Source: Solomon Star

Solomon Islands is one of several countries in the Asia-Pacific that will benefit from a USD$350,000 (SBD$2.5 million) Taiwanese assistance to help protect its natural marine environment.

The Standard Chartered Bank (Taiwan) Ltd’s Coral Triangle initiative is a new multilateral partnership working to safeguard the marine and coastal resources of the coral reefs, the world’s centre of marine biodiversity.

The funds will be administered by Worldwide Fund for Nature’s (WWF) Coral Triangle program.

According to WWF, the Coral Triangle is the most diverse marine region on the planet, matched in its importance to life on earth only by the Amazon rainforest and the Congo basin.

Defined by marine areas containing more than 500 species of reef-building coral, it covers 5.4m km/sq of ocean across six countries in Asia-Pacific - Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands and Timor Leste.

It also directly sustains the lives of nearly 130 million people and contains key spawning and nursery grounds for tuna while healthy reef and coastal systems underpin a growing tourism sector.

WWF’s Solomons office said they would be working with many different partners in the Pacific to ensure these funds helped them realize their conservation goals.

It said the funds would help to establish a system of marine managed areas in the Pacific and to conserve the Pacific’s unique biodiversity, such as the threatened green, hawksbill and leatherback turtles.