Compared to maritime ministries worldwide, Indonesia’s Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries (MMAF) is a teenaged neophyte.
The governing body was formed a mere 13 years agoa staggering fact for a country made up of two-thirds water where many of the 250 million people depend on fish for both protein and income.
So why has it taken so long for seagoing Indonesians to get their own ministry? For the 35 years of deposed dictator Suharto’s rule, all power and status was concentrated in Java’s urban and military elite. Outer islands and coastal villages, where most seafarers dwelt, stood neglected. Now, nearly one in two Indonesians live on less than $2 a day, according to Asian Development Bank estimates, and the poorest of this population lives in the reef-bound regions of Maluku and Papua.
But, since its establishment in Indonesia’s post-Suharto wave of decentralization, the newly fledged MMAF has been making up for lost time.
So far this “decentralization,” as applied to fisheries, has translated into such measures as augmenting the government’s own over-stretched coastal patrols with locally recruited deputies; building artificial reefs in bombed-out coral patches; restocking seabeds with giant clams; and fronting loans to fishermen for building larger, GPS-equipped vessels, allowing them to venture deeper into the Indian Ocean to chase bigger schools of fish.
All very commendable, says University of Hong Kong marine biologist Yvonne Sadovy. But it’s hardly enough to get to the root of the crisis: species depletion and environmentally destructive fishing practices.
Sadovy, an expert on Southeast Asian reef fish, is tired of hearing governments throughout the region give any solution but better management, arguing “mariculture is going to solve the problem. Marine protected areas are going to solve the problem. Artificial reefs and restocking are going to solve the problem. Anything but solid, foundational management.”
Yet, Sadovy and other experts are convinced that only through a holistic ecosystem-based management approach can Indonesia’s fisheries be restored to sustainability. And the Ministry itself is starting to get the message, as seen in a series of more sweeping recent initiatives undertaken with international and NGO collaboration.
To systematically tackle the problem entails a three-step process. First, the government needs to size-up the extent of overfishing and habitat-destruction with reliable baseline statistics. Next, it should place these numbers in context with a more nuanced understanding of different species interactions in the overall web of oceanic life; Lastly, managers must draw up prudent, effectively enforced harvest limits and no-catch zones.
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