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ike many other countries endowed with rich
marine habitats and coastal waters, the Philippines has historically
pursued coastal and marine development along the premise that fisheries
production can be increased through the use of more efficient gear and
technology; that we can continue to operate within the open access regime
(Related story);
that marine and coastal problems are primarily the problems of fishers
and coastal communities; and that we can take the maximum from the sea.
 Coastal
resource management (CRM) issues have traditionally not figured prominently
at the national policy level, or been regarded with as much urgency as
land-oriented problems. When allocating resources, whether in terms of
funding or personnel deployment, the government has been biased toward
increased agricultural production resources, with food security programs
rarely factoring fishery and aquatic resources into the equation.
It is now widely acknowledged that this framework of development has led
to excessive fishing pressure, overfishing, stock depletion, and the destruction
of freshwater and marine habitats. As elsewhere in the world, fisheries
production in the Philippines has steadily declined despite nearly two
decades of fishery resource management projects and development initiatives.
The situation has been aggravated by the low level of public awareness
of what is happening to the country's marine and coastal resources. Advocacy
activities for marine and coastal issues have been largely confined to
fisherfolk groups and a few conservation-oriented NGOs. Outside these
sectors, there has been relatively little sympathy for marine and coastal
problems from the bigger spheres of influence in the country. Local government
units (LGUs) in general have been detached from CRM-related issues, preoccupied
as they are with infrastructure, health, sanitation, and economic problems.
Compared to such devolved functions as health and agricultural services,
natural resource management has received low LGU prioritization in the
Philippines.
Add to this the very nature of CRM itself. CRM is a complex strategy involving
not only many sectors of society but also various types of resources that
need to be conserved and/or utilized in a sustainable manner. It means,
as CRM expert Dr. Chua Thia-Eng and co-authors wrote in a paper 10 years
ago, "trying to influence the behavior of groups and individuals
whose activities contribute to the problem." A change in a few persons'
behavior is usually not enough. For behavioral change to have any significant
impact on the environment, it must happen in a big enough segment of society,
the so-called "critical mass" who can further spur the social
transformation process.
As well, CRM can offer no immediate benefit in exchange for dropping environmentally
unfriendly behaviors. Between earning a living and environmental considerations,
the former will have more takers than the latter, anytime. Indeed, although
changing fishers' behaviors - such as stopping them from using dynamite
or cyanide in fishing - is in everyone's best interest in the very long
term, it often has instant negative impact on the fishers.
The need for a
critical mass
Against this backdrop, the Coastal
Resource Management Project (CRMP) recognized that it would take a
strategic spread of sustained resource management within the Philippine
coastal zone to prevent a general collapse of marine resources due to
increasing population pressure and the rapidly rising demand for marine-based
protein. For CRM to get anywhere as a sustainable development strategy,
marine and coastal issues must first be perceived as priority problems
needing action by both national and local governments and the bigger sectors
of society. Given the centralized nature of decision-making in Philippine
politics, no amount of community-based CRM programs would reach the threshold
of sustainability without the convergence of national policies and local
initiatives.
Given all this, it was evident that the first task for CRMP was to move
coastal issues into the forefront of the country's political landscape
and public milieu, and to transform perception of these issues from "local,
sectoral and productivity issues" to "national, general public
and environmental problems". Ownership of coastal issues must expand
beyond sectoral confines to a much broader and "noisier" political
base. And, as LGUs have the mandate to sustainably manage coastal resources
(Related story),
the Project also recognized the need to repeatedly affirm this mandate.
Agenda-setting
and mainstreaming as a CRM strategy
Because CRM is a relatively new issue and challenges the status quo of
Philippine fisheries development policies and practices, agenda-setting
- the process by which problems become salient as political issues meriting
the attention of the larger public - is a key strategy for achieving a
threshold of sustained CRM. This does not simply mean mandating CRM as
a matter of national policy. A national CRM policy will not, by itself,
arrest environmental degradation. A transformation among all sectors of
society is required. Such transformation demands a good understanding
of the intended change, the exercise of political will, and strong leadership.
And it requires a lot of time.
For this reason, CRMP undertakes agenda-setting at both the national and
local levels. The Project has formulated an IEC framework
that aims not just for behavioral targets but for the initiation of social
processes that will have their own momentum, so that they trigger large-scale
social transformation. This framework uses approaches that are synergy-driven,
multi-level, inclusive, and strategic, identifying pressure points or
nodes within social processes that will lead to the greatest impact at
the shortest possible time.
At the local level, CRMP pursues agenda-setting through community-based
approaches. Through a method called "Participatory Coastal Resource
Assessment" (PCRA) (download),
the Project has consistently encouraged the direct involvement of communities
in the gathering of data regarding their resources. This has resulted
in a prioritization process, where participants learn the values of personal
stewardship and collective responsibility, reach a common vision for their
community, and identify the critical result areas needed to be considered
by their community to achieve the sustainable use of resources.
At the national level, an immediate IEC objective has been to "create
a buzz" around marine and coastal issues and engage the general public
to help transform perception of these issues into urgent problems requiring
national attention and solutions. The 1998
International Year of the Ocean proved to be just the right occasion
for CRMP to focus national attention on CRM issues. That year, the Project
staged, in five of the country's major urban centers, the "Our Seas,
Our Life Exhibit," a "world-class" event (according to
one media observer) that received the official endorsement of the Secretary
of Education as a school "field trip" activity and drew close
to 1.4 million visitors, including students from more than 400 schools.
