MANY environmental conservation programs fail because it does not consider the people on the ground, their lack of ability to cope when certain resources are restricted or certain behaviors are required.
The successful programs, however, focus on the small people, the marginalized, and ensure that they will earn better with the prospects proposed.
As has been the dilemma for so long, it's almost like pitting humans against the environment.
Rare Inc. in the Philippines is one of the international non-government organizations that looks into the livelihood of the people so that they will be capable of protecting marine resources.
One of their project areas in the country is the Ayoke Island in Cantilan, Surigao del Sur, where Rare Inc. introduced conservation enterprises to ease poverty in fishing villages comprised of municipal fishers.
Through the Global Development Alliance project of its Fish Forever campaign supported by the US International Agency for International Development (Usaid).
In Fish Forever, "Rare is looking at the role of markets in helping fishers adopt sustainable practices, and how self-help organizations contribute to financial resilience," Rare Inc's pamphlet on the Ayoke project read.
"Conservation enterprises are the way forward in easing poverty among municipal fishers, who make up 85 percent of the country's fishers and produce half of the annual fish catch," Rare Inc. said.
With their basic needs supported through their own enterprises, the fishing communities themselves protect their waters from illegal, unreported, unregulated (IUU) fishing.
"Marine biodiversity loss and fisheries decline have an impact on Filipinos. Fish provide more than 50% of the Filipino’s dietary protein. Small-scale or municipal fishers, estimated to be 1.7 million, are the poorest of the poor; 4 out of 10 Filipino fishers live below the poverty line, catching an average of 3 kg/day and earning about $4/day (P195/day)," said Roquelito Mancao, Senior Director of Rare Inc's Program Design and Delivery Support in the Philippines, in his presentation to a group of journalists recently.
"So you quickly see that overfishing isn’t just an environmental problem. It’s becoming a humanitarian crisis," he said.
It's a chicken and egg situation when no intervention is introduced.
Fishermen resort to IUU fishing because there is less catch and there is less catch because of IUU fishing.
"Typically, fish populations can handle a somewhat higher death rate, but when fishing becomes too intense, the population declines. Often the population declines year after year, as fishers continue to fish. Often they fish harder by making their gear more efficient or spending more time on the water, in order to keep catching more fish," Mancao said.
In Cantilan, fishermen were helped to inventory the fishing gears that are used, where, and how often, and the fisher's catch.
Strategies were also designed on how to manage fisheries at the community level.
Among these strategies are several fisheries management controls that local government can implement to increase fish stock and manage users of the fisheries. These include: registration of fishers and licensing of fishing gear and fishing boats, banning of destructive gear, regulation mesh size for nets and gear modifications, regulating sizes of catch such as size limits for crabs, declaring closed season especially during spawning season of know species such as rabbitfish, and establishment of marine protected area.
From all these came the concept of managed access and establishment of a sanctuary. Here, the community set up harvest controls that will include gear restrictions, gear modification by phase, closed season, size limits for grouper and selected invertebrates, natural area closures, and spawning area closures. Protocols for managed entry were also solicited and decided by the community itself. Aside from these, the community identified the designated docking and landing areas in their island.
The identified sanctuary area is 2 kilometers around Ayoke, or a total of 2,022 hectares against the municipal waters of a total of 41,830 hectares.
Critical to the implementation of these controls are locally collected data to support the regulations. Manager needs gears to catch more, you need length-weigh data to know the quality of fish stocks, one has to determine the location of their fishing ground for appropriate spatial management. Moreover, locally collected data by fishers will encourage community compliance if regulation is imposed.
The outputs made by the stakeholders themselves and just polished to become formal proposals for legislative action.
Other stakeholders were also identified and their roles defined. These include the different government agencies that have functions that affect the marine resources, including the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and its Mines and Geosciences Bureau, Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau, and Environmental Management Bureau, Department of Public Works and Highways, the Department of Tourism, the Philippine Coast Guard, the Maritime Industry Authority, Philippine Coast Guard, Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, the Philippine National Police, and the local government unit.
This has resulted to the doubling of fish abundance from 2011 as compared to 2017 despite a significant drop in coral cover due to other environmental factors, mining among them.
Aside from higher catch savings clubs were also introduced that allowed households to manage their finances and provide for their children's education, health emergencies, and small businesses.
The womenfolk of Ayoke were provided with a mobile fish dryer that gave them more income than selling fresh fish.
Over-all, what is achieved is a change in the behavior of the community and the implementing agencies that now look at conservation efforts not as a contest between human needs and natural resources, but the way forward to sustainable use of resources.