Map of Bintan Island with delineation of districts. May 2026. Courtesy of Pak Andi Zulfikar, Universitas Maritim Raja Ali Haji, Tanjungpinang.
The Repository on Coastal Ecosystems: Bridging Artistic, Scientific and Community-led Practices in the Riau Archipelago is an online educational tool that gathers, documents, and bridges different forms of knowledge relating to two coastal ecosystems: mangroves and corals.
Emerging from conversations with marine biologists at Universitas Maritim Raja Ali Haji in Tanjungpinang, and Nanyang Technological University and National University of Singapore, community members and practitioners in Bintan, and artists engaged in environmental research, the repository brings together three ways of knowing that are often kept apart: scientific research, community-based practices, and environmentally engaged artistic approaches.
In this way, the repository can be used as a resource for learning, teaching and exchange, helping students, practitioners, researchers, coastal communities and wider publics better understand why mangroves and corals matter, how they are threatened, how they are cared for, and how different forms of knowledge can support coastal stewardship in the Riau Archipelago. The repository should also be understood as a “living” platform: a continuous work in progress that will be added to, revised and reshaped over time as new insights, contributions and developments emerge.
To explore the repository, users can move through categories such as Ecosystems, Community Practices, Research and Resources, where they can browse posts on mangroves and corals, watch video interviews with collaborators, and search for specific content. The repository is available in both English and Bahasa Indonesia.
