Coral Triangle Stakeholders Pledge To Buy Only Legal Tuna ff
22 January 2010
Philippines Source: Malaya Business Insight 160 fishing operators and buyers who attended the first-ever business summit to address overexploitation and overfishing in the Coral Triangle have promised not to source their products from illegal, unregulated and unreported operations.
They are also committed to implement catch and trade documentation by using third party certification schemes to ensure that products are not sourced illegally.
The Coral Triangle, encompassing Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste, covers just 1 percent of the earth´s surface but includes 30 per cent of the world´s coral reefs, 76 percent of its reef building coral species as well as vital spawning grounds for tuna.
According to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the Coral Triangle sustains the lives of more than 120 million people, along with thousands of small and medium businesses that heavily rely on healthy marine environments and resources.
The region is threatened by over-exploitation and environmental degradation, population pressures and severe climate change, it says.
The WWF reported the coral reefs could disappear from the Coral Triangle by the end of the century and the ability of the region´s coastal environments to feed people could decline by 80 per cent if no effective action is taken now.
The Coral Triangle Business Summit was attended by more than 160 delegates from tuna and live reef fish businesses, airlines and resort owners, government officials and non-government organizations.
They outlined ways to provide a platform for financial support and investment for businesses willing to commit to protect one of the world’s most ecologically-important areas.
"Business leaders have a central role to play in the protection and on-going management of this unique and important marine environment," said Dr. Lida Pet Soede, head of the WWF Coral Triangle Program.
"The summit has been a great success and the private sector has shown it is willing to take greater responsibility for the millions of livelihoods that depend on the health of the marine environment in this part of the world," she said, adding it laid some strong foundations for greater participation of the private sector in the protection of the Coral Triangle.
"There is a growing demand for seafood and other marine products from this region, as well as increased tourism, coastal development and oil and gas interests, all driven by exploding population growth and increasing affluence," said Soede.
"Thankfully there are emerging opportunities for businesses willing to operate more responsibly, and growing demands from consumers for greener products. This summit will help businesses leaders identify what some of those opportunities are."
Recently US seafood company Anova Food and global seafood supplier Culimer BV expressed plans to source tuna caught with circle hooks, which reduce the unwanted bycatch of sea turtles by up to 90 per cent.
Certification programs are also valuable business assets in the tourism sector, where such programs reward operations that exhibit best practices and help differentiate them from those that are less environmentally sound. They also provide consumers with a way to identify the kinds of tourism businesses they wish to support.
By taking early action to source only responsibly managed resources and by effectively marketing these endeavors, companies can achieve a business advantage in increasingly sophisticated and environmentally aware global and domestic markets, WWF said.
