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The Arafura and Timor Seas (ATS) is part of the North Australian Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem (LME), which is a tropical sea lying between the Pacific and Indian Oceans and extending from the Timor Sea to the Torres Strait and including the Arafura Sea and the Gulf of Carpentaria. The region is adjacent to the Coral Triangle, which hosts the world’s highest marine biodiversity and contains some of the pristine and highly threatened coastal and marine ecosystems. At the regional scale, the ecosystems of the ATS play an important economic and ecological role in the littoral nations bordering the Arafura and the Timor Sea: Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Australia, and Papua New Guinea.
The marine environment in the ATS region is in serious decline, primarily because of overharvesting and other direct and indirect impacts of anthropogenic stresses and global climatic changes. Fisheries in the ATS region represent an extremely complex productive, socioeconomic sector, with multiple actors, target species sought, and technology used. In addition to climate change, unsustainable harvesting, Illegal, Unreported Unregulated (IUU) fishing, and bycatch are having significant impacts on the populations of key marine species in the ATS region, particularly globally threatened coastal marine megafauna including migratory, rare, and threatened species of turtles, dugongs, seabirds/shorebirds, sea snakes, cetaceans, sharks and rays. Lastly, potential sources of marine pollution in the ATS region include marine debris, marine-based pollution from oil and gas activities, as well as waste from fishing and shipping vessels.
ATSEA-2 is the 2nd phase of the GEF-financed, UNDP-supported ATSEA program, building upon the foundational results realized in the first phase of the ATSEA program, covering Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea, and Australia. This 5-year project will support the implementation of the following governance and environmental objectives of the ATS regional Strategic Action Program: (i) Strengthening of ATS regional governance; (ii) Recovering and sustaining fisheries; (iii) Restoring degraded habitats for sustainable provision of ecosystem services; (iv) Reducing land-based and marine sources of pollution; (v) Protecting key marine species; and (vi) strengthening adaptation to the impacts of climate change.
The ATSEA-2 project will support the protection of priority coastal and marine habitats and the conservation of protected species. The first step will be a regional stock-taking of key biodiversity habitats, including coral reef, seagrass, and mangrove ecosystems, and identifying priority conservation areas. This will be used to support the designing of a resilient network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), covering an estimated 1.5 million hectares and extending from the Lesser Sunda region to the south coast of Timor-Leste, southeast Aru Islands in Indonesia, and over to Kolepon Island located at the far eastern reaches of the Arafura Sea, near Merauke.
The project is also providing resources to support efforts at strengthening regional biodiversity information management systems. Furthermore, the potential impacts of climate change on the biodiversity of the coastal and marine ATS ecosystems will be addressed, and adaptive strategies will be integrated into the protected area management plans and regional action plans for enhanced protection of key species.
The UNDP Timor-Leste and Directorate General of Fisheries (DGF) of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fishery (MAF) is seeking to engage a national consultant (capacity assessment specialist) to support the undertaking of a capacity and needs assessments of the relevant government ministries and/or agencies in strengthening institutional and human resource capacity towards integrated approaches in natural resource management, coastal and marine biodiversity conservation through protection of habitat and species in Arafura and Timor Seas portion of Timor-Leste