Workshop Highlights Crucial Role of Seagrass and Mangroves

7 August, 2023 - Seagrass is important for a lot of things that happens in the water as well as mangroves. If there is no seagrass, there would be no Dugong and Turtles.

This was the opening remarks by Mr Chanel Iroi, the Undersecretary Technical for the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Disaster Management of the Solomon Islands during the MACBLUE inception workshop held at the King Solomon Hotel on Wednesday last week.

In his opening address, Mr Iroi outlined the relevance of the MACBLUE project to the Solomon Island national policies and plans and stressed the work on blue carbon ecosystems is critical for the Solomon Islands meeting its Nationally Determined Contributions.

“The work we have done in the past we look at it in-depths and how we can best resolve all those policy stuff. Then we work in people’s context to look at work on the conservation of seagrass and how to manage it sustainably. This project is to help us in terms of strengthening our work on resource management”

Iroi also called for the integration of traditional knowledge within ocean governance, all while linking these efforts to national government policies.

“The project is important because it links to the work of the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Disaster Management and the work of seagrass and mangrove is linked to the Ministry of Forestry and the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources”

“It is a great opportunity and needs the cooperation of the government and other stakeholders. Our focus is of the country national policies that will be the end-result”.