CTI-CFF Interim Regional Secretariat's Coral Triangle Day 2014 Message

Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to send warm greetings to all CTI-CFF colleagues who must now be preparing the activities marking the Coral Triangle Day (CT-Day) 2014. You may recall that in 2012 in Putrajaya, Malaysia, our Ministers have endorsed the 9th of June as the CT-Day.

Looking back at the last two years when CT-Days were celebrated, I express my warmest appreciation to those who have consistently devoted themselves in organizing so many commemoratory events forging ties among CT-6 Countries, Partners and people living in the Coral Triangle area.

We have made a great success in the previous CT-Days events. The second CT-Day in 2013 was celebrated in a total of 6 countries, in approximately 100 locations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Timor Leste. More than 30 local government and private businesses and by an estimated 30,000 people around the region also participated.

This year’s activities shall be more than an opportunity to make and treat CT-Day celebration as a repeated good practice. They shall be taken as a valuable momentum for anyone involved to strengthen bonds of friendship as member of CTI-CFF family while at the same time to reflect on how our works have advanced the betterment of coral reefs quality and enhancement of fish available to feed the people in Coral Triangle. We shall be grateful that we are given another year as a chance to learn more objectively about each other’s honest success and failure. And by doing these, I believe CT-Day this year will truly mean as a celebration of our socio-cultural and bio-physical diversity, wealth and richness of marine and coastal resources and dedication of committed people who work hard to put Coral Triangle activities as priority in national and local development agenda.

Right now, as the CTI-CFF is engaged in accelerating our efforts to implement the Regional and National Plan of Actions while focusing the works on priority action and activities I am encouraging all CT-6 countries and partners to do something peculiar, exemplary and memorable on June 9, 2014. Activities can be similar with what we have done in the past years such as beach clean-ups, clean-up dives, mangrove planting, recycling programs, educational talks, puppet shows, coloring contests, sustainable seafood launches, mural painting contests, and other public outreach campaigns and many others.

However the understanding on why we have to do those activities and their relation with protection of coral reefs and other marine and coastal resources and increased stock of fish shall not be forgotten. 

CT-Day is a day to strengthen our commitment and efforts to address the grave threats to our coral reefs and other marine and coastal resources. We have been entrusted by people living in Coral Triangle area with responding to climate change-related, livelihood, food security and fishery problems they are facing. Each of us plays an essential role in our response.  I hope that CT-Day will be an inspiring reminder of the importance of our work and the solidarity of colleagues with whom we are privileged to serve. CT-Day is an open-sourced event, which means any individual, organization, institution, or establishment can organize anything they want in relation to the Coral Triangle and coral reefs protection.

As part of the regional celebration and to help show the world how we in this region are celebrating this one special day together, we encourage organizations holding CT Day activities to upload photos or videos of their events to the Facebook page of Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fishery and Food Security at https://www.facebook.com/CTICFF.

For more information, please contact Olivia Sope at osope@cticff.org.

Let’s all work together and spread the message of protecting the Coral Triangle to provide more fish for the world.

With best regards,

Prof. Ir. R. Sjarief Widjaja, Ph.D., FRINA
Chairman of CTI-CFF Interim Regional Secretariat/
Secretary General of Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries,
Republic of Indonesia