An international fisheries group expressed doubt over the prospects of the Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI) that aims to address threats to biodiversity within the Coral Triangle, particularly in the Philippines, due to harmful investments on fishing in the area.

According to the Southeast Asia Fish for Justice (SEAFish), a network of fisherfolk and non-government organizations, investments that harm the marine environment persist in three Southeast Asian countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

The Coral Triangle is bordered by six countries, namely the Philippines, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, Solomon Islands, and Timor Leste.

The group expressed concern that commercial fishing activities continue unregulated and unreported in the Coral Triangle, which is considered as the center of marine biodiversity in the world.

SEAFish said these investments put into question the priorities of Southeast Asian governments and their commitment to the CTI, a multilateral effort to conserve the area where one of the world’s largest concentration of corals, mangroves and marine biodiversity are found.

SEAFish regional coordinator Arsenio Tanchuling said that in Indonesia, commercial fishing continues to be unregulated and unreported.

He added that in Malaysia and the Philippines, the same situation prevails and one of the practices causing major damage to corals commercial trawl fishing continues and remains legal.

The Coral Triangle, where Philippines is at the apex, covers 6.5 million square kilometers with over 600 reef-building coral species or 75 percent of all known coral species in the world and more than 3,000 fish species.

Besides commercial fishing, Tanchuling noted that the expansion of shrimp aquaculture in Indonesia has continued, “but it is the newer phenomenon of reclamation projects that are now causing the loss of mangrove forests in this country on a massive scale.”

He cited a study of WALHI, an Indonesian non-government organization, which showed that 5.2 million hectares of mangrove forests in 1986 have been reduced to only 1.9 million hectares at present because of reclamation projects.

Meanwhile in the Philippines, where reclamation projects are also common, mining operations have been on the rise by virtue of the Mining Act of 1995, and affected coastal communities are complaining against the mine wastes carried by rivers to their coastal fishing grounds, Tanchuling said.

“In this situation, where the governments of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines are part of CTI and yet they allow investments that harm the coastal and marine areas, their commitment to CTI itself is put into question,” Tanchuling stressed.

The following international funding institutions are also members of CTI: Asian Development Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Development Programme and its Global Environment Facility, the United States Agency for International Development, and World Bank.