Description

It is common knowledge among farming and land management practitioners that agriculture is often the cause for land degradation because of the conversion of natural landscapes and vegetation to agricultural lands. In Palau, taking into consideration its Small Island Developing State (SIDS) categorization, the degradation of land also has a negative impact on its reefs, thus also affecting fisheries and gleaning. However, taro cultivation is an 800 year old practice, in danger of being put out of practice due to modernization, that has been tested by researchers to prove to be an effective sediment filter with the same sediment trapping capacity as mangroves. The women of Ngaraklidm organization had a mission to revive the practice, not for environmental reasons, but for cultural and social reasons. It was after they had finished the SGP project that the study supported the protection and promotion of reviving, restoring, and maintaining taro fields and promoting cultivation to ensure that the taro fields are a secondary buffer (with the mangroves) to protect reefs and important fish nursing and spawning grounds.