THE Philippines recently signed a regional agreement supporting the establishment of a permanent secretariat for the Coral Triangle Initiatives for Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security (CTI-CFF).
The agreement was signed by Environment Secretary Ramon J.P. Paje on behalf of the Philippines government in Manado, Indonesia. The agreement is expected to come into force by May this year.
According to documents provided by Paje, the secretariat will be in charge of the technical and administrative management of one of the most biologically diverse and ecologically rich regions in the world, bounded by the countries of Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Timor Leste and the Solomon Islands.
Paje added that “the permanent regional secretariat would play a central role in putting in place effective adaptation measures in the region, especially for coastal communities, to improve their resilience to climate change.”
“The impacts of climate change are very real threats to us in the region and this agreement rolls out the full operation of the regional secretariat in May in time for the fifth CTI-CFF Ministerial Meeting in Manado, Indonesia, on May 16 during the World Conference on Coral Reefs.”
According to Paje, the agreement was reached during the 9th Senior Officials Meeting of the CTI-CFF Interim Regional Secretariat, which was hosted by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in Manila in November last year.
Under the auspices of the Indonesian government, the construction of a five-story building on a 6,000-square-meter compound is now nearing completion. The compound, provided by the Provincial Government of North Sulawesi, will also house the CTI headquarters.
“This agreement clearly reflects the unique role of CTI-CFF in protecting and sustaining the world’s epicenter of marine biodiversity as a fully operational secretariat that will coordinate the implementation of the CTI Regional Plan of Action,” Paje said.
The agreement was personally presented to him by Sjarief Widjaja, secretary-general of Indonesia’s Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries and chairman of the CTI-CFF Interim Regional Secretariat, at the DENR main office in Quezon City on Monday.
CTI-CFF is a multilateral partnership designed to safeguard the region’s extraordinary marine and coastal biological resources for future generations by promoting sustainable fisheries and livelihood, and climate-change resilience and adaptation measures.
The Coral Triangle is home to 600 corals or 76 per cent of the world’s known coral species and has the highest in terms of reef fish diversity with 2,500 or 37 per cent of the planet’s reef fish species concentrated in the area. It is also the spawning and nursery ground for four principle market tuna species that populate the Western and Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO), which supplies close to 50 per cent of the global tuna catch.
The species populating the WCPO include the yellowfin, albacore, bigeye and skipjack.
