OVER SEAS -- The Online Magazine for Sustainable Seas

Northwest Bohol

The CRMP learning area covers five municipalities in northwestern Bohol: Buenavista, Inabanga, Clarin, Tubigon and Calape, a total area of 35,446 hectares stretching to 75.2 km of coastline with a population of 140,820 persons (1995). CRMP also assists five municipalities, Loon, Panglao, Dimiao, Candijay and Getafe, in its expansion site. Signs of over-exploitation and environmental degradation are all over the place, brought about by illegal fishing activities (particularly the use of modified Danish seine (locally known as hulbot-hulbot), baby trawl, sodium cyanide and dynamite) , illegal fishpond construction, and the the extraction of coral and white sand quarrying. Local government units have initiated efforts -- mangrove reforestation (Banacan Island in Getafe has the largest man-made mangrove in Asia) and the declaration of closed seasons for blue crabs and rabbitfish (siganids), for example -- to arrest the decline of fisheries. CRMP hopes to harness these local initiatives to jump-start a wider and more integrated implementation of coastal resource management.

Municipal-level PCRA Completed
It’s Northwest Bohol’s turn this month to wrap up its municipal-level participatory coastal resource assessment (PCRA). The last training was held in early June in Buenavista. Earlier (May), Clarin also completed its PCRA. Counting the training held in the expansion areas (Loon and Dimiao), this brings to seven the number of municipal-level PCRAs CRMP has conducted in Bohol. All told, 103 barangays (villages) were represented in the PCRAs -- 78 barangays in the five learning area municipalities, three in Loon and nine in Dimiao. "The challenge is now to develop a simple yet quick way and easy process for the PCRAs to be conducted at the barangay level. The barangay-level PCRA process will take a long time to complete because of the large number of barangays involved in the process," Stuart Green, Provincial CRM Coordinator, said in his midyear report. With a small fund provided by CRMP, the municipal agricultural officers and agricultural technicians will monitor and facilitate the conduct of the PCRAs in the barangays covered by their respective towns. The plan is for Northwast Bohol to have one coastal environmental profile, which will serve as basis for the formulation of a coastal resource management plan for the entire learning area.

Meanwhile, the enterprise development team has begun pilot-testing a number of mariculture projects -- oyster culture, mussel culture, seaweed farming, crab fattening, fish cages and fish pens -- in the learning area. "The projects chosen are sea-based because it’s the fishers who are being targeted as beneficiaries. Fishers generally do not have access to land resources. Also, they’re better able to relate to marine-based enterprises that allow them to obtain tenurial rights," Learning Area Coordinator Mel Cimagala noted.

Environment Code Awaits Governor’s Signature
The newly crafted Bohol Environment Code is now ready and awaiting a public hearing and the final signature of the governor. "As a further knock-on of CRMP’s involvement in the code, we have been requested to work hand in hand with the main institutionalized output of the code, the newly formed Bohol Environment Management Office," Green reported. "CRMP will work with BEMO towards developing a provincial CRM office. This office will help ensure that CRMP inputs are both institutionalized and sustained by the province above and beyond the lifespan of the project."

The local government has allocated an initial budget of P500,000 for the BEMO this year. §