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Pro­ject de­tails Phil­ip­pines

Pro­ject in­form­a­tion

Report by Gloria C. Diaz

Our pro­ject, little as it may seem in the over­all na­tional cov­er­age be­cause of the se­lec­ted areas we fo­cused on, it has con­trib­uted in the na­tional pro­gram.

The pro­ject aimed to build ca­pa­cit­ies of the Fish­er­ies and Aquatic Re­sources Man­age­ment Coun­cils (FARMCs) as dy­namic and ef­fect­ive part­ners of local gov­ern­ment units for in­teg­rated coastal zone man­age­ment. Activ­it­ies were fo­cused on the crit­ical role of the fish­er­folk in achiev­ing sus­tain­able use of coastal and mar­ine re­sources as mem­bers of the FARMC. The pro­ject sup­ports the na­tional pro­gram for FARMCs of the Bur­eau of Fish­er­ies and Aquatic Re­sources (BFAR).

The pro­ject fo­cuses on the crit­ical role of the stake­hold­ers, par­tic­u­larly the fish­er­folk in achiev­ing sus­tain­able use of coastal and mar­ine re­sources, and provides spe­cial in­ter­ven­tions to give them op­por­tun­it­ies for mean­ing­ful par­ti­cip­a­tion as co-man­agers of the coastal area through the FARMCs. The FARMC is com­prised of rep­res­ent­at­ives from fish­er­folk or­gan­iz­a­tions, key mem­bers of the local gov­ern­ment unit and other stake­hold­ers in the coastal area and serves as a re­com­mend­at­ory body to the local gov­ern­ment in mat­ters con­cern­ing the man­age­ment of the coastal area. The FARMCs also seek to put in place policy re­form meas­ures and cre­ate a policy en­vir­on­ment con­du­cive to the sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and man­age­ment of the mu­ni­cipal wa­ters.

In the past six years the or­gan­iz­ing of FARMCs reached its crit­ical mass and now we have or­gan­ized the FARMCs in 99% of the coun­try’s 924 coastal mu­ni­cip­al­it­ies and cit­ies. Ad­di­tion­ally, we have also or­gan­ized more than 150 FARMCs in in­land and up­land areas bor­der­ing lakes, rivers, marshes and other fresh­wa­ter bod­ies of wa­ter.

As a na­tional of­ficer for the im­ple­ment­a­tion of the FARMC pro­gram, the na­tion­wide cov­er­age in 7,107 is­lands speak­ing dif­fer­ent lan­guages can be very daunt­ing. But the pro­ject provided me with unique op­por­tun­it­ies to at­tend FARMC meet­ings on site and to be able to guide them on how to re­spond ap­pro­pri­ately to is­sues con­front­ing the mu­ni­cipal wa­ters. Some­times the FARMC it­self provide in­nov­at­ive solu­tions way bey­ond our ex­pect­a­tions.

 

Fisheries Management

The pi­lot strategies that we im­ple­men­ted in the three pro­ject sites par­tic­u­larly the Nemo was very novel at the same time full of chal­lenges. I wanted it to be owned by the com­munity as it was the only way that the whole strategy can be suc­cess­ful. Thus, con­trary from the usual way of do­ing stock as­sess­ments, I de­signed that the fish­er­folk them­selves gen­er­ate the data from their daily fish catch. This was to en­sure that they trust the data un­like when re­search­ers gather data, the fish­er­folk do not trust the data gen­er­ated be­cause they ac­cuse re­search­ers of “draw­ing the data on the table,” it means they think that re­search­ers only gen­er­ate the fig­ures when they are already sit­ting on the table. Hav­ing them gather the data means that they can at­test to the vera­city of the data.

This happened in the com­munity data present­a­tion and ana­lysis after one year of data gath­er­ing by the Aroroy FARMC. It proved my hy­po­thesis that fish­er­folk will de­fend the ac­cur­acy of data that they them­selves gathered, and that they trust the pro­cess. Hav­ing trust in the basis of their de­cisions also pro­mote co­oper­a­tion in the en­su­ing pro­cesses such as the for­mu­la­tion of res­ol­u­tions and other policy meas­ures for fish­er­ies man­age­ment, which we were able to suc­cess­fully do in Aroroy.

The aim of Nemo was for them to know their re­sources for in know­ing comes ap­pre­ci­ation and from ap­pre­ci­ation, caring for these re­sources and from caring, tak­ing ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion to en­sure that these re­sources are sus­tained.