To get the attention of policy-makers and decision-makers, CRMP framed
CRM messages within two existing national programs of government, namely,
President Estrada's Food Security and Poverty Eradication Program and
the Omnibus Amendment to the Local Government Code. An effort was made
to converge national and local level activities to allow the interaction
of national leaders with local leaders, and national media with local
experiences. But while partnerships were strategic, emphasis was also
placed on the inclusive nature of IEC activities, where anyone and everyone
who wanted to be involved were encouraged and accepted. A rule of thumb
was the aggressive solicitation of mass media coverage and business sector
support.
 In
all this, CRMP made sure that CRM was packaged as a mainstream, and not
an activist, cause. Common themes, such as the need for Filipinos to reconnect
with their rich maritime heritage, were used for emotional appeal to engage
the public as advocates of marine conservation and coastal management.
Such themes struck a responsive chord, drawing people from all walks of
life to the ocean's cause through the "I
Love the Ocean" Movement . Even with minimum work done on recruitment,
the Movement's membership is now close to 13,000.
Media was not merely fed press and photo releases. Through joint productions
with leading media networks, CRMP not only cut production costs, but also
turned mass media into a primary ally for the promotion of CRM in the
national social agenda. Print and broadcast journalists, including those
from industry leader ABS-CBN and the government's Philippine Information
Agency, were literally immersed in CRM issues, so that they were transformed
from being simply commentators on CRM to being responsible advocates of
CRM.
One of the most important partnerships that emerged from CRMP's agenda-setting
effort is that with the League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP),
a quasi-government body made up of the local chief executives of the Philippines'
1,527 municipal LGUs, of which 832 are classified as coastal.
Even with limited resources, an activist LGU can deliver CRM as a basic
service of the municipality, while an indifferent LGU will not. As noted
political scientist Richard Tobin once observed, "While it is true
that poverty pervades much of the world, it is a rare government that
is not able to find money for its preferred projects. Political will usually
produces political capital, which readily converts to resources."
With LMP serving as a "pressure point" among coastal mayors
as well as for the national government, CRMP has set into motion the process
for the prioritization of CRM in the LGUs' local agenda.
The great leap
forward
And so, on May 26-28, 1999, 701 mayors representing 90% of coastal municipalities
in the Philippines met with the country's top government officials, including
President Estrada himself. The occasion was the first Conference of Coastal
Municipalities of the Philippines. This environmental forum, the first
of its kind in Asia and only the second in the world after a similar conference
held in Canada in 1998, was unprecedented in terms of mayors' attendance,
cabinet-level interest and participation, mass media coverage and intensity
of discussions.
Four cabinet secretaries, a presidential
adviser, and a presidential assistant spelled out their respective departments'
agenda for empowering LGUs for CRM. The Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court, challenged the mayors to exercise political
will in protecting and conserving the country's marine and coastal resources.
And the President delivered a historic "State
of the Ocean" address, challenging LGUs to maintain CRM as one
of their basic services and "lead in the sustainable management of
municipal waters."
For their part, the mayors drew up a 15-point
set of resolutions requiring executive and legislative actions that
would enable LGUs to effectively manage their municipal waters. They also
committed to undertake "doable" CRM
best practices in their respective municipalities.
 A
direct result of the Conference was a series of Presidential
directives that put into motion the formulation of a national coastal
and marine policy framework; the creation of an inter-agency task force
on coastal zone management; the fast tracking of the delineation of municipal
waters as provided for in the country's Fisheries Code of 1998 (download);
and a closer study to increase national funding for CRM by amending the
Local Government Code to include municipal waters in the computation of
the LGUs' share in the legally mandated Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA).
The Conference is clearly a milestone for CRMP, which aims to achieve,
by the year 2002, a threshold of sustainable CRM over 3,000 kilometers
of the Philippines' more than 18,000 km of coastline. At one broad stroke,
it brought to the collegial attention of the country's highest leaders
the Project's call for government to promote CRM as a basic service to
coastal municipalities.
The continuing
challenge
The complexity of environmental problems poses tremendous challenges to
environmental educators in developing countries who face not only daunting
institutional and financial barriers but also the constraints of time.
A limitation of time-bound, location-specific projects is the difficulty
of achieving the much-needed critical mass and strategic spread for their
sustainability. That CRMP was able to achieve some success in projecting
CRM to the national agenda can be attributed to the project's flexibility,
willingness to innovate and opportunistic attitude.
Despite its success, CRMP faces a continuing challenge. The so-called
"right social message" that would transform people into responsible
stewards of our seas remains elusive on a larger scale. We may need to
consider other models of successful social movements and learn how to
unify people for a cause greater than ourselves.
It is unfortunate that the agenda-setting process is usually looked at
with great skepticism, with IEC-related activities being dismissed as
mere "public relations tools" that projects can do without.
Such attitude is largely dictated by a project's or institution's limited
budget and personnel as well as a lack of appreciation for how important
a favorable social and political milieu is in getting things done. In
fact, however, there are ways by which IEC activities can be undertaken
at reasonable costs. Going by the CRMP experience in the Philippines,
it does not take a budget of tremendous proportions (although a big budget
certainly helps!) to cultivate the beginnings of a social transformation.
This article is based on a paper presented at
the GreenCOM International Symposium, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, on August
26, 1999, and the North American Association for Environmental Education
(NAAEE) Conference, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, on August 29, 1999. (Download
full text of paper)
Ms Smith is the IEC Advisor of the Coastal Resource Management
Project-Philippines (CRMP)
Dr. Courtney is the Chief of Party of CRMP
Dr. Grieser is the Senior IEC Advisor of CRMP
Ms Sia is an IEC Specialist of CRMP
Information, Education and Communication
or IEC is a strategy for promoting awareness of, and involving people
in decisions about, various development issues. The IEC Component of CRMP
is subcontracted to Global Vision, Inc., 11802 Saddlerock Road, Silver
Spring, Maryland 20902, USA.
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