LEI’s Marine Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Devel­op­ment Work Team was estab­lished by LEI exec­u­tive Direc­tor on Octo­ber 4. The work team was estab­lished as one of the results pro­duced in the 2009 LEI National Meet­ing (Rak­er­nas). The 5 LEI team mem­bers imme­di­ately con­duct dis­cus­sions via email to set up the strate­gic plan of 2010–2014 marine cer­ti­fi­ca­tion devel­op­ment. The strate­gic plan doc­u­ment at the moment is in draft 3 status.

As the draft is being com­piled, on Novem­ber 2–4, 2009 the National Water Con­ser­va­tion (LKPN) held an infor­ma­tion dis­sem­i­na­tion activ­ity and work pro­gram coor­di­na­tion. The heads of Marine and Fish­ery offices from all over Indone­sia were invited in the national event. At first, LEI was not invited to the event but after explain­ing that LEI has a work team of marine con­ser­va­tion, the head of LKPN was more than happy to include LEI in the atten­dance list.

The impor­tant infor­ma­tion acquired by the marine cer­ti­fi­ca­tion devel­op­ment team when attend­ing the above national event was: 1) in 2009 a total sea area of 13.5 mil­lion ha has been stated as con­ser­va­tion area and in 2014 the total area is expected to expand to reach 15.5 mil­lion ha. In addi­tion to pro­vid­ing pro­tec­tion for the species and habi­tat, the con­ser­va­tion area will also bring a pos­i­tive impact of rais­ing the local com­mu­nity pros­per­ity. The local community’s pros­per­ity can be raised through marine biota exploita­tion, under the con­di­tion that the exploita­tion must be respon­si­bly and care­fully car­ried out. The team also obtain the infor­ma­tion that the Min­is­ter of Marine and Fish­ery, Fadel Moham­mad, has the ambi­tion to make his Depart­ment as one of the high bud­get Depart­ment. In this way the depart­ment will have the capac­ity to make Indone­sia as one of the biggest fish pro­duc­ers in the world. This pro­vide a guar­an­tee that only qual­i­fied and envi­ron­men­tally friendly prod­ucts Indone­sia will offer to the global market.

When attend­ing LKPN’s event, on Novem­ber 2, 2009, the head of Marine Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Devel­op­ment Team, Fadil Nadila, con­ducted a mail­ing list launch­ing on the exis­tence of his team to other milling lists of which are focused on sea and nat­ural resources issues. Through the mail­ing lists, the marine and fish­ery stake­hold­ers wel­come the team while remind­ing the team to make sure that the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion (LEI cer­ti­fi­ca­tion) that is going to be devel­oped will cre­ate no dis­crim­i­na­tion for the tra­di­tional community.

In addi­tion to the warm wel­come to the world of marine and fish­ery stake­holder, on Novem­ber 11, 2009 the team was invited to a national work­shop titled The final­iza­tion of Sus­tain­able Coral Fish Man­age­ment Strat­egy held by The Direc­torate Gen­eral of Marine, Coast­line and Small Island, the Coral Reha­bil­i­ta­tion and Man­age­ment Pro­gram in Jakarta.

The impor­tant infor­ma­tion dis­cussed in the work­shop includes prepa­ra­tion for Indone­sia to set up marine prod­uct cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem so that Indonesia’s marine prod­ucts can be accepted by the mar­ket that demands envi­ron­men­tally friendly goods. LEI is hop­ing that this can be a kick off towards LEI cer­ti­fied marine products.

LEI Marine Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Team meet­ing was sched­uled to con­duct its first meet­ing on Novem­ber 17 2009 to for­mulize strate­gic to raise fund and con­duct activities.