April 2008

Reversing Environmental Degradation Trends in the South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand

The UNEP-GEF project entitled Reversing Environmental Degradation Trends in the South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand is a $34 million, 7-country project, addressing degradation from habitat loss, land-based pollution and over-exploitation of fisheries resources. Amongst its many innovations this project has made use of a new technology to enhance global awareness of the projects’ interventions.

A complex undertaking, the South China Sea project was launched in 2002 to create an environment at the regional level, in which collaboration and partnership in addressing environmental problems of the South China Sea, between all stakeholders, and at all levels is fostered and encouraged; and to enhance the capacity of the participating governments to integrate environmental considerations into national development planning.

Based on Google’s online Geographical Information System (GIS) known as Google Earth, the project utilized an innovative coding approach known as Keyhole Markup Language (KML) to create a permanent layer for the project on the Google Earth system. This work was featured in the official Google news and showcased by Google in its Google Earth Outreach Showcase - http://earth.google.com/outreach/showcase.html.

This is the first time in the history of the GEF that such a tool has been used to highlight achievements and successes of a project and to bring the world’s attention to global environmental problems in a specific region. The layer developed by this project uses Google Earth as the geographical search engine to provide an in-depth analysis of the South China Sea project and its’ many interventions. The work was highlighted by Google in its official news as “a great example of how to connect with a wide audience”.

By creating a KML layer on Google Earth, the project is able to provide a platform that allows users to the site to interactively access information on government ministries and departments, research institutions and universities involved in the implementation of the project activities. In addition, visitors to the site can also access information and data on over 135 mangrove, coral reef, seagrass, and wetlands sites of the South China Sea studied during the project.

For more information, please visit the project website at www.unepscs.org; or write to: