OVER SEAS -- The Online Magazine for Sustainable Seas

Northwest Bohol

The CRMP learning areas covers five core learning areas municipalities of Northwest Bohol, a contiguous area facing Cebu. The Project has expanded sideways to secondary core municipalities in Loon and Jetafe, producing a straight seven municipality block, which all have pretty similar issues but are all various stages of CRM development, with Tubigon and Calape leading the way and the others at various other stages. Other areas including Dimiao, Candijay and Mabini are worked in on a much more technical demand driven' criteria. There are many issues within the learning areas and these range from the usual cocktail of illegal fishing methods to others such as illegal fishpond construction, etc.

Local communities have initiated some very good efforts. Several fish sanctuaries have been established. Also, Jetafe has Asia's largest man-made mangrove reforestation (Banacon island). The LGUs are not too far behind. They have promulgated a number of appropriate laws which only need good implementation and a few implementing rules and regulations. With the Calape Bay tri-partite working committee leading the way in multi-sectoral planning and implementation of CRM, it is hoped that these initiatives can be built upon by the CRMP and hopefully with some well planned and executed facilitation get CRM onto the agenda of all the local LGUs with full support of the fisherfolk.

Calape MOA finalized
The Calape tripartite management consultative group finalized last January 12 a draft memorandum of agreement (MOA) between the municipality of Calape, CRMP, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), and the Department of Agriculture (DA). The MOA is expected to be signed by February 3, when the group will meet again to discuss Calape's coastal resource management plan.
This month's meeting was attended by 25 participants from the DA-Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (DA-BFAR), DENR, local government, Bohol Integrated Development Foundation (BIDEF), Philippine National Police, CRMP and various people's organizations. It was hosted by the BIDEF, a NGO-partner of CRMP based in Tagbilaran City.
Meanwhile, the Enterprise Development Component met with local institutional and community partners to consolidate and strengthen agreements and linkages necessary to fully implement projects for enterprise development. Plans are afoot to commercialize successful seaweed production trials in Calape and fine-tune ecotourism products earlier identified as having market potential, such as the Cabilao Marine Sanctuary Tour, Cambuhat Coastal Ecosystem and Village Tour, and Banacon Mangrove Forest and Sea Horse Expedition.§