Mangrove Care Forum Bali

The methodology and materials of environment education will be adapted to local context (language, case studies and photos) and be part of the regular school curriculum.

The Mangrove Care Forum Bali, in collaboration with Universities, Ministry of Forestry and experts in the conservation fields, will develop modules that can be incorporated and accepted by all levels of participants.

[3] The programme to clean up the beaches had already started in March 2013 with daily activities involving students and the community at large, with the aim of reaching 1,373.5 hectares of mangrove in 5 villages in Benoa Bay.

For centuries, the Indonesian people have relied on the resources provided by the mangroves, for firewood, charcoal, tannin, dyes, food and beverages, medicine, pole and timber.

Now, millions of hectares of mangrove forests are lost to agriculture, oil palm plantations and fish farms, making coastal communities vulnerable to the force of tropical storms and loss of livelihood and products.

In 2011, the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) detected 23 tropical cyclones off the coast, which produced high speed winds, heavy rains, and storm surges that caused flooding and structural damage to buildings and coastal infrastructure.

The entire coastline is protected by an extensive coral reef system that runs continuously apart from a very narrow (200 metre) channel at the harbour entrance at the northern tip of the Benoa Peninsula.

The human feature of the Bay is the Benoa Port facility located on reclaimed land in the middle of the estuary, and the connecting causeway that stretches 3 kilometres north to the mainland.

There are many fresh water rivers flowing into the estuary, predominantly those draining the central plains and mountain ranges to the north, and to a lesser extent from the southern Bukit Plateau.

Three of the fresh water rivers that enter Benoa Bay from the north originate in the agricultural heartland of Bali and reach the estuary after travelling through the highly populated urban centre of Denpasar.