www.greenfins-thailand.org

Overview : Monitoring of the socio-economic impacts/benefits of coral reefs has been noted as a common and urgent need in the SE Asian region. As a contribution to, and in support of, relevant work undertaken in the region, the US counterpart contributions will be used to initiate a new activity called "Green Fins" by which a network of dive operators will be asked to offer tours according to a set of environmentally- friendly guidelines.

The dive operators will assist in surveying and keeping track of information on their customers with regard to their knowledge of and behaviour in the sea. In addition, the dive operators may help with monitoring coral reefs when they take customers on dive trips.

The "Green Fins" initiative will strengthen the involvement and role of dive operators as an important stakeholder and partner in the protection, conservation and sustainable use of coral reefs, and will raise the environmental awareness for coral reefs. In support of the "Green Fins" initiative, capacity building activities and training workshops will be organised as needed.

The Inauguration of the first ever Green fingers club of koh Samui was established on 10^th November 2009. This is part of the Islands focus on its “Green Island Project”, where over 200 hotels signed an M.O.U in 2008 along with the local Government. This was the first step in moving forward on Koh Samui Thailand, in regards to keeping the island green, recycling, reducing and reusing, taking its awareness not only to the hoteliers, but to the local community and schools where it all begins.

The Green fingers club has been set up to re generate the island, setting up their club, and directions were discussed today and approved, Khun Suraphong Veerityanong, Deputy Mayor of Koh Samui, Khun Ruegnam Jaikwang the president of THA Koh Samui, along with other support such as John Ens Deputy of the Green team THA, Shelley Pollack of GLOBAL MALA, and Tamarind springs, Mark form Tongsai Bay Resort and spa, Brent Martin General Manager of the Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui, Andreas Rubio General Manager of the Imperial Boat house Koh Samui.

The club will be given a piece of land by the local government to set up their Nursery for growing the indigenous trees of Koh Samui, create a centre for development and learning that will be open for all the main support for this will come form the Tessaban ( local Government) who have major projects on the go on koh samui, its combing forces for the better of mother nature.

Seed collection has began and on their field trips they will begin tocollect as much as they can and store them for the future, EM Effective Microorganism is being produced Island wide again not much has been told or written about this, composting and many other green initiatives will now be showcased as part of the Green Island image on Koh Samui.

The Green School project or is known as the Low Carbon School project is established to support schools in Samui to sustainably go green. There are 3 main purposes including giving all information about the environment to schools and students, managing the activities in the school as; recycling the garbage as reduce, reuse and recycle, energy saving, water saving and waste water treatment etc as well as working with a local community closely.

The first inspections gave us an indication that the school curriculum did not include any form of education on the Environment and recycling

THA- Hotels+ Resorts How we shall apply our hotel project in regards to the school Low Carbon School Project

For the past 4-8 years most hotels have been recycling some even longer, Each hotel was a single unit,Through THA we have worked to combine our efforts/forces to have a system in place.To work under certain guide lines.