A local fishers’ federation, the Tambuyog Development Center (TDC), is planning to stage a protest rally when the two-day Coral Triangle Summit opens today at the Shangri-La Hotel in Makati.
This developed even as the TDC criticized organizers of the Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI) for focusing on developing investment opportunities in the region while ignoring the plight of people living in coastal communities, particularly in the Philippines.
“They designed the CTI for the benefit of big foreign companies, as if the coastal communities do not exist,†said Arsenio Tanchuling, executive director of TDC and coordinator of the Southeast Asia Fish for Justice network (SEAFish).
According to Tanchuling, CTI organizers failed to do its “homework†back in the Philippines when they ignored the presence of coastal communities and gave corporate interests priority, “at the expense of local communities and the impact of climate change on their livelihood and the environment.â€
Tanchuling was referring to the World Wide Fund (WWF), which he said designed the CTI and helped the Philippine government organize the Coral Triangle Summit to be held in Manila today and tomorrow. President Arroyo and Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap are expected to attend the two-day event.
The Business Mirror tried, but failed to interview officials of the WWF.
According to Tanchuling, the people in coastal communities were ignored by the WWF in designing the CTI.
“The communities were neither consulted nor asked how they could benefit from the initiative,†Tanchuling said.
The Philippine government is committed to the CTI, which was started in 2005. The WWF and another international environmental nongovernment organization, the Conservation International, got funding from the United States Agency for International Development amounting to $80 million.
For the implementation of CTI, Tanchuling said the Asian Development Bank is committing $300 million. Sadly, he said, it seems the people in coastal communities will not only get nothing out of it, but worse, “they may eventually lose home and livelihood†once corporate interests take center stage.
The CTS will gather more than 100 delegates from Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Solomon Islands and Timor Leste to debate how to protect the Coral Triangle, the world’s most diverse marine environment, and to outline the business opportunities for key sectors operating in the region.
It will also provide a platform for financial support and investment for businesses willing to commit to sustainability and green growth.
Covering just 1 percent of the earth’s surface, the Coral Triangle includes 30 percent of the world’s coral reefs, 76 percent of its reef-building coral species, as well as vital spawning grounds for tuna.
The region sustains the lives of more than 120 million people, along with thousands of small and medium businesses that heavily rely on healthy marine environments and resources.
It will be recalled that on May 11, 2009, the first summit was launched along with the world Ocean Conference in Manado, Indonesia, wherein the Philippine delegation was headed by no less than presidential daughter Luli Arroyo, who is associated with the WWF.
The event also saw Tambuyog, KM and SEAFish launching massive protest for failing to include the fisherfolk representatives in the summit. The Manado immigration officials forced 11 Filipino fishefolk leaders, who were sent back home to Manila from Jakarta, apparently to prevent them from exposing the antipoor scheme design of CTI.
While Tanchuling said the initiative to protect the coastal marine environment and to promote sustainability is laudable, it came as a shock that even today, the people in the communities were not consulted as to how they will truly benefit in co-managing the country’s marine environment.
The Coral Triangle Summit, he said, will tackle topics as tuna, live fish, energy and financing, but not community-based coastal-management system.
Tanchuling said in the Philippines, there are around 500,000 municipal fishermen who are threatened by possible economic dislocation once big businesses start to come in to invest in the region encompassing the Coral Triangle. An estimated 1.5 million households, he said, depend on fishing as a source of livelihood.
Ruperto Aleroza, leader of Kilusang Mangingisda (KM), said under the CTI, the fisherfolk is delegated as mere “security guards†of marine resources.
“Unlike those who are guarding the banks where financial resources are kept, fisherfolk families including women and children voluntarily guard the marine resources since their very lives are at stake and daily survival depends upon the condition of marine resources,†Aleroza said.
He said the CTI is a typical top-to-bottom style management, where political pressure from the President sets out policy instructions without much sectoral participation.
“National policies like the establishment of large-scale marine protected areas are set through a series of executive orders that pressures local governments and communities to comply despite the fact that projects like this will take away traditional fishing rights of the poor coastal communities,†Aleroza said.
Tanchuling urged Congress to hold a congressional oversight action to look into the potential problems that the project may bring, particularly for the incoming administration.
He said what the government really needs to do is to strictly enforce environmental laws, to protect the country’s marine ecosystem and promote community-based coastal marine-resource management wherein the people living in coastal communities will be comanaging the country’s natural wealth.
“We need to push for a more people-centered approach to the problem, wherein coastal communities and small fishers are given premium in planning and implementation stages in sustaining coastal fisheries and adapting to climate change,†he said.
