Anemone and Clown Fish in Sumbawa Island.

Despite the fact that Sumbawa Island, Indonesia, lies within the Coral Triangle and that marine resources are the main food sources for the Island's inhabitant and direct resource for subsistence and livelihoods for fishermen, coral reefs here are poorly studied and lacked of conservation initiative. Meanwhile, coral reefs are threatened by unsustainable fishing and land use practices, and climate change.

Traditional Fishermen in Sumbawa Island.

This project aims to raise awareness amongst young people about coral reefs conservation and to provide insight on which method they consider as the most effective way influencing their awareness. To realize it, the objectives are:

(1) Youth's awareness before raising awareness activity are described as baseline data.

(2) Awareness raised amongst youth through environmental journalism training encompassing indoor, outdoor (snorkelling) and live-in with fishermen community activities.

(3) Method considered as the most effective way to influence young people awareness is understood.

This work will be a pioneer project to start capturing public attention to marine resources conservation in Sumbawa Island. The raising awareness activities are critical to foster pro conservation behaviour in the long run to preserve the rich biodiversity of the island. What is more, involving young people which will be the future stakeholders as beneficiaries is important for long term conservation goals.

Environmental journalism training will contribute to raised young people awareness and to developing youth journalistic skills. The outdoor and live-in with fisherman activities is hoped to make young people be more critical, sensitive, and analytical towards environmental issues particularly coral reefs problems.

Bulletin containing their writings regarding coral reefs conservation issues resulted from the training will be produced and disseminated to schools, public libraries, and governmental offices. Having the knowledge about basic environmental concept and journalistic skills, after the training, they will be able to disseminate conservations issues through their writings within their schools and local community. Through these, we hope to capture wider community attentions towards marine biodiversity conservation issues in the Island. The more people aware of the importance of nature conservation and coral reefs in particular, the bigger the chance of conservation programs (such as reef checks, coral reefs transplantation, promoting sustainable fishing, etc.) will get public's participation in the future.

Current stage of the project is project announcement and socialization to senior high schools, local mass media, and fishermen community. 20 selected young people will join the journalism training on 18 – 24 July 2010. More updates will come soon.