Im­me­di­ately after the na­tional of­fice is­sued the memor­andum for the im­ple­ment­a­tion of fish catch by the FARMCs, Davao Re­gion in Mindanao im­ple­men­ted the fish catch train­ing. The Bicol Re­gion in South­ern Luzon fol­lowed. We ex­pect oth­ers to fol­low suit. By now we have many FARMCs gath­er­ing their fish catch already. It is re­mark­able that the Local Gov­ern­ment Units are fully sup­port­ing the pro­gram.

 

Greening the Shorelines, Setting a New World Record

Spe­cial Pro­ject – On-site Train­ings, so called SPOT, are site-spe­cific pro­jects to equip the tar­get sites with the ne­ces­sary tech­nical skills and know-how on the sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and man­age­ment of the coastal areas were provided through train­ing/​work­shops de­livered by com­pet­ent re­source speak­ers from the pro­ject’s pool of ex­perts

In the SPOT on man­grove man­age­ment that we star­ted way back in FARMC Phase I we were able to prove that we can make the fish­er­folk aware and to care about not only for the fishes at sea, but also on re­lated eco­sys­tems that af­fect fish­er­ies pro­ductiv­ity. Be­fore the FARMCs, BFAR has no pro­gram what­so­ever on the man­age­ment of man­grove forests be­cause it is un­der the jur­is­dic­tion of the De­part­ment of En­vir­on­ment. But in FARMC we can­not dis­reg­ard the man­groves just be­cause it is not un­der BFAR’s jur­is­dic­tion. So in the FARMC Pro­ject SPOT on man­groves we taught them about man­groves and how to man­age the man­grove areas. From the SPOT of FARMC I we were able to es­tab­lish that fish­ers can take a re­spons­ib­il­ity over the man­groves– and do something about it to im­prove their coastal en­vir­on­ment and en­hance their fish­er­ies. We were able to mo­bil­ize coastal com­munit­ies in re­for­est­ing their wet­lands, to­gether with stu­dents and vo­lun­teer groups.

In 2008 we in the Na­tional FARMC Pro­gram Man­age­ment Cen­ter made man­grove plant­ing into a na­tional pro­gram by launch­ing the first ever na­tion­wide sim­ul­tan­eous plant­ing of man­groves as a fish­er­ies pro­ductiv­ity en­hance­ment, biod­iversity con­ser­va­tion and cli­mate change ad­apt­a­tion strategy. The FARMCs led the plant­ing activ­it­ies and were joined by other agen­cies, the po­lice force, vo­lun­teer groups, the me­dia and even the mil­it­ary. We were plant­ing man­groves at the rate of half mil­lion trees per year. In the up­land FARMCs planted forest trees in wa­ter­shed areas. By 2011 we were able to plant more than two mil­lion man­groves! This is equi­val­ent to more than two hun­dred hec­tares re­for­es­ted dur­ing the period.

Amaz­ingly, today man­grove plant­ing has be­come a pri­or­ity pro­gram of the BFAR --- just very re­cently. In July this year, BFAR has ordered all its re­gional of­fices to in­tensify its sup­port for man­grove re­for­est­a­tion activ­it­ies na­tion­wide.

 

On Whales and Dolphins

We had a spe­cial fo­cus on en­dangered spe­cies in FARMC Phase I, train­ing our FARMCs about mar­ine mam­mals and how the FARMCs can con­trib­ute to sav­ing stran­ded an­im­als along the beach. We had a very pos­it­ive re­sponse from the FARMC in that ini­tial train­ing. Thus, we pur­sued that ini­ti­at­ive through the years, spread­ing the pro­gram in a na­tional scale as my of­fice con­tin­ued its co­oper­a­tion with the Ocean Ad­ven­ture and with the Uni­versity of the Phil­ip­pines In­sti­tute of En­vir­on­mental Sci­ence and Met­eor­o­logy, train­ing all Re­gional FARMC Co­ordin­at­ors in the coun­try and loc­al­iz­ing the mar­ine mam­mal strand­ing work­shops to Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao with the FARMCs among the ma­jor par­ti­cipants.

Thus we were able to suc­cess­fully es­tab­lish local strand­ing re­sponse net­works na­tion­wide, res­ult­ing to in­creased aware­ness about these en­dangered spe­cies, an in­creased ef­fort in re­spond­ing to strand­ing in­cid­ents of dol­phins and whales and even other large mar­ine ver­teb­rates like the whale­shark as well as mar­ine turtles and sharks. To date, we have trained more than 1,500 per­son­nel from our local FARMCs and from vari­ous sec­tors. Among these are med­ical man­age­ment train­ings es­pe­cially de­signed for veter­in­ari­ans to at­tend to med­ical re­quire­ments and nec­ropsy.

