NGOs focusing on environmental issues have urged the Bali administration to draft a bylaw that would protect the rights of traditional fishermen, who have been marginalized by massive coastal development on the island.
I Made Iwan Dewantama, manager of the Marine Protected Area Network program with Conservation International (CI) Indonesia, said the bylaw was crucial as a formal recognition of the rights of traditional fishermen to catch fish within a certain zone as their working area.
If farmers in Bali are protected with the subak traditional farming system, then fishermen should also be protected.
The fishermen have sovereignty over their working zone, and this should be legally recognized with a bylaw.
He said many of them had been marginalized by development taking place on the island’s coastal areas, where public beaches were turned into tourist resorts and other facilities. In some areas, the fishermen even have no space to park their traditional fishing boats.
The provincial government should learn from Raja Ampat regency, where the rights of traditional fishermen have been legally recognized.
The bylaw should also ensure that traditional fishermen be protected from the practices of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, he added.
Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing is rampant in Indonesia, aggravating the overfishing that has made life more burdensome for traditional fishermen, since they have to go further to find adequate amounts of fish.
According to Greenpeace’s recent report on the condition of the Indonesian ocean, the primary perpetrators of this illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in Indonesian waters and its exclusive economic zones are from Malaysia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand, the Philippines and China.
Suryadi Darmoko, from environmental group Walhi Bali, said that the current regulations had yet to favor fishermen’s rights and environmental conservation.
The massive development along some of the island’s coastal areas has not only marginalized poor fishermen, but also put the environment in danger.
He doubted the administration’s seriousness to control the conversion of seaside natural landscape. The administration easily issued development licenses for investors, even in conservation areas like Benoa Bay.
To improve the country’s marine sector, including enhancing the livelihoods of traditional fishermen, the NGOs also demanded provincial and regency administrations nationwide allocate a substantial budget for the sector.
CI Indonesia found that in most areas, budget allocations for the marine sector were below 1 percent of the total regional budgets.
This shows that the marine sector has yet to be a priority in national development, in spite of the great potential of marine resources Indonesia has, Dewantama said.
Indonesia is the largest archipelago in the world with 17,504 islands. Its coastline, at 95,181 kilometers, is the fourth longest in the world. Sixty-five percent, or 324, of its total 497 districts and cities are coastal, and around 80 percent of its population live in coastal areas.
Stretching between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, the archipelago has approximately 50,875 square-kilometers, or about 18 percent, of the world’s coral reefs.
2012 PT. Bina Media Tenggara