Letter to Streamkeepers

December 7, 2012 Letter to Streamkeepers

Hi Friends,

I'm definitely ok with anything I communicate to Streamkeepers being used and edited for the newsletter.

Today I attended yet another Integrated Coastal Management Planning Workshop for IMFARMC (Integrated Municipal Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Management Council) for the 5th District of Leyte. The 5th district includes six municipalities of coastal Leyte. Leyte is the province (like a state) and municipalities are like a county. The municipalities are broken into barangays which are like barios. Or like Seattle having areas such as Wallingford, Queen Anne, University and Freemont but on a much smaller scale. At some point a muni can have a 'city' with different government??? but I haven't got that part figured out yet.

My municipality of Inopacan has 20 baranguys, nine coastal and 11 upland. The national gov. has relegated coastal resource management (CRM) to the Municipal Local Government Units (LGUs). My position is with the LGU. Each municipality is charged with developing a CRM plan. As I said before ours is weak but at least we have one. Many don't. Many PCVs are starting from ground zero at their sites.

We have many challenges. Today's homework is to prioritize two project goals from our muni and get the write-up back to Visayan University next week so areas of focus and funding can be targeted. With municipal resources and funding seriously lacking it's funding through the universities that gets research, studies, assessments and recommendations done.

As in the US laws are passed at the national level such as 'municipalities will have sanitary landfills as of five years ago, ha, that is not happening, or munis will establish 10% of their municipal waters as MPAs and enforce regulations of these Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) but the national gov. provides no funding for this enforcement. Most munis have no patrol boats or if they do they have no money for gas for the boats and the only incentive for being an enforcer is a tee-shirt and a cut of the fine money if they ever catch an offender and the charge actually leads to a fine being paid.

The biggest problem and violation is commercial fishing in municipal waters, a no no. But charges never hold up in court because of boundary disputes. Things like political boundaries are decided by the elected legislative body/(city council) through passing of ordinances and these people are always looking out for votes, especially when its election time like now. I don't quite understand why, but for some reason this is why we are having difficulty in delineating our municipal water boundaries.

Politics are very interesting here. The same families stay in power for decades. The provincial governor of Leyte is at the end of his third three year term. He can't run again. His brother is up for election unopposed. His sister is the mayor of our neighboring muni of Baybay and was a congress woman previously. They create dynastic power and if they're corrupt which seems to be the case sometimes it is a bad situation. One fellow CRM PCV from another area had a very difficult time. Her mayor owned the commercial fishing boat that was doing illegal fishing using dynamite (destroys the coral reefs). No body does anything about it. Everyone looks the other way.

Enforcement and support for enforcement seems to be the going concern and at the forefront of all these management planning workshops. The big joke at our first conference with our prospective site bosses and counterparts was them asking if they could put us to work in CRM enforcement. Answer: no

I would like to see us focus on monitoring, doing regular assessments and establishing a centralized database so we can network and share the information.

We need easy to understand visual representations, like pie charts and graphs, we can present to fisherfolk that helps them understand the importance and value of MPAs to their livelihoods. They may not be highly educated but they're not stupid and they know fish populations are dwindling. How can we tell them they can't fish here or there where they used to fish or that we need to make the protected areas bigger without showing them why and the proof that it is really improving their fish catch and will continue to do so in the future?

I'll be proposing the idea of something like Streamkeepers with volunteer fisherfolk trained to do assessments. We don't need expensive instruments, just slates, snorkel gear and some gas for the boats. At first my boss, Cito, asked me if the people aren't being paid what's the incentive. After explaining the people would be those who care about the environment and future and they would know they were doing important work providing valuable information used in governmental decision making, he said yes, he thinks it's a good idea we can propose. YES!

We'll see where it goes.