In Timor-Leste, FAO Director-General visits Mangrove Study Center

Dili - As he wrapped up a two-day visit to Timor-Leste, FAO Director-General QU Dongyu visited the country’s well-known Mangrove Study Center, a coastal botanical garden covering an area of 52 hectares in Hera, east of the capital.

The Centre, which has been developing 16 species of mangrove tree, is managed by the non-governmental organization, Conservation of Flora and Fauna (CFF), established in 2014.

CFF also has a nursery to produce seedlings, as it plants an estimated 30,000 mangrove seedlings to develop or restore the degraded mangrove area. A total of 100,000 mangrove seedlings have been planted to date. 

After climbing to a viewpoint to overlooking the sea and the gardens, together with Timor-Leste’s Ambassador for Climate Change Adao Barbosa, State Secretary of Civil Protection Domingos Mariano Rai, CFF Coordinator Alito Rosa and other team members, the FAO Director-General planted a Mangrove seedling. 

The Director-General noted that the Centre had a “big opportunity to go digital and make its good work on conservation known to a wider range of audience,” adding that the country’s youth had great potential to use digitalization for mobilizing additional resources. He said FAO, as a technical specialized agency, would be willing to work together with the Government of Timor Leste to support such an initiative.

Ambassador Barbosa meanwhile acknowledged the longstanding partnership with FAO on climate change-related work. He said the country was willing to strengthen the partnership further through different funding windows, especially the Green Climate Fund (GCF), Global Environmental Facility (GEF), Adaptation Fund, and GEF Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF). 

The Center, which receives support from development agencies and government, often serves as a resource for botanists and students researching different species of Mangrove.

The impacts of climate change, with increasingly variable rainfall, are among the factors causing significant soil erosion, landslides and flash flooding.  The past two decades have seen serious degradation of the mangroves, which serve as a natural defense from the sea and help to reduce the vulnerability of the shoreline and coastal communities.