Lida Pet-Soede
Lida Pet-Soede leads WWF's Coral Triangle Program in support of the goals developed by the six governments of the Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security. As a senior strategic conservation and fisheries management professional she has extensive experience in developing conservation programmes and collaborative networks and has a solid track record in achieving a marine conservation and sustainable fisheries agenda in Indonesia particularly. She has graduate degrees in fisheries biology and management, aquaculture and socio-economics of developing countries from the Wageningen Agricultural University in the Netherlands and a PhD. in Fisheries Biology and Management from the same school. In her spare time she takes her family diving on their live aboard www.thesevenseas.net and gives free pilates classes to her colleagues and neighbours.
In her work Lida motivates her teams and partners to think out of the box and she stimulates development of innovative approaches to wicked problems. Some recent examples include:
- Creating a Climate Change Adaptation Marketplace to facilitate earmarked funding to flow to climate change adaptation projects in the Coral Triangle region.
- Initiating the debate around benefits of a Blue Economy approach to support people, planet, and profit.
- Initiating the Coral Triangle Regional Business Forum as a venue for business and industry leaders from around the region and other parts of the globe to come together to develop innovative business solutions that are both economically profitable and environmentally sustainable. Three forums have resulted in significant government commitments or policies and various Public Private Partnerships.
- Trialing of new approaches to reducing fisheries footprints, especially for reduction of by-catch of juvenile tuna (target fish) and sea-turtles (non-target species).
- Supporting the Tourism Energy Efficiency Investment Programme pilot in Fiji and then facilitating its up-scaling to Bali, in support of conservation finance and coastal community livelihoods.
- Establishing an Asia Pacific Sustainable Seafood & Trade Network as a regional platform promoting responsible seafood production. The network is designed to promote improved stewardship of fisheries among the private and public sectors and advance seafood sustainability in the Asia-Pacific region.
- Initiating the Coral Triangle Day, which is an annual open-sourced event held every June 9, and which is officially recognised and endorsed by the Coral triangle governments. Although only in its second year, the Coral Triangle Day 2013 saw more than 60 individual Coral Triangle Day events taking place around the region. Participating countries this year included: Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Timor L’ Este, Solomon Islands, and Fiji with more than 30,000 people participating in Coral Triangle Day 2013.