Wednesday, October 01, 2008 RP facing fish shortage By Henrylito D. Tacio
IF WITHIN five to ten years from now you won't see fish anymore in your plate or restaurant menus, don't be surprised. Blame the current surging population for that.
Currently, the Philippines is home to almost 90 million people. "About 62 percent of the population lives in the coastal zone," said the Philippine Environment Monitor published by the World Bank.
The Philippines has one of the highest population growth rates in the world, with an average annual rate of increase of 2.75 percent during the last century.
Estimates show that if the present rapid population growth and declining trend in fish production continue, only 10 kilograms of fish will be available per Filipino per year by 2010, as opposed to 28.5 kilograms per year in 2003.
"Without any change in fish consumption and no active human population management program," the World Bank report warns, "domestic demand for fish will reach 3.2 billion kilograms by 2020, given the projected population growth rate of the country."
If increased demand is met solely by marine capture fisheries, such increased pressure on the fisheries sector could lead to an eventual collapse of fisheries and the fishing industry, which employs more than one million people (about five percent of the national labor force).
"All fisheries are showing decline in total catch and per unit effort (total number of fish caught per unit of time) despite increasing effort," the World Bank report noted. "Fish are harvested at a level 30 to 50 percent higher than the natural production capacity."
The Philippines is among the largest fish producers in the world, the World Bank report stated. The commercial, municipal, and aquaculture fisheries account for 36, 30, and 24 percent of the total fisheries yield, respectively. Its annual total fisheries yield is estimated to be worth around US$70 to UD$110 billion (equivalent to about 2-4 percent of the country's gross domestic production over the years).
A new report from the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (BAS) said that the total volume of fisheries production increased by 9.67 percent during the third quarter of 2007 over the same quarter in 2006.
"All the sectors managed to outdo their third quarter production performance," reports BAS, a line agency of the Department of Agriculture. "The commercial fisheries that served as the major source of growth exhibited a 10.35 percent increase."
Next gainer was the municipal fisheries with output surging by 10.46 percent. Aquaculture production increased by 83.5 percent during the third quarter of 2007 compared to the same period in 2006.
Even if the government can check the current population growth, there's one problem that cannot be solved by the country alone: global warming.
"We still have enough fish now but with global warming we may have problems in the next five to ten years unless we do something about it," warns Dr. Rafael D. Guerrero III, the executive director of the Laguna-based Philippine Council for Aquatic and Marine Research and Development (PCAMRD).
This has been confirmed by a recent report released by the United Nations. "At least three quarters of the globe's key fishing grounds may become seriously impacted by changes in circulation as a result of the ocean's natural pumping systems fading and falling," the UN report suggests.
Global warming refers to an increase in average global temperatures, as a result of too much greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This, in turn, results to climate change. Marine species are not spared from the threats caused by rising temperatures.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration physicist Josefino Comiso recently told Philippine media that rising temperatures could reach a point where "various living creatures" would start to die in large numbers. "Such temperatures would vary from species to species," he said. "But the deaths of these creatures would gravely affect the food supply chain."
