KOTA KINABALU: Malaysia could become a good role model in the region for park management and turtle conservation.
Solutions for Marine and Coastal Resilience in the Coral Triangle (SOMACORE) programme director Dr Jan H. Steffan said that Sabah had decades of experience in managing marine parks and trained staff.
Under Sabah Parks, the Tunku Abdul Rahman marine park here was gazetted in 1974. It also manages Pulau Tiga in Kuala Penyu, Turtles island in Sandakan, Tun Sakaran and Sipadan island in Semporna, as well as the Tun Mustapha Park in Kudat, Kota Marudu and Pitas.
"In some ways, Malaysia is a role model. You have a history of park management. If you see a country like the Solomon Islands, they just gazetted the first marine protected area a few years ago. They don't have your experience.
"We would love to find ways to give Sabah Parks opportunities to share with the Solomon Islands or Timor-Leste how they have structured their work on the parks," Steffan said in an interview in the Sabah capital.
The marine ecologist also complimented Sabah and the Malaysian government in protecting sea turtles as the conservationists knew about the right ways of hatching turtle eggs and the correlation of sand temperature and the gender of turtles.
Steffan is in the state for a five-day Coral Triangle Initiative Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security (CTI-CFF) event that started on Aug 12. He had met Sabah Parks management last Thursday.
Organised by CTI-CFF Regional Secretariat in partnership with the Malaysia National Coordinating Committee, the event has representatives from six countries — Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Timor Leste, and Solomon Islands — as well as other stakeholders to discuss and exchange information about marine conservation in the region.
SOMACORE aims to support national and regional stakeholders in their efforts to scale up proven practices in a multilevel approach across the six countries. For five years, it has contributed 20 million euros for the latest projects in six countries.
CTI-CFF regional secretariat executive director Dr Frank Keith Griffin said that CTI, an international organisation registered under the United Nations, was established in 2016 to help do all the coordination work and bring in the six countries to work on the same platform.
"The objective of (the multilateral) agreement is to protect the region which is home to the biggest biodiversity in terms of corals in the world. It is home to almost 76 per cent of the global corals and 31 per cent of the world's known reefs fishes.
"It is also home to almost 351 million people with 130 million depending directly on resources of the marine environment. So, it is essential that we have protective measures in place to keep the livelihood and welfare of the people."
The five days will see the Sulu-Sulawesi and Bismarck-Solomon Seascapes Regional Exchange, the Seascape and Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management Working Group Meeting, and the Threatened Species Working Group Meeting, among others.