CRM Planning

Some people have said that it’d be nice to hear a little about the actual work that I’m doing at site (hi Mom and Dad). Realizing that I haven’t spent much time explaining what I’m doing here as a CRM (coastal resource management), I thought I’d give a little explanation. It’s going to be long, because I have to start at the beginning, but I hope you enjoy!

When I came to the Peace Corps, I did not really know what my work as a CRM volunteer would entail. I knew about CRM in theory but not in practice. CRM work is very for every single volunteer at site, but during training we learned different aspects of what our work at site could be like.

The key things to know about CRM in the Philippines are that after two decades of autocratic rule of Ferdinand Marcos, much control was devolved to the local governments during the period of democratization that followed. In the early 90s, the Philippines national government passed laws giving all control over the municipal waters (from 1 to 15km away from the shore) directly to the municipal government unit. That’s where most CRM PCVs, including myself, work. Although it’s very promising that the LGUs (local government units) have so much authority due to their close connection with the fisherfolk, it can also challenging for many of these resource-strapped government offices to implement plans and projects. In the Philippines, in the past 30 years, there has been a rapid decline in fisheries resources (as has happened all over the world). In this country, the main drivers are population growth and destructive fishing practices (like fishing with cyanide poison or, believe it or not, dynamite), which peaked in the 70s and 80s. Nonetheless, their harmful consequences continue to be felt today. In Nueva Valencia, an oil spill back in 2006 also caused significant damage to the coastline. This is where CRM comes in. The objective of coastal resource management is to create policies and regulations that work to minimize the harmful effects of human activities on the marine environment while protecting fisherfolks’ livelihoods and ensuring fisheries can be sustained for future generations. It’s a difficult tightrope to walk on, and that’s what makes CRM so challenging but also so interesting.

Each volunteer has an extremely different situation. I am lucky because in Nueva Valencia the fisherfolk communities are well-versed in the importance of CRM (thanks in part to the information campaign targeting fisherfolk about the oil spill), and the fisherfolk are very well organized. This helps in gathering information as well as in making plans that the fisherfolk will support.

With the help of a few NGOs here in Nueva (mainly Philippine Business for Social Progress and Zoological Society of London) as well as some academic institutions, my office is taking the lead on creating a plan which will outline the policies and regulations to be implemented for all municipal waters surrounding Nueva Valencia. Since our first group meeting on February 8th, I have been extremely busy working on the CRM plan. The plan will also focus on implementation of projects and regulations, monitoring and evaluation, budgeting, and education campaigns about plan specifics.

Our first step is consolidating information from various studies that have been done in different barangays by different organizations with different focuses. I hope that the varied information will prove very helpful in the CRM planning.

The other big step that is going on right now is collecting firsthand information from the resource users themselves. This activity is known as Participatory Coastal Resource Assessments (PCRAs). This step is crucial for several reasons. One, the local knowledge they have is arguably the greatest source of information about the resource available. Secondly, policies and regulations in the CRM plan need to come from the wants and the needs of the community members themselves, or else whatever plan is created will surely fail. And third, it’s important to give the fisherfolk ownership during this whole process for the plan to succeed. 

For me, first I had to help organize and facilitate trainings for community members (4 from every coastal barangay). We believe that the best way to get information during these meetings is from the community members themselves. We had both trainings two weeks ago, and we began the meetings themselves last week. We’ve been having two a day, and within 2.5 weeks we will (hopefully) have completed our PCRAs in every coastal barangay. Our PCRAs focus on three main activities: community mapping, trend diagrams, and problem/issue matrices. 

Gelby, from PBSP, giving an introduction on what is CRM to our PCRA facilitators.

Describing some of the PCRA activities.

Facilitators learning about fish catch trend diagrams.

Don't worry: I got a haircut later in the week.

The mayor of Nueva Valencia, Juan Gaitan, came to thank participants for attending and to help hand out certificates.

Ma'am Jo from ZSL describing PCRAs in the second part of our PCRA training (for the southern barangays).

Facilitators practicing the PCRAs activities in Barangay Cabalagnan, the site of our second training. High schoolers are in the back practicing their dances for Junior-Senior Prom.

Confirming the schedule of PCRAs in every coastal barangay.

My LGU counterparts.

The barangay captain of Poblacion leading in a community mapping activity. 

A community member presenting the results from her group's fish catch trend diagram.

Rosalie (back to camera) and Joe Ann (one the right) having a discussion with community members about problems in their community, the causes and effects of those problems, as well as any recommendations they may have to find a solution.

Gathering secondary data and conducting PCRAs are only the beginning. The next big step will be taking the outputs from the PCRAs and determining where biophysical assessments are needed most. I’ll be taking the lead on this endeavor. After biophysical assessments are complete, we’ll have a 2 or 3-day workshop with the CRM planners and representatives from each coastal barangay in order to come up with a draft plan. Then will come the actual drafting, which I’ll probably be taking the lead on that as well. After the draft is circulated amongst the planners, we’ll present our preliminary draft to the community members to address any issues or concerns. Those community consultations will also serve as an education outreach to explain to the community members what’s going on. Once we go back and make revisions, it will be ready to go to the mayor for final approval. Our goal is to be ready for submission sometime this summer (your July/August summer). I’ll be really satisfied if we meet that target.

Of course, planning is very important and a worthwhile activity. However, it is the actual implementation of the plan that is arguably the most important part. So once the plan is approved, a whole new list of activities will begin for me, as well as the other people involved in CRM activities in Nueva Valencia. So it doesn’t sound like things will be slowing down anytime soon.

Before I get too far ahead of myself, I’ll just say that I’m excited that we’ve gotten the ball rolling. I enjoy helping to run the PCRAs. My introductory remarks are getting a little easier each time, and the people are thankfully very patient with my Illongo. While there’s a lot of preparation for each meeting and a lot of data processing after, I have a lot of fun going out in the coastal barangays and hearing community members talk about the condition of the resources and what they would like to see in the future. During one of our activities, we ask the fisherfolk to predict the future condition of their resource. Many are optimistic that with the work we’re doing and the strict implementation of Nueva Valencia’s CRM plan, we’ll be able to reverse the fish catch decline in the waters of Nueva Valencia. Now that seems like something worth fighting for!