Universitas Hasanuddin (Unhas) actively collaborates with coastal communities, local government, schools, and international partners to conserve and restore shared aquatic ecosystems across South Sulawesi. Through research, community engagement, and capacity-building programs, Unhas promotes the sustainable management of seagrass, mangrove, and seaweed ecosystems that are essential for biodiversity, blue carbon storage, and coastal livelihoods.

A key example is the Seagrass Restoration and Ecosystem Services Research Group (SESREG) initiative in the Selayar Islands, conducted in partnership with the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI). The program brought together 87 students, local vocational schools, and Unhas lecturers and students to strengthen community awareness of seagrass conservation and blue carbon ecosystems. As a follow-up, the collaboration includes ecological monitoring and community interviews to generate evidence-based recommendations for seagrass conservation policies in Eastern Indonesia.

Unhas also works directly with coastal communities in Takalar to restore mangrove ecosystems. Through the Sobat Bumi Unhas program, students and local residents jointly carried out mangrove planting alongside disaster preparedness education, reinforcing the role of healthy coastal ecosystems in climate-change mitigation, shoreline protection, and community resilience.

In addition, the Faculty of Marine Science and Fisheries (FIKP) collaborates with the South Sulawesi Marine and Fisheries Agency (DKP Sulsel) and seaweed-farming communities in Punaga Village to develop a Seaweed Seedling Center. The program improves the quality of Kappaphycus alvarezii seedlings through enrichment technology, supporting sustainable seaweed cultivation while strengthening the productivity and livelihoods of local coastal communities.

At the international level, Unhas collaborates with Shanghai Ocean University and Guangdong Ocean University on marine ranching research and innovation. Implemented on Bone Tambung Island in the Spermonde Archipelago, the collaboration integrates scientific research, technological innovation, and ecosystem-based solutions to support sustainable marine resource management, food security, and marine ecosystem restoration.

Unhas extends this collaborative model from coastal to freshwater ecosystems through work around Lake Matano. As reported by local media, PT Vale Indonesia brought together Unhas academics and local communities to conduct joint biodiversity observation of the lake, one of Indonesia’s oldest and most ecologically distinctive freshwater systems. The collaboration brings an industry partner into direct, shared stewardship of the lake alongside academic researchers and the residents who depend on it, broadening Unhas’s community-collaboration model beyond the government- and NGO-partnered examples above to include private-sector co-responsibility for a shared aquatic ecosystem.

Through these collaborative initiatives, Unhas demonstrates a long-term commitment to maintaining shared aquatic ecosystems across South Sulawesi, working alongside the full range of actors with a stake in these environments: international development partners, government agencies, industry, schools, and the coastal and lakeside communities themselves. Whether seagrass, mangroves, seaweed, or a freshwater lake, each example reflects the same underlying principle — that protecting a shared resource requires shared responsibility, built through sustained local engagement rather than externally imposed conservation.