seeking nominations and is publicizing the Awards through the mass media and the Internet. Awards will be given in three categories: coral reef management activities (individual and group/community), coral reef research (individual and institutional), and coral reef journalism (reporter and media outlet). The project will conduct an awards ceremony in April 2001.

Communication training and capacity building: A series of communication skills training workshops has been underway since November 2000 and will continue into mid-2001. These workshops are designed to improve the communication skills of government and NGO counterparts, field facilitators working in other components of COREMAP, and members of volunteer community-level environmental communication committees. Topics include basic familiarity with advertising and public relations; how to make presentations; how to plan and carry out media advocacy activities such as staging press conferences and interviews and preparing press releases; and how to develop and use communication materials. Initially, workshops are facilitated by JHU/CCP staff (training of trainers), but will be handed off to local trainers in Jakarta, Riau, South Sulawesi, West Papua, and Flores.

Journalist training focuses on familiarizing journalists with coral reef issues and developing a core of writers at both national and provincial levels committed to reporting on the condition of Indonesia's coral reefs and efforts to use them in a sustainable manner. An outcome of the training is the production of articles on coral reef management for local newspapers.

Institutional networking involves bringing together key stakeholder groups and organizations involved in marine-related fields to increase collaboration regarding coral reef management issues. Examples of such networking include collaborations between LIPI and Sea World/Indonesia, between the Water Sports Association of South Sulawesi and the Marine NGO Consortium in Makassar, and between COREMAP and other donor-funded marine environment programs such as Proyek Pesisir (USAID) and CO-FISH (ADB).

A Marine Resources Field Guide is being developed by professional science journalists with technical assistance from COREMAP/LIPI and JHUCCP. This 40-page Guide will highlight threatened marine species in Indonesia and steps that can be taken to protect them for the benefit of coastal communities. It will be published and disseminated to marine resource managers and local communities throughout COREMAP's nine provinces.

Contact

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