Marine tourism activities, particularly diving and snorkelling will bring negative impacts to marine ecosystems including coral reefs if implemented not following environment friendly principles. In contrast, diving and snorkelling provide an opportunity to educate divers and snorkelers in support of marine conservation and coral reefs protection. As it is known that coral reefs ecosystems and marine life are vital assets for the diving industry.
While the management plans of marine protected areas and diving destinations recognise the financing mechanisms marine tourism can provide, it is important to also acknowledge that there is a risk of negative environmental impacts. Anchoring, direct contact or wildlife harassment, waste mismanagement or chemical discharge, to name a few, can all lead to coral cover loss or disease, and must be addressed as part of the management of dive destinations, especially protected areas. Green Fins, a conservation management approach established in 2004, led by The Reef-World Foundation (RWF) in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), leads to a measurable reduction in the negative environmental impacts associated with marine tourism. Green Fins provides the only internationally recognised environmental standards for diving and snorkelling, and has been adopted by 15 countries to date, offering strategic outreach and capacity building to governments and a robust assessment system for the marine tourism industry to measure compliance. Green Fins has been implemented in Indonesia by the Coral Triangle Center (CTC) since 2011, and currently spans across 14 key sites nationally.
RWF, in collaboration with the CTC, and the Coordinating Body on the Seas of East Asia (COBSEA) welcomes you to a National Green Fins Workshop on 18-19th February 2025 in Jakarta. This workshop brings together stakeholders from Indonesian government agencies and the global Green Fins network to create a roadmap for Green Fins implementation in Indonesia. The roadmap will be a multiyear plan to expand Green Fins activities and build capacity for resource managers across all key sites in Indonesia, and inform parallel efforts for Green Fins globally. Through this workshop, governments, non-government organisations, and marine tourism industry stakeholders will be able to identify and target site-specific threats in order to protect key areas to ensure the future of Indonesian marine ecosystems. The second day of the workshop will also be an opportunity for a learning exchange with the global Green Fins network to explore strategies and financing mechanisms from the experience in the regional and global level in sustaining the Green Fins initiative.
This workshop is part of a current agreement that RWF has in place with the IUCN under their Blue Natural Capital Financing Facility (BNCFF) and working alongside project partners COBSEA and CTC. This project titled “Unlocking sustainable marine tourism businesses using Green Fins as a resource for MPA conservation” is focussing on Green Fins in Indonesia but has wider implications from the outputs that we intend to roll out globally upon completion of the project in March 2025.