 

Incentives

In the past two years we in BFAR were able to suc­cess­fully im­ple­ment an in­cent­ive sys­tem for the FARMCs – by way of identi­fy­ing the Out­stand­ing FARMC in the Phil­ip­pines. The Search for Out­stand­ing FARMC aims to re­cog­nize the in­valu­able con­tri­bu­tions of the FARMCs to sus­tain­able coastal re­sources and fish­er­ies de­vel­op­ment and to pro­mote this par­ti­cip­at­ory man­age­ment tool.

For sev­eral years be­fore that, we in the Na­tional FARMC Tech­nical Work­ing Group (for which I am the Chair­per­son) worked on the cri­teria on how we will identify the best FARMC. The Levels of FARMC De­vel­op­ment that we helped for­mu­late in FARMC II, it was the basis for the cri­teria in identi­fy­ing the Out­stand­ing FARMC that the De­part­ment of Ag­ri­cul­ture ap­proved. The in­cent­ive sys­tem provides the out­stand­ing FARMC with a cash award that the FARMC can use for their many activ­it­ies. Be­cause of the suc­cess­ful pro­gram, BFAR doubled the ori­ginal cash award and on top of the cash prize of three hun­dred thou­sand pesos the Dir­ector gave a mil­lion-peso pro­ject to sup­port the fish­er­ies law en­force­ment activ­it­ies and live­li­hood of the first ever win­ner for Out­stand­ing FARMC. The FARMC people were teary-eyed with joy as they re­ceived the un­ex­pec­ted prize. The Pres­id­ent of the Re­pub­lic of the Phil­ip­pines gave the awards to the FARMC in the Pres­id­en­tial Palace. Now the FARMCs are smil­ing… and the may­ors too!

 

Making A Difference

The pro­ject’s spe­cial fo­cus was on provid­ing aware­ness and bet­ter un­der­stand­ing among re­source users and mo­bil­iz­ing the par­ti­cip­a­tion of the coastal com­munit­ies in the con­ser­va­tion of mar­ine re­sources and in pro­tect­ing biod­iversity. It aimed to con­trib­ute to the eco­nomic up­lift of the com­munity through the en­hance­ment of man­age­ment meas­ures for sus­tain­able fish­er­ies, in the pro­cess build­ing re­spons­ible be­ha­viour among the fish­ing com­munit­ies for the pro­tec­tion and sus­tain­able use of mar­ine re­sources. It spread the be­ne­fits of the pro­ject in the ad­ja­cent com­munit­ies through a strategy that is based on build­ing core lead­ers with a heart for the en­vir­on­ment and hu­man­ity, re­cog­niz­ing the in­ter­de­pend­ence between people and the mar­ine en­vir­on­ment and find­ing solu­tions to is­sues af­fect­ing their live­li­hood and well-be­ing.

The pro­ject also pi­loted spe­cific fish­er­ies man­age­ment in­ter­ven­tions that have been proven to be of sig­ni­fic­ant im­port­ance. The de­vel­op­ment of the soft­ware and the ex­per­i­ences and les­sons learned from the pi­lot runs in the three pro­ject sites en­abled BFAR to de­velop a na­tional pro­gram for FARMC Data­base and Fish Catch Mon­it­or­ing with some changes and en­hance­ments on the soft­ware and the train­ing pro­gram. It has already is­sued spe­cific in­struc­tions for its im­ple­ment­a­tion na­tion­wide. It has also ad­op­ted the Core Group Build­ing com­pon­ent as a ne­ces­sary in­ter­ven­tion in build­ing lead­er­ship cap­ab­il­it­ies and com­mit­ment among the FARMCs. BFAR is fully sup­port­ing these ini­ti­at­ives and has already con­duc­ted na­tional train­ings for the FARMC Co­ordin­at­ors with full fund­ing from the agency. Re­gional Train­ings to loc­al­ize the FARMC Data­base and FARMC Fish Catch Mon­it­or­ing Pro­gram were already be­ing done at the time of the pre­par­a­tion of this re­port.

Project partner:

Ocean Beacons

Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR)

Background:

FARMCs em­phas­ize em­power­ment of the ma­jor stake­hold­ers in the coastal com­munity, par­tic­u­larly the fish­er­folk.

 

Part of the trainings is to enhance knowledge on endangered species.
Part of the trainings is to enhance knowledge on endangered species.
Near Sagay fishing activities are controlled by manned watch towers.
Near Sagay fishing activities are controlled by manned watch towers.
Fish catch data are collected directly at the landing sites.
Fish catch data are collected directly at the landing sites.
Core Group Building
Core Group Build­ing pro­motes the ex­pert­ise of senior mem­bers of these bod­ies in their role in par­ti­cip­at­ory coastal re­gion man­age­ment. .