Inside KePKAS

KOTA KINABALU: The State Tourism, Culture and Environment Ministry is planning to extend 2.031 million hectares of its Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) by 2025.Its Permanent Secretary Datuk William Baya said to date MPAs in Sabah only accounted for 7.2 per cent of the total area.“The Sabah Government is planning to add two more Marine Protected Areas by 2023, one each in the West Coast and East Coast of the State,” he said during the eighth Marine Protected Area Regional Exchange (MPA REX) and MPA Technical Working Group Meeting (MPA-TWG) welcoming dinner, here, Wednesday. Off Sabah waters, six marine parks have been gazetted under the Sabah Parks Enactment of 1984, totalling 973,155 hectares.William said the Sabah Government recognises the importance of marine areas, as the fisheries sector is worth 2.8 per cent of the State’s GDP, while the tourism sector contributes 10 per cent.“Sabah, recognised as one of the most biodiverse areas in the world, is a hotspot for eco-tourism. The number of visitors has been increasing by 7.6 per cent per year. “In fact, in 2018, we had a record of 3,879,413 (5.3 per cent) arrivals in Sabah, the highest number of visitors so far,” he said. William added that following the 2009 Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI) agreement, the Sabah Government, under the Tourism, Culture and Environment Ministry with its statutory body, Sabah Parks, were chosen as the focal points for the CTI-Malaysia National Plan of Action’s third goal, which is to be Malaysia’s stewards of MPAs. “In the 10 years we’ve been with the CTI, many strides were made in the protection of our marine areas, culminating with the gazettement of Tun Mustapha Park, Kudat in 2016,” he said, adding that it is currently the largest MPA in Malaysia with over 890,000 hectares.Meanwhile, Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security (CTI-CFF) Interim Executive Director, Dr Henra Yusran Siry, was confident that common approaches for the Coral Triangle Marine Protected Area System (CTMPAS) can be materialised.“It will help us focus our efforts on CTMPAs and possibly develop project proposals for funding support of various like-minded international organisations or financing institutions,” he said.The CTI-CFF is a 10-year plan and a multilateral partnership of the six Coral Triangle countries (CT6) - Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Timor-Leste and Solomon Islands.Its objective is to sustain extraordinary marine and coastal resources by addressing crucial issues such as food security, climate change and marine biodiversity.The MPA REX linked to MPA-TWG serves as CTI’s crucial monitoring element to assess the performance of the CT6 in terms of contribution towards attaining the goals of the CTI-CFF Regional Plan of Action. Source: Daily Express