Coastal habitat protection and restoration with Tananua Flores Foundation / Yayasan Tananua Flores

 

 

The organization and local perspectives on conservation and stewardship

 

Our organization is the Tananua Flores Foundation, located on Flores Island in eastern Indonesia. Currently, our focus is working in the field of empowerment of underprivileged groups in villages and in the coastal area. Tananua Flores provides mentoring work, assisting as many as 24 local villages. For these 24 villages, Tananua launched a program related to sustainable agriculture and managing small-scale fisheries in a sustainable manner using a participatory monitoring and evaluation system. 

 

Environmental conservation is a series of efforts to maintain the local carrying capacity and productivity of the environment. In environmental stewardship efforts by the communities/villages assisted by the Tananua Foundation, the main goal is to encourage people to maintain environmental sustainability at sea, such as not littering in the sea, taking care not to destroy trumbu karang (coral reefs), and ensuring the process of catching fish does not use harmful methods such as bombs or poison/potassium. For the environments in the mountains, it is always encouraged to not damage the forests and to continue to plant trees as part of providing oxygen to living things.

 

Stewardship experience: Coastal habitat protection/restoration in Indonesia

 

The issue or problem being addressed

Locally, concerns for the sustainability of aquatic environments are mainly directed toward overfishing as well as industrial waste that reaches the ocean and causes pollution. Other problems that often lead to environmental damage are activities such as mining (coal, gold, and in coastal areas it is for clean sand), unsustainable forestry plantations and clear-cutting, which increases soil erosion and runoff.

 

The activities

For certain villages, depending on their needs, the focus is on the sustainability of coastal communities, namely in the Arubara neighborhood (Tetandara subdistrict) and Maurongga village. In other coastal villages the organization’s focus is on assessing the potential capacity that exists in the village to manage the environment, as well as on developing sustainable agriculture initiatives. The local women’s fishing community is involved in participatory data collection and in making decisions at each meeting to determine the appropriate management of their octopus fishery.

 

Overall, our efforts have focused on:

1. building understanding for business actors who use large equipment, to reduce the impact of these activities,

2. organizing clean ups of trash that is dumped on the beach,

3. planting trees for soil retention, while also building erosion-resistant embankments, keeping forests from being cleared through enforcing local customary rules.

 

The benefits/impacts including sustainability/environmental effects

A positive benefit of environmental conservation activities and awareness building is that now more people realize how important it is to protect the environment. This requires a collective understanding and agreement to be successful. With a clean and protected environment, all living things can enjoy a sustainable life.

 

For more information, visit:

https://blog.blueventures.org/en/bridging-the-mountains-and-the-sea/

 

 

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Fishery Facts

(Below are the applicable categories of fisheries, environment, species, gear type and livelihood role.)

 

Fishery characteristics:

• Marine capture fishery (e.g. nearshore/coastal/reef-based/deep sea)
• Single-species

The environment where fishing takes place: 

• Coastal – Nearshore

Main species targeted:

• Molluscs (including bivalves and cephalopods – e.g. octopus/clams)

Gear types/ methods used:

• Pot/trap
• Dive
• Other: Pocong fishing rod

Role of the fishery in local livelihoods:

• Main source of employment
• Secondary/supplementary source of employment