WWF

The USAID funded OurFish OurFuture National Inception Workshop for PNG, was held yesterday in Port Moresby officiated by U.S Charge d’Affaires for PNG, Joseph Zadrozny.

He said the implementation approach for the program is unique and that it will use a community-centered approach to ensure maximum impact with the people and communities being the core focus of the program.

This initiative is an effort to help serve as a possible defence against the negative effects of climate change and other environmental disasters.

Like most coastal communities in the Pacific, there is an increasing concern over human induced changes affecting fish and other marine life, water quality, erosion and threatening food security.

These communities know too well that the demand for both personal and commercial uses has resulted in the over cultivation of mangroves.

Kjell Inge Roekke, a former fisherman who made his fortune in the oil industry, will begin by funding a research ship that will remove plastic from the ocean.

It will operate in partnership with the environmental organisation WWF.

He joins other billionaire philanthropists including Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Mark Zuckerberg.

Mr Roekke has an estimated wealth of $2bn (£1.6bn).

"I want to give back to society the bulk of what I've earned," he said in an interview with the Aftenposten newspaper. "This ship is a part of that."

Sea level rise is an effect of climate change which is causing coastal impact on the islands.

Mbuke Group of Islands is located in Ward One of Pobuma Local Level Government.

Head of the local NGO Marine Environment Awareness and Response Team, former WWF Marine Officer Selarn Kaluwin, said they’ve started to relocate due to sea level rise and population growth.

WWF’s Living Blue Planet Report has highlighted enormous losses in the world’s oceans – but this was not just about “losing some fish and turtles”, according to John Tanzer, director of WWF International marine programme.

“It is about the unravelling of the fabric of an ecosystem that sustains life on Earth.”

Tanzer said while Nasa’s photos taken from space in 2015 showed the same blue planet that Nasa had captured in 1972, “we know the planet has changed substantially and perhaps irrevocably in the intervening four decades”.