Scientists Warn of Food Security Threats From Seagrass Meadows Degradation in Indonesia

If you’re a baby fish, and everything around you probably wants to eat you, you need somewhere to go and hide.

The reef is full of a lot of really big fish that want to eat you. But if you’re in a seagrass meadow, it’s full of dents, shoots, places where you as a small fish can hide.

A starfish resting in a seagrass meadow in waters off the Turks and Caicos Islands. (Photo courtesy of seagrass.org.uk)

Jakarta. A team of British scientists is launching a project this week that will investigate the condition of seagrass meadows off the coasts of Indonesia’s South Sulawesi province – amid growing concerns over losses of the important marine ecosystem across the archipelago.

Richard Unsworth, a marine biologist from Britain’s Swansea University and the leader of the project, said in an interview with the Jakarta Globe earlier this week that seagrass meadows were as important as mangrove forests and coral reefs were to marine life and food security.

Not to be confused with seaweeds or algae, seagrasses are a group of flowering plants that live in shallow sheltered areas along coastlines. Similar to grasses on land, seagrasses often form vast meadows underwater – thus the name seagrass meadows.

Unsworth says these meadows provide an important nursery ground for many species of commercial fish and sea invertebrates.

And yet, very little attention has been paid to the largely unknown ecosystem, even amid reports of disappearing and degraded seagrass meadows in many parts of the vast Indonesian archipelago.

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In Indonesia, Caution Urged With China’s New ‘Silk Road’ Plans

Nusa Dua, Bali. China is making clearer its intention of engaging Southeast Asia to support its ambitious plans to revive the ancient Silk Road commerce routes, but observers in Jakarta remind Indonesia — which has expressed interest in China’s new initiative — to exercise caution.

The joint “Belt and Road” development is the topic of a forum in Nusa Dua, Bali, taking place on Sunday and Monday, which was attended by officials and community representatives from China and member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

China has been touting the phrase Belt and Road to promote its ambitious initiative of engaging other countries to jointly develop the so-called Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road.

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Indonesia’s Flawed Deforest Moratorium More of the Same, Activists Say

Activists have criticized a presidential decree issued last week that extends Indonesia’s moratorium on new logging and plantation permits, saying it once again fails to offer strong law enforcement measures to ensure implementation and protect the country’s waning forests.

President Joko Widodo last week signed the new decree extending the deforestation moratorium, which was first introduced by his predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, in May 2011.

The original moratorium expired in May 2013, but Yudhoyono extended it for another two years, before Joko signed another two-year extension last Wednesday.

Environmental activists, albeit welcoming the extension, lament the president’s failure to fortify the regulation.

“The government’s move of extending the forest moratorium deserves appreciation,” Greenpeace Indonesia forest campaigner Yuyun Indrayadi wrote on a blog post published on the NGO’s website.

“It is very regrettable, however, that the only thing changing from the previous moratorium is only [the decree’s] number and the period of validity. We’ve found no clauses whatsoever on stronger [law enforcement] and protection in the forest moratorium that will be in place through 2017.”

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Singapore Urges SEA Lenders to Better Screen Palm Oil Investment

(The story was originally published at the Jakarta Globe on May 17, 2015)

Singapore. The Singaporean government has called on financial institutions operating in Southeast Asia to exercise caution in funneling funds to palm oil producers, saying scrutiny on the sector continues to intensify with recurring problems in transboundary haze.

Banks have acted as an important source of capital for the region’s palm oil industry, Singapore’s Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Vivian Balakrishnan said last week.

Citing a 2010 report by BankTrack, he said lenders provided an estimated 24 percent of the total financing needed for the sector globally, with more than $50 billion invested in the Malaysian and Indonesian palm oil sectors alone during the decade prior to the release of the study.

“The number has grown significantly since then. And this includes local sources of capital from within Indonesia and Malaysia,” Balakrishnan said in a keynote speech during the second annual Singapore Dialogue on Sustainable World Resources held last Wednesday.

With the recurring issue of transboundary haze, he added, calls have intensified for companies and individuals “all the way down” the supply chain to be held accountable for deforestation — the main culprit behind recurring forest fires in Indonesia and haze affecting neighbors Singapore and Malaysia.

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CDKN Chief Talks About Renewable Energy, Climate Finance in Indonesia

(The story was originally published at the Jakarta Globe on May 10, 2015).

Indonesia’s rate of deforestation makes the country one of the world’s major greenhouse gas emitters and a target work area for many international organizations.

Preferring to supply technical assistance and guidance rather than financial support, London-based Climate and Development Knowledge Network is one of the many organizations assisting Indonesia with its climate change mitigation and adaptation measures.

CDKN’s chief executive Sam Bickersteth, however, thinks deforestation efforts in Indonesia have garnered a lot of attention already.

His organization therefore is mostly focusing on other areas that have largely been untapped — including renewable energy and climate finance.

Bickersteth sat with the Jakarta Globe last week during a brief visit to Jakarta to talk about these issues, including the upcoming United Nations’ climate change conference (COP) in Paris.

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