Certainly efforts must be continued to expand the area to reach the ideal level,"
Lombok Barat, West Nusa Tenggara (ANTARA News) - Indonesia continues expanding its sea conservation areas to increase water productivity and develop marine potentials with a clear direction in line with international expectations, an official from the fisheries and marine resource ministry said.

"The sea conservation areas are continuously expanded and until 2014 minimally five percent of our sea ecosystem will have been designated as conservation areas," the director general for coastal marine resources and small islands, Sudirman Saad, said at the opening of a discussion on small islands` adaptation to climate change here on Monday.

He said theoretically 30 percent of the sea ecosystem must be prepared for conservation in order to increase productivity of waters and develop their potential.

But due to various shortcomings and limits faced by the government and the Indonesian community so far the conservation area has remained relatively limited, he said.

"Certainly efforts must be continued to expand the area to reach the ideal level," he said.

Sudirman said Indonesia is a country with a lot of islands and therefore also has vast waters and so efforts to expand the conservation area could still be done.

Indonesia has also been encouraged to produce the world`s biggest marine and fisheries products and therefore real efforts must be continued especially to optimize its marine potentials.

As an archipelago with more than 17,000 islands and a coastline of 81,000 kilometer long Indonesia meanwhile is also vulnerable to the impact of climate change.

In view of that he said the ministry of fisheries and marine resources is also developing fishery development centers based on small islands especially in the eastern regions which have a large potential to produce fish and other biota products.

"As an illustration a small island in Kepulauan Seribu which is managed sustainably is able to produce around 30,000 tons of fish a year. If that potential is developed using models that have been tested environmental friendly the small islands could become sustainable centers of economic growth," he said.
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Editor: Aditia Maruli Radja
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