Published in Geographical
October 2001

CONSERVATION EXPERIMENT IN PHILIPPINES PROVIDES BENEFITS AND FRUSTRATIONS

Community management is one way to stop coral reef destruction; 25% of world's reefs already gone

by Paul Spencer Sochaczewski © 2001

APO ISLAND, Philippines

I sat on a postcard-pretty beach with Mario Pascobello, the village head of tiny Apo Island in the central Philippines, who explained the good news: the take of the village's fishermen has increased dramatically since the community agreed in 1982 to protect its coral reefs.

Then came the bad news: the government owes them $21,000.

I was reminded of the ancient Chinese curse: "May you get what you wish for."

The Apo Island experiment showed that it is possible to simultaneously save nature and benefit people. But the path has not always been smooth.

* * * * *
Jesus Delmo is a happy man, having caught a five-kilogram octopus the morning I met him.

In a way, Delmo's story reflects the change in attitude of the 750 people of tiny Apo Island, who were reluctant pioneers in a nature conservation experiment.

Delmo, 65, remembers the time in the late 1970s when Angel Alcala, then a biologist with Silliman University, and his colleagues first proposed setting up a community-managed nature reserve. "We thought they were crazy," Delmo recalls. "We had no idea how reefs function. But at that point we had nothing to lose. We were already travelling 30 kilometres across the sea, at great personal risk, to fish off the coast of Mindanao."

Liberty P. Rhodes, who was then barangay captain, or village head, remembers "they came with seminars; we were very innocent. We agreed to try it for two years."

Dr. Alcala, now director of the SUAKCREM Marine Laboratory of Silliman University remembers another problem. "The people of Apo were afraid we were going to take their land, for which they had no legal rights," he says.

But they went along with the idea. In 1982 the community agreed to two related initiatives. The first was the creation of a "no-take" reef sanctuary, an area approximately 500 meters by 500 meters encompassing about 10% of the golf course-sized island's reefs, where no fishing at all was permitted.

And outside the "no-take" zone, but still within an area designated as a marine sanctuary, which encompasses virtually the entire, the community introduced stringent fishing regulations - no dynamite, no cyanide, no muro-ami drive net fishing with weighted scare lines, no spear fishing with scuba, no dynamite, cyanide, or gill nets with very small mesh nets. The community also prohibited fishermen from outside from entering Apo waters.

What made the plan unusual was that the entire coastal area was to be managed by the community, not the government, a revolution in conservation thinking at that time. In 1986 the reserve was given legal protection and declared a local reserve under the municipal authority of the mainland town of Dauin.

Before long, benefits started to swim in, first through scuba divers who paid a fee to dive in Apo's pristine reefs, then by improved fishing in the areas surrounding the "no-take" zone. Economic benefits were estimated at more than US$ 126,000 annually.
Then, in 1998, the federal government, through a Presidential Proclamation, declared all of Apo Island a "protected seascape" and placed Apo Island within the National Integrated Protected Areas System. In 1999 a Protected Area Management Board, comprised of government and non-government representatives and Apo islanders, took over management of the reserve, including the job of collecting revenues. This might seem like good news - after all national recognition should provide better safeguards against intrusion, more visibility that would help lure tourists, and help with management -- but it turned out to be a two-edged sword. A park manager of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, who is supposed to live on the island, rarely visits. And since the national government got involved not one peso in tourist fees - some US$ 21,000 estimated by Angel Alcala -- has made it back to the community.

Angel Alcala, who served a stint as secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in the 1990s, isn't surprised. "These bureaucrats sit in their air-conditioned rooms in Manila, and lose touch with the realities of the field." Leila Peralta, an expert in community based management with the United States Agency for International Development, which supported the Apo Island sanctuary from the beginning, notes that "things were working fine in the community until this national law was passed, and now the community has been affected."

Dr. Alcala, 72, who based the Apo model on a similar experiment on Sumilon Island, [editor: Sumilon Island is not the same as Silliman University] is proud of the Apo initiative. "This all took place in 1974, which was a year before the Great Barrier Reef Authority was established in Australia," he says. "Our reserves were the first marine reserves specifically intended to increase fishery yields."

It's clear that fishermen's attitudes have changed.

"Before the reserve I used dynamite," Delmo adds. "I 'boom', easy to get lots of fish," he says. Today, the only boom he has in his life comes from pop music from the stereo.

Fishing has dramatically improved, and with it the cash income of formerly poor villagers.

