After quite a while I’m back with my column, Conservation Matters. This will continue to bring lessons learned, successes, challenges, announcements, and innovative ideas and concepts as I continue my journey in the field of conservation work.
After years of working as an independent professional in natural resources management, protected areas, environmental protection, and biodiversity conservation in the country and to some extent in Southeast Asia, I am now working as the national coordinator/country programme manager for the Small Grants Programme Operational Phase 7 in the Philippines. The SGP-7 is a funding window of the Global Environment Facility with the United Nations Development Programme and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
This five-year initiative is now being implemented under a nongovernment organization modality, which actually triggered my interest to join the programme. The SGP has been implemented in the country for quite a while, but this is the first time that an NGO shall administer and manage the programme. The Foundation for the Philippine Environment, which is also a grant-making organization using the trust fund established under the Debt-For-Nature-Swap between the Philippines and the United States of America, is the National Implementing Partner of the SGP-7. It is serving as my host and contracting party for this assignment.
Both the SGP and FPE are providing funds and technical assistance to the initiatives of the civil society organizations toward biodiversity conservation and sustainable development, through community-based approaches in environment and natural resources management. The landscape strategy espoused by the SGP-7 motivated me to join the programme, too, as I thought I could infuse the ideas, concepts, and learnings I have had when I attended a course on protected landscape at the University of Wales in the United Kingdom years back when this modality was still newly introduced and considered in the country.
The four priority project sites of the SGP-7 are known and familiar to me. One of the sites is the Catubig Watershed in Northern Samar and it is partly within the Samar Island Natural Park, where I spent considerable time in preparing its first management plan as a protected area. Coincidentally, it was an engagement under the Samar Island Biodiversity Project, which was also supported by the UNDP-GEF. The other project site is the province of Aurora that is within the Sierra Madre Mountain Range, an area where a large track of forest cover in Luzon still exists. My familiarity of this site was made possible when the SGP-5 engaged me as a logic specialist on the development of project proposals on this site.
The two other sites of the SGP-7 are the Calamianes Group of Islands in Northern Palawan and Siargao Island in Mindanao. I had the opportunity to visit the Calamianes twice in recent years, and this area is high on species endemism, the reason why it is one of the priority sites of the Philippines Biodiversity Conservation Foundation Inc. (PhilBio) of which I am a founding and active member of its Board of Trustees.
I am excited to work in Siargao since, along with the MKNP, it was also a priority site for the implementation of the National Integrated Protected Areas System, because it has been declared as a protected landscape and seascape. In particular, I would like to see how the management category of Siargao as a PA is being amplified on its management plan and the overall conservation of the area, especially so that it is a popular tourism destination.
I am just over a month in my present post, but I’m sure there are exciting and challenging things ahead. Just like in my previous assignments, I look forward to working with diverse personalities, groups, institutions, and sites, but the main focus remains – the conservation of our biological and cultural diversities and sustainable benefits of local communities, this time though aside the worldwide changing climate, we are in the midst of global health crises as well.*