Sustainable Use of Marine Protected Areas by Communities in the Sawu Sea

Description

The Sawu Sea Marine National Park (MNP), located in the province of East Nusa Tenggara, is one of the marine conservation areas that has the potential to be developed as a marine ecotourism location in the Province of East Nusa Tenggara (NTT). Tourism potential in the waters of the Sawu Sea TNP includes marine mammals observation tours, diving tours, surfing tours and other beach tours. Ecotourism as an environmentally friendly tourism activity that prioritizes aspects of nature conservation, aspects of socio-cultural and economic empowerment of local communities as well as aspects of learning and education, needs to be developed to ensure the preservation of natural resources, environmental services and sustainable development in the Sawu Sea TNP area.

To encourage the preparation and development of a model for accelerated coastal management, the Ministry of National Development Planning/National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) through the Indonesia Climate Change Trust Fund (ICCTF) implemented the project The Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Program – Coral Triangle Initiative (COREMAP- CTI). COREMAP-CTI is a coral reef ecosystem protection program that aims to strengthen institutional capacity for monitoring and research on coastal ecosystems in order to produce data-based information, as well as increase the effectiveness of priority coastal ecosystem management.

YAPEKA is one of the Non-Governmental Organizations implementing the COREMAP-CTI Project, particularly for the implementation of Package 2: “Sustainable Use of Marine Protected Areas by Communities in the Sawu Sea”, which aims to contribute to the fulfillment of the EKP3K Blue Rating, especially Criterion 9: Standard Operational Natural Tourism Management Procedure (Number B45); Criterion 14: Area Resource Management (Number B59) and Criterion 15: Socio-Economic and Cultural Management (Number B66) related to research and development activities as well as tourism impact assessments. In implementing the activities in Package 2, YAPEKA consortium with the Center for Sustainability and Transdisciplinary Science Studies, Bogor Agricultural University (PKSKT-IPB), Penabulu Foundation and Indonesia Ocean Pride (IOP).

The COREMAP-CTI project activities in package 2 include: Development of small-scale infrastructure to support tourism, increasing the capacity of the community and area managers in the use of sustainable ecotourism and fisheries, and a feasibility study on investment for ecotourism in the Sawu Sea MNP, which is expected to be a baseline for the development of activities. ecotourism that can be developed in this area. In the COREMAP-CTI Package 2 project scheme, the Investment Feasibility Study for Ecotourism is expected to be used as material for the development of an ecotourism business model and SOP for Natural Tourism Management in Sawu Sea MNP.

Funding

This program is supported by ICCTF: COREMAP-CTI with total funding support of IDR 10,522,400,000.00