Mario Pascobello notes that before the sanctuary was established fishermen were lucky to get two kilograms of fish a day, while today eight kilograms is an average catch. "The sanctuary became a breeding place, which meant better fishing outside the reserve," notes Ronel Entia, 24, a divemaster working on the island.

Tourism has brought some cash benefits, but, as elsewhere, comes with a price. For example, two sisters have reportedly begun prostituting themselves, a rather audacious act on a conservative island where everybody knows everybody else's business.

Mario Pascobello notes that tourism, which has doubled in the last three years, might be reaching the carrying capacity; and fears that coral is deteriorating. Paul Rhodes, who pioneered ecologically-sustainable commercial diving on Apo, notes that in 1998 there were 23 dive operators, mostly from outside coming to Apo. Now there are about 40.

As I learned as I slipped into the water, those divers experience some of the better diving in the Philippines, viewing teeming schools of jack, their gleaming silver bodies dancing in synchronized choreography. There are turtles and small sharks, and of course tropical corals that reveal Mother Nature in her Daliesque mode.
But on land the situation is less idyllic.

"I'm scared," Mario Pascobello admits. "The sanctuary could change character. Last week someone was seen fishing with a net in the sanctuary."

Walking through the neat village I could see obvious signs of prosperity that certainly didn't exist 20 years ago. Most houses now have electricity, and dozens of television antenna sprout from the roofs. Many homes are concrete, and zinc roofing, a universal sign of tropical upward mobility replacing common sense, has replaced cooler and cheaper thatch. Homeowners proudly grow orchids in their front yards.

I sat with Delmo and his aging buddies in the village and asked what improvements he has seen.

"There's more fish," he says, with a similar smugness to Bill Clinton telling his campaign staff 'it's the economy, stupid.' "And the village is improved."

How so?

"Well, we now have the village highway," he says, referring to the meter-wide concrete path we're sitting on.

* * * * *
The Apo experience illustrates the different ways conservationists are fighting to save coral reefs and the pitfalls they face.

Conservationists are running out of time to find effective solutions. At an international conference in Bali, Indonesia less than a year ago, scientists released the startling estimate that more than a quarter of the world's coral reefs have been destroyed and most of the remaining reefs may be dead in 20 years.

Some 90 percent of the 33,700 square kilometres of reef in the Philippines (an area half the size of Ireland) are dead or deteriorating in the wake of human abuse.

Immediate direct threats to reefs worldwide include blast fishing, and, to a lesser extent, use of cyanide, in fishing for rare reef fish (see sidebar for one initiative to reduce the impact of cyanide fishing). Other human induced problems include sediment runoff from land-based construction and deforestation, and poor anchoring of boats.
Mark Erdman, of the United States Agency for International Development Natural Resources Management Program in Sulawesi, Indonesia, and Lida Pet-Soede of World Wide Fund for Nature-Indonesia, argue that in Indonesia, just next door to the Philippines, "blast and cyanide fishing, are indisputably the biggest threats to coral reefs."

Longer-term threats come particularly from global warming. United States President George W. Bush's recent refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on Global Warming is likely to further frustrate coral reef conservationists.

Global warming is a greater threat to coral reefs than local environmental damage, according to Clive Wilkinson, a marine biologist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, and editor of Status of Coral Reefs of the World: 2000, which was released at the 2000 Bali conference. The report documents a sudden and steep jump in damage stemming from the 1997-1998 El Nino-La Nina event, in which sea temperatures were higher than normal. Scientists believe that El Nino events are linked to global climate change. Wilkinson says "in the latest event we had bleaching all the way from Brazil to the Indian Ocean. It was a wake-up call for reef scientists."
Australian marine biologist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg said water temperatures, particularly in the tropics, are likely to have risen to the point where corals will be sitting in a 'hot soup' and unable to survive.

"Sea surface temperatures throughout the tropics have shown
dramatic increases over the last two decades, as much as half a degree per decade. This is ten times what we are observing globally," said Alan Strong, of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "As a result, the concern for coral reefs is how much of this increase will continue over the ensuing decades." The sensitivity of reefs to rising temperatures makes them "silent sentinels of global warming, adds Strong.

In some of the worst hit areas, such as the Maldives and Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean, up to 90 percent of coral reefs have been killed over the past two years by an increase in water temperature

Hoegh-Guldberg argues that if global warming continues as expected "there's a very good probability that coral reefs as we know them now will be gone in 30 to 50 years." However he takes a practical view when asked whether more emphasis should be placed on blasting or climate change. "If you're being charged by a rhino at 20 meters and a bull elephant at 100 meters you have to pay attention to both," he warns.

