The Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security (CTI) has released an online GIS database of maps on environmental and economic change in the coastal and marine zones of Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste. The Coral Triangle (CT) Atlas presents decades worth of fisheries, biodiversity, natural resources and socio-economic information. The Atlas was developed through a collaboration between WorldFish, The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, Wildlife Conservation and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and was supported by the US Government’s US CTI Support Program. The future success of the Atlas as a management planning tool will be contingent on the engagement of the CTI partner countries in contributing and validating data. Long-term maintenance will be the responsibility of WorldFish, which is a member of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).
Photo: Rau Island by Emre Turak (http://www.reefbase.org)
Source: Biodiversity Policy & Practice
