SUCCESS IN COASTAL MANAGEMENT:
The Tubigon, Bohol Story
Tubigon stands out as the first coastal town in Bohol to have finalized and published a municipal coastal management code, formed one of the most active coastal law enforcement groups in Bohol, and established the beginnings of a real, community-based, participatory coastal resource management program that has transcended its author’s political term.

By Reigh P. Monreal and Stuart J. Green, DENR – CRMP Bohol

hat used to be marshland on the northwestern edge of Bohol has evolved through the years into a major business center, a vibrant town that calls itself Tubigon, meaning ‘plenty of water’.

The name is descriptive of more than the town’s origins. Tubigon’s economy is based to a large extent on the sea. It has 12 coastal barangays and 6 islands, in which 40% of the population relies on fishing for livelihood. It is also northern Bohol’s most important seaport, where passenger and cargo ships on the Cebu-Bohol route dock regularly. And, among all the coastal towns of Bohol, it boasts the longest local government experience in managing coastal resources.

Quite aptly, Tubigon’s official municipal seal bears the picture of a big blue crab on one side. The picture symbolizes the abundance of blue crabs in the area, and, more significantly, the townsfolk’s dependence on coastal resources, as well as the local government’s efforts to manage them.

And yet, Tubigon learned to value its coastal resources the hard way. In 1992, researchers from Silliman University assessed the town’s coastal and marine resources and reported that these were either depleted or destroyed, largely as a result of destructive fishing activities in the area. Alarmed, the municipal government, then under the administration of Mayor Eufracio Mascariñas, embarked on a coastal resource management (CRM) program aimed at reversing the decline. Mascariñas, who now chairs the coastal resources sub-committee of the Bohol Provincial Board, launched a local sea-borne patrol operation to combat trawling, blast fishing and other destructive fishing practices.           

But perhaps what is most noteworthy about Tubigon’s CRM program is that it has remained in effect through a change of leadership, a remarkable feat among local governments in the Philippines, where programs usually come and go with every new local executive that is elected into office. A first-term mayor, Paulo Lasco, was elected in 1997 and has carried on Mascariñas’s work, with help from the vice mayor, Renato Villaber; Municipal Council Member Gerardo F. Chagas, who serves as chairman of the council’s committee on fisheries and agriculture; Municipal Planning and Development Coordinator (MPDC) Noel Mendaña; and Municipal Agriculture Officer Epitacio Mumar, among others.Mendaña also serves as the CRM municipal action officer and coordinator of the Local Government Development Foundation (Logodef), while Mumar chairs the Municipal Fishery and Aquatic Resources Management Council (MFARMC). Sustaining the fight against illegal fishing, meanwhile, the Bantay Dagat, fish wardens deputized by the government to enforce fishery laws, continues to conduct sea-borne patrol operations.

The plan

One key to the successful and sustained implementation of coastal management in Tubigon has been the involvement of all stakeholders in the formulation and adoption of a holistic, multi-program CRM plan. At the outset, the local government took every effort to make the planning process participatory. Barangay-based resource studies were conducted using participatory coastal resource assessment (PCRA) methodologies, not only to generate information about the status of the coastal resources but, more importantly, to begin encouraging the various coastal stakeholders’ participation in coastal management.

A first, necessary step was to hold public consultations to determine the community’s perceptions about coastal issues and problems and what they thought might be their most effective solutions. To ensure that all the different stakeholders’ concerns were considered, the municipal government consulted with LGU officials, fishers associations, barangay leaders, NGOs and other interested sectors. All told, it took a full year and a series of consultations in all coastal barangays just to identify the major issues and problems that needed to be considered for management.

Trainings and workshops form a large part of the Tubigon LGUs CRM program, here Kagawads Tony Salomon from Batasan Island and Kagawad Chris Mante busy developing a work plan for their respective barangays.

A two-day workshop was then conducted to prepare the initial draft plan.  To provide directions in planning, the LGU created a multi-sectoral technical working group (TWG) headed by the vice mayor, Renato Villaber, and composed of the barangay captains (village chiefs) of all coastal and island barangays (villages) and representatives of the municipal government, government line agencies, NGOs, and the business sector.

Before the proposed draft plan was adopted through legislation, it was presented to all coastal barangays for comment and discussion with the stakeholders, revised, and then, along with a zoning plan, presented for further review to the barangays. Because of this, the ordinance installing the plan was readily accepted by the public and, indeed, met hardly any opposition from members of the community who attended the requisite public hearings. 