* * * * *
Will the Apo community get their money?

Leila Peralta, with the U.S. Agency for International Development, fears that "the Philippine government coffer is bankrupt and the government might have already spent the money earned by the community of Apo. Probably, they will return the money, but when? In the meantime, how are the people of Apo going to maintain their sanctuary? " Angel Alcala is more optimistic, "I'm confident the money will go back to them."

Regardless of whether the villagers get their cash to maintain their sanctuary, the one sure thing is that they'll continue to have plenty of tasty jack at the end of a day's fishing. I suggest you try the rich white-fleshed fish steamed in soy sauce, ginger, garlic and onions.
end

Sidebar 1

Can certification scheme reduce cyanide poisoning of reefs?

In late 2001, if all goes according to plan, a shipment from the Philippines of poetically-named blue face angels, imperators, percula clowns and lunula butterflies might be the first aquarium fish "certified" as having been collected according to environmentally-responsible guidelines.

The new certification, loosely patterned on a similar timber certification scheme, is being created by the Hawaii-based Marine Aquarium Council (MAC) for the marine ornamental fish and coral trade worldwide.

With MAC certification, fish verified to have been caught using non-destructive methods, such as hand nets, and transported with care, will be available to home aquarium enthusiasts in the United States, Europe and Japan. Although there may be a bit of a price-premium for these fish, according to Paul Holthus, MAC director, the benefits will be healthy animals, healthy reefs, and sustainable income for fishermen.

Why is such a certification scheme for the marine aquarium trade necessary?

According to Holthus, some fishermen use harvesting methods that damage reefs. Cyanide fishing, for example, takes a heavy toll. Philippine divers for both live food fish (supplied to restaurants in Asia) and aquarium fish are estimated to use about 150,000 kilograms of the poison yearly. The cyanide stuns the fish, sometimes even killing them outright. Worse, since the coral polyps cannot move, they too are often killed, along with their symbiotic algae that give corals their exuberant colours. Poisoned reefs turn white and lifeless.

Without certification, hobbyists are unable to distinguish sustainably-caught fish from fish caught with cyanide.

The fish that survive find ready markets. The global trade in marine aquarium organisms, estimated by MAC at several hundred million dollars annually, pays large sums for tropical reef fish - for example, in the UK a blue damsel retails for UK pounds 4.50 to 5.

The Philippines and Indonesia together account for approximately 80% of the world's aquarium fish trade.

Sidebar 2

Stay on Apo

Most visitors to Apo want to snorkel and dive.

Tourist access is severely limited, with no more than 15 divers a day allowed in the sanctuary.

Visitors to Apo Island have two choices of accommodation: Liberty's Guest House and the Apo Island Beach Resort. Both resorts have dive shops staffed by certified dive masters.

Liberty's, owned by former village head Liberty P. Rhodes and her English husband Paul Rhodes, sits on a terrace overlooking the bay; all rooms face the sunset. It's freshly decorated, friendly, with a good restaurant.

Rooms: Pesos 500-800
Dorm beds: Pesos 200
Tel: +63-35-424-0888, +63-917-603-9987
email: apo@mozcom.com

Apo Island Beach Resort has location, location, location. Its eight bungalows sit right on the crushed shell beach of Kan-upi cove, facing a huge rock in the sea that provides a perfect frame for the sunsets you'll see from your beach-front thatched roof shelter. To reach the Beach Resort you have to scramble between some boulders and through a cleft cut in seaside cliffs taller than coconut palms. The cottages are decorated in simple pan-Asian tropical beach resort architecture, and the pleasant open-air restaurant serves reliable food. The place could use a tougher resident manager, and the architect seems to have gone out of his way to limit light and air circulation in the bungalows.

Rooms: Pesos 700 - 800
Fax: +63 35-225-5490

Sidebar 3:

How does global warming kill corals?

What happens to corals when water temperature increases?

The odd biology of corals may prove to be their undoing. The tiny corals, which are invertebrate animals, capture single-celled algae and force the plants to make their food "like galley cooks on a slave ship," according to one biologist. Global warming increases the algae's metabolism, increasing the speed at which photosynthesis takes place. At about 30 degrees Celsius, the algae produce so much oxygen that the coral cells begin to suffer from oxygen poisoning. The corals then spit out their symbiotic algae, which give corals their brilliant colors, leaving the animals chalky-white. This transformation is called bleaching, and if the water remains warm the corals eventually die.