Welcome to the Earth Hour global community!

Looking back at the last 12 issues of our monthly e-newsletter, I am surprised that the events we covered all happened within just one year.

With our colleagues in Wakatobi, Indonesia, we learned how to tag tunas in Indonesia while our WWF Pacific colleagues gained more migratory data from tagging sea turtles in Fiji. WWF Malaysia launched the seafood guide, boosting awareness about how consumers can be part of a solution if they choose the right seafood. WWF Singapore and WWF Hong Kong motivated restaurants and consumers to serve sustainable seafood choices and to reduce shark fin options on restaurant menus. Meanwhile, WWF Philippines strengthened its private sector work, among others with Cebu Pacific, to significantly support effective management in Tubbataha National Park. With our support, small-scale hand line tuna projects are underway in support of better tuna management and harvesting practices. The low carbon tourism initiative, led by our WWF Pacific colleagues from Fiji, and the Seafood Savers initiative spearheaded by WWF Indonesia are gaining traction and are facilitating the magnification of early examples of public-private partnerships. Discussions during an APEC sponsored meeting co-hosted by the Indonesian government between grouper farmers and experts from China on sustainable production and consumption, will see these parties continue to share information to transform the live reef food fish trade.

As a result of our good relations in Coral Triangle countries, collaboration in the context of our regional work and national government engagement has been going very well. The Philippine government launched an export levy on seafood which would support conservation at fishing grounds. It is very exciting to see the Pacific Island Forum keen to support further development of a “blue economy” for the Coral Triangle Initiative, the Malaysian government spearheading important discussions on “blue carbon” and private sector roles for the Coral Triangle at the Business Forum, and the Indonesian government now ready to launch the formal Coral Triangle Initiative regional secretariat.

Our programme was reviewed this year, and based on important input and feedback which we received from our partners, we drafted a new 3-year programme. The regional programme will focus even more on the mobilization of the private sector for the transformation of unsustainable practices in the seafood and tourism sector.

The WWF Coral Triangle Programme team is looking forward to collaborating with you in the New Year.

Help WWF’s efforts to protect the Coral Triangle by buying a virtual spot in this amazing region: www.panda.org/mycoraltriangle