Description: Indonesia is the world’s largest exporters of CITES-listed coral accounting for an estimated 90% of the global market, but following a two-year export ban on coral, Indonesia has the ambition to establish a robust system which can ensure traceability and legality of the trade, particularly for field implementation and monitoring. This project will provide resources to develop such a system and support progress towards a 100% coral culture scenario. It will promote improved identification and traceability of cultured corals through the development of practical tools for authorities to differentiate them from wild-collected specimens, primarily through the production of a cultured coral visual identification guide with supporting materials (e.g. video tutorials). This in turn will build capacity within Indonesia to more rapidly determine the legality of traded products; reducing illegal trade and ultimately promoting stewardship of healthy coral reef ecosystems. This project will also contribute to the evidence needs of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), the UK’s Scientific Authority, to conduct their non-detrimental findings on trade in Indonesian coral through a series of knowledge-sharing virtual workshops aimed at identifying current practices and protocols governing the mariculture of, and trade in, CITES-listed corals.
Objective: The overall aim of this project is to develop practical tools for CITES implementing officials to differentiate between maricultured corals and those which have been miss-declared as Source Code F. The objectives of the project will be to: 1.Establish effective UK government to Indonesian government engagement on coral tradethrough a series of knowledge exchange workshops. 2.Develop an in-depth understanding of current practices and protocols governing mariculture of, and trade in, CITES-listed corals from Indonesiato support the finalization of the UKs NDF. 3.Produce a non-specialist visual identification guide and supporting materials for the differentiation of maricultured and wild-collected coral which will be submitted to CITES.
Authors: K. A. Bradley, B. Cowburn, G. Reksodihardjo-Lilley, S. Yusri, J. K. Bluemel, and J. M. Murray