Focusing on programs that the TWG, through public consultation, deemed relevant to the overall development of Tubigon, the CRM plan provides common direction and framework for Tubigon’s municipal government and coastal communities in their effort to manage their coastal resources, as well as benchmarks against which their can measure their accomplishments in CRM.  It includes fisheries management, habitat management, tourism development, shoreline management, coastal zoning, enterprise and livelihood development, waste management, legal and institutional arrangements, among others. A key strategy is to consolidate and integrate into one plan all the coastal management programs and activities being implemented by the municipality, its partner NGOs and national government agencies such as the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and DA-BFAR. This will effectively put CRM under the umbrella of the LGU, thus facilitating the delivery of CRM as a basic service to coastal communities.

Besides the plan, the TWG has also been responsible for drafting, reviewing, and presenting for public consultation bills and resolutions pertinent to coastal management, as well as recommending legislations to the Sangguniang Bayan (Municipal Council).

Getting it done

The plan addresses the four major concerns, which surfaced during the first multi-sectoral planning session, namely, law enforcement, livelihood, resource rehabilitation and education.

Newly acquired municipal patrol boat purchased by the LGU
with assistance of Logodef and KAS.

With the municipality’s sea-borne operations already in place, the main objective of law enforcement has been to strengthen community support for the municipality’s campaign to stop illegal fishing. Undeterred by a jurisdictional dispute with its neighbor Clarin over Lima Ka Pulo (Five Islets), a proposed Protected Landscape and Seascape under the NIPAS with an active PAMB, the LGU has stood firm on its position against illegal fishing, insisting in various public forums that the LGU is responsible for enforcing national laws in its municipal waters. Indeed, Tubigon’s Bantay Dagat and deputy fish wardens are among Bohol’s most active coastal law enforcers, and the fact has not escaped notice. In October 2000, one of Tubigon’s fish wardens, Roberto Mejares, was named Most Outstanding Fish Warden in Region 7 (Central Visayas).

Livelihood concerns are being addressed in several ways. The LGU’s Logodef-coordinated mariculture program is being pilot-tested in five barangays through fishers organizations. The program promotes the culture of oyster, mud crab or seaweed as identified by the fishers themselves. To provide additional support to the livelihood program, a research station managed by the FTC has been set up in Matabao to develop and improve coastal livelihood technologies.

Fisherfolk beneficiaries around their mariculture project for on-growing grouper in barangay Panaytayon, Tubigon, Bohol. Provincial Board Member Eufrasio Mascarinas and Vice Mayor Rene Villaber place the young groupers into the net facility.

Financial assistance is raffled off to the first-in-line beneficiaries, who must commit to religiously pay a low-interest-rate loan so that the next batch of recipients need not wait too long to avail of the same loan. Loan applicants become eligible for financial and technical assistance by attending capability-building seminars and training activities, and being active in environmental campaigns in their barangays and the municipality. These requirements are designed to engender cooperativism and community spirit among the project proponents, and reduce loan delinquency.

LGU officials, barangay captain and fisherfolk from Batasan Island and Bilangbilangan Islands visit Apo Island, Negros Oriental to see the impact of the sanctuary there.

Program implementation is usually accompanied by an information and education drive. This is especially true for the resource rehabilitation program, in which activities are often preceded by a massive information campaign and study tours to communities that have achieved success in rehabilitating their coastal resources. Visits to successful fish sanctuaries in Apo Island in Negros Oriental and Baliangao in Mindanao, for example, led to the establishment of fish sanctuaries in the barangays of Bilangbilangan, Macaas and Batasan. The largest sanctuary, which was initiated by FTC, is managed by the barangays of Matabao, Pandan and Panaytayon.

On Batasan Island, Tubigon’s hotbed of illegal fishers (compressor divers mostly using dynamite and cyanide) and pilot site for the World Bank-funded Community-Based Coastal Resource Management (CB-CRM) Project, a series of CRM planning sessions was conducted in collaboration with Haribon Foundation. As part of the planning activities, the island’s coastal and marine habitats were divided into zones, and its Protected Area Management Board (PAMB) was strengthened. (The island has been selected for inclusion in the National Integrated Protected Areas System (NIPAS).)

