Restoring coastal ecosystems - a case study Malang and Gresik regency, Indonesia

Abstract

Fisheries provide livelihoods and income for many Indonesian communities and play a very important role in contributing to national economic development. However, excessive fishing effort, and destructive fishing methods can lead to less fish at sea, which in turn could adversely affect the life and livelihood of coastal communities. the role of coastal and marine ecosystem for human well-being tends to decrease every year. This is because of the weakness capacity of the country to manage retrieval of coral, sea sand mining, overfishing, pollution, urban development, conflict land uses and logging of mangrove. The coastal area is a main supporting the livelihood of fishermen. If coastal areas are degraded, then the fisherman’s life is threatened. Therefore, It is very important to carry out conservation activities which address the issues of life of fishermen in the coastal region. The government of east java province has been trying to overcome the damage to coastal ecosystems with various package programs, such as rehabilitation mangrove, coral reef and sea grass. However, there have been no significant improvement progress in the coastal areas. The aim of this research is to formulate restoration strategies for integrated coastal ecosystem management to support the Indonesian policy called master plan for acceleration of economic development. It includes formulate restoration strategy based on restoration optimation. To formulate restoration optimation, an statistical approach is needed with assumption that restoration will consider the relationship between community participation and ecosystem restoration. PLS (Partial Least Square) is a method for constructing predictive models when the factors are many and highly collinear (Tobias 1995). In this research PLS was used to calculate the relationship between community participation and coastal ecosystem restoration. Whereas, to analyse the priority of which ecosystems should be prioritized to be solved, it is used AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process). The results of this research finds that ecosystem restoration should involve community participation, government and private sector. To implement integrated coastal ecosystem restoration, a forum or institution is needed to realize such collaboration by considering the priority program should be prioritized begin from mangrove, coral reef, estuary to sea grass.