Guide launched to protect ecosystem

A TEACHERS’ guide has been prepared to teach marine environment and conservation at primary schools.
The United States government, through the US Agency for International Development (USAid), recently launched the guide in Kimbe.
“We can still make a difference by working together, before the biodiversity of Papua New Guinea’s ecosystem is damaged or destroyed irretrievably,” USAid officer Robert Pierce said.
“This is what makes our cooperation on protecting Papua New Guinea’s biodiversity so vital.
“USAid aims to shape a future in which both people and biodiversity thrive via improvements in economic prosperity, social equity and environmental stewardship.” Pierce reaffirmed the American people’s commitment to the wellbeing of people of the Pacific Islands.
Through its Pacific-American Climate Fund (PACF), USAid awarded a grant in Oct 2017 to Mahonia Na Dari Research Education and Conservation Centre (MND).
It leveraged its tried-and-tested marine environmental education programme (Meep) to develop a curriculum to teach and inspire students to champion marine conservation.
The working committee, which included officials of the Department of Education, ensured the Meep curriculum was aligned with its national curriculum.
The marine environmental education curriculum approach and materials can therefore be rolled out to the rest of the country and to other countries within the Coral Triangle, which is also known as the ‘Amazon of the Seas’.
The Kimbe Bay marine awareness project covered three districts, reaching more than 10,000 students with 120 students trained in Meep-intensive courses.
The bay is considered a key biodiversity area which hosts more than half the world’s species of hard corals and over 900 species of fish.
USAid has implemented 28 resilience projects in 12 Pacific nations with six of those projects located in Papua New Guinea through the Pacific-American Climate Fund.