Fish sanctuary signboard for newly developed sanctuary

Batasan’s fish sanctuary now teems with marine resources, which are being zealously protected by the local community. One dynamite fisher who wanted to fish in the area, for instance, was promptly turned down by resident fishers, who now use only hook-and-line fishing, and only in the buffer zone. The sanctuary is often included in the itinerary of study tours of LGU officials from other provinces who want to see for themselves how a well-managed sanctuary can benefit the local community as well as the municipal government.

The organization of fishers often leads to greater cooperation among them, particularly in the implementation of livelihood projects and in the protection of their coastal and marine environment. It also serves to facilitate the availability of financial and technical assistance from the LGU and external sources. Appreciating these benefits, the municipal government organized Tubigon’s fishers associations into a federation. Since barangay officials usually serve as association advisers or are members themselves, the federation also functions as a forum for discussing and resolving common concerns, including potential resource use conflicts.

Engr Noel Mendana, municipal planning and development coordinator and CRM action officer of the town of Tubigon presents the mariculture project to beneficiaries on Batasan Island, Tubigon.

The continuing challenge

Except for a few, most of Tubigon’s coastal villages have attained a high level of awareness of the importance of protecting their marine and coastal environment. Village elders as well as ordinary folk themselves have in a number of instances urged the local government to provide them financial or technical assistance so that they are better able to manage their coastal and marine resources.

It is thus fortunate that Tubigon’s municipal council is in full support of coastal management efforts at both the municipal and barangay levels. The council encourages counterpart-funding arrangements with other agencies for CRM-related activities, and for a number of years now, has regularly allocated an annual CRM budget of more than Php750,000 out of its municipal budget. Notwithstanding the significant contributions of shipping to the local economy, the council is seriously considering a proposal to impose user’s fees on passenger and cargo vessels using Tubigon’s municipal waters, and to address the problem of indiscriminate disposal of garbage by passenger and cargo ships.

Given such LGU commitment to CRM, Tubigon has achieved the singular honor of being the first among all of Bohol’s coastal municipalities to have finalized and published its municipal CRM code.

And yet Mayor Lasco remains cautious about calling Tubigon’s CRM program a total success. With more than eight years of CRM work behind it, Tubigon has accomplished a lot, but it has much more work to be done, he says. To him, the local government, having laid down the foundation for sustainable management of the town’s coastal and marine resources, has only really just started a task that should ideally involve generations of coastal leaders engaged in a never-ending cycle of resource management and protection activities.

Time may come when the people of Tubigon will have fully embraced the principles of coastal management in their minds, hearts and lives. Then, and only then, says Mayor Lasco, can he declare their CRM program a complete success.

On the road, promoting the project and the products: Municipal Agriculture Officer Epitacio Mumar at the Bohol Sandugo Agri-fair in July in Tagbilaran City. Here shown displaying mud crabs after that had been ‘fattened’ in cages.

Partners in CRM

The USAID-funded Coastal Resource Management Project of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR-CRMP) entered Tubigon in 1996 determined not to ‘reinvent the wheel’ with yet another new project in CRM. The focus was to work directly with the local government unit (LGU), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), national government agencies (NGAs), and try and fit in where there were gaps and amplify and enhance the already quite strong CRM activities going on within the town. In this respect, the Project saw that the best way to assist the municipality was to offer its technical expertise in coordinating with the different activities and actors, provide trainings, and help the LGU install a five-year CRM plan.

Key partners in CRM in Tubigon enjoy the fruits of good coastal management in the form of the delicious seafoods: Calape Vice Mayor Gaudencio Marapao; Stuart Green, CRMP Provincial Coordinator; Tubigon Mayor Paulo Lasco; Dr. Gadioso C. Sosmena, Executive Director, Logodef; and Dr. Willibold Frehner, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS).

Other partners filled other important niches and helped to harmonize all the CRM efforts in the municipality. Feed the Children’s (FTC) primary areas were community organizing and resource mobilization. Logodef managed mariculture-based livelihood projects. Collaborating with the Germany-based Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS), the foundation obtained financial support from the European Union (EU) and established a project management office in Tubigon. This office is being coordinated by the MPDC, a set-up designed to facilitate the transition of services from the foundation to the LGU when the EU support ends in three years, and in preparation for the establishment in the future of a coastal resource management office (CRMO) under the LGU.

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