JAKARTA, Sept. 8, 2014 (ANTARA) -- The Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries (MMAF) partners with the World Bank and FAO to discuss the initiation of the Action Plan of the Global Marine Program. Indonesia was the chosen country by those two institutions given it is one of the countries consistently accelerating the development in the marine and fishery sectors as a whole, driven by the long-term strategy, the Blue Growth.

As a brief summary, the world will obviously face one of the big issues in the future; to fulfill the food necessity for approximately its 9 billion people by 2050. This challenge is ultimately in consequence of the complexity of the climate change impact, the condition of the uncertainty in the economic and finance sectors, and the strict competition in the use of the natural resources. Therefore, to overcome this challenge and to ensure that the world can double its food resilience, MMAF working with the World Bank and FAO believe that we need to respond, by executing integrated transition efforts, to turn the current world's economy into a sustainable, inclusive development and the efficient and effective use of natural resources.

Sharif C. Sutardjo, the Minister of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, explains that the importance of the Blue Economy paradigm in the national marine development is as the reflection of the growth, development, and environment synergy oriented to the triple helix model - a development model unifying the land and marine development by optimizing the use of technology, industry, and the natural resources (both land and marine).

Referring to the World Bank's and FAO's reports, by 2030, it is predicted that nearly two-thirds of the world's overall fishery consumption will be sourced from the fishery sub-sector which mostly relies on the Asia, including South Asia, Southeast Asia, China, and Japan is expected to be the ones obliged to fulfill the 70 percents of the global fishery demand.

The meeting is a follow-up for the Global Oceans Action Summit held in The Hague, the Netherlands, on April 2014. The Summit was held to strengthen the regional and international partnership in the marine and fishery sectors. Collaborating with the World Bank, MMAF develops its best efforts to achieve the
sustainable utilization of marine resources. With FAO, MMAF is agreed to identify the marine commodity development to increase the people's livelihood and to help eradicate the poverty.

Furthermore, Sharif added that he will initiate a consultative working group consisting of a number of nations, international organizations, and other international institutions. This group is the implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Blue Growth and the food resilience.




Editor: PR Wire
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