Rod? Reel? Dynamite? A tough-love aid program takes aim at the devastation of the coral reefs.
© US News & World Report written by Steven Butler
Dawn comes to Olango with the sound of roosters crowing and dynamite detonating. The blasts roll across the water every few minutes from the coral reefs that ring this sandy islet near the city of Cebu in the Philippines. And so begins another day of the struggle between man and nature in the developing world.
These days, it's definitely not a fair fight. Dynamite is a crude method of fishing, but horrifically effective. A single blast yields a boatload of fish in minutes. It also turns yet another piece of one of the Earth's most productive ecosystems into a pile of rubble.
Elsewhere along the reefs, fishermen sucking air from a long hose attached to an air compressor designed to fill tires stay underwater for hours at a time, squirting cyanide to stun valuable aquarium fish that they catch alive, or pounding the reefs with rocks and crowbars to scare fish out into nets. The tons of cyanide pumped into the reefs kills the coral as surely as the other, more direct methods.
Reservoir. The poor fishermen of Olango ought to be natural conservationists: A healthy coral reef is not only a multicolored garden of fantastic shapes and a reservoir of global biodiversity as important as any rain forest; it is also the source of productivity that populates the fisheries of the entire region. Setting aside reefs as a marine sanctuary can pay for itself in as little as two years in increased catches. Destroying reefs is destroying the capital that ocean life depends on for its future. The coral animal that slowly builds the reefs is fragile and depends on a complex symbiotic interaction with other plants and animals to survive.
But as in other developing countries, modern technology has vastly increased the capacity to mine and destroy ecological systems for short- term gain even as poverty, corruption and a rapidly growing population have increased the pressures to do so. Large portions of the 250,000 square miles of coral reef worldwide have already been destroyed beyond recovery, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. Overexploitation and untreated sewage have virtually exterminated some coral reefs in Jakarta Bay in Indonesia. Through a combination of overfishing and natural causes, such as hurricanes, the coral cover of spectacular reefs on Jamaica's north coast has dropped from over 50 percent to less than 5 percent since the late 1970s.
But the choice for many fishermen each day is not between illegal and legal fishing methods but between eating and going hungry--between surviving and sinking. "Most fishermen who use dynamite live in concrete block houses," observes Bablito Inoc, a trap fisherman from Olango--where most people live in tiny wood and straw huts. Even though the Philippine economy has begun to grow again at a good clip, it will take years before manufacturing and service jobs counterbalance the population pressure.
The Philippines long ago outlawed blast and cyanide fishing, with little effect. In Olango, a community organization is supposed to police the waters to prevent illegal fishing, but one of the leaders of the group has made a business selling dynamite to fishermen. Meanwhile, in the dark of night, an illegal trawler cruises past the island with a bright light to attract fish and a fine-mesh net strung out behind to cleanse the water of the tiniest minnows. "When the trawler comes there is nothing left for other fishermen," says Sister Shirlita Sintos, a Franciscan nun ministering to the community. "Their families have to go without breakfast." Unfortunately, it turns out, the trawler is owned by the mayor of a neighboring municipality, making it politically untouchable.
"People are afraid to speak up," says Sister Shirlita. Indeed, one environmental activist campaigning against destructive fishing in northern Luzon was murdered at home in what people assume was a payback from syndicates of illegal fishermen.
Local villains. Although some degradation of the reefs can be traced to classic environmental villains--minor changes in water temperature or salinity caused by industrial pollution can wipe out a reef, and commercial logging of forests increases deadly silt runoff--most of the devastation is a direct result of local poverty and local politics.
The traditional style of nature preservation has posted some success in saving the Philippines' reefs--at least in isolated spots that are hard for fishermen to reach in the first place. Coral growth and fish populations have already begun to revive at the Tubbataha Reefs in the Sulu Sea, an internationally famous dive site that was listed as a World Heritage Site by the United Nations in 1993. From a patchy start when the reef was declared a marine park in 1988, after extensive damage from blast fishing, enforcement of a fishing ban has gradually improved, with cooperation from conservation and dive groups. The Tubbataha case shows that a little enforcement can go a long way, at least in a site that is 12 hours' sailing from the nearest large port.
But closer to land, enforcement is much more difficult. And it is these areas that are the target of a $21 million Coastal Resources Management Project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. The project, which aims to put 10,000 miles of coastline under sustainable management, is tough-love development aid. Gone are the vehicles, computers and cell phones that aid recipients expect as a symbol of American largess. No longer are resources being poured into a single model site. The purpose is to empower local communities to act in their own self-interest. "Past environmental projects were just dots on a map," says Catherine Courtney, project chief from PRC Environmental Management in Virginia. "We designed this project for movement to other communities." And it is supposed to work by lifting local incomes quickly.
Power politics. The project is more controversial than it sounds; though AID does not put it this way, coastal resource management can only succeed by remaking the local balance of politics. Ultimately, the project aims to create a local political coalition with a common interest in preserving the coastal environment and strong enough to defeat those who make money destroying it.
On the west coast of Palawan province, the town of San Vicente, with still relatively rich fishing grounds, was chosen as an easy target of opportunity for the project, in part because the mayor--Antonio Alvarez, scion of a wealthy logging family--has already tipped the balance heavily the right way. Over half of Alvarez's constituents are immigrants from other provinces where fishing resources have already been severely depleted. Says Alvarez: "I said to them, 'Let's not do here what you did there.' "
San Vicente set up a small marine sanctuary that it plans to expand to cover 20 percent of the fishing grounds, and has banned compressor fishing in municipal waters. At a workshop organized by the project, Alvarez made a commitment to pass laws to protect resources and to assign personnel to enforce them, while Courtney agreed to provide legal advice and technical support and help train municipal staff. But with just 11 policemen, 20,000 people and 110 kilometers of coastline, the fishermen themselves will have to organize to keep outsiders from plundering hard-won gains.
No one thinks that extending the model to other sites along the Philippines' reefs, like Olango, will happen automatically. "Alan [White, a PRC project consultant] told me not to make enemies," says Maria Fe Portigo, who joined the AID project as Olango's area coordinator. "We are just making friends with everyone now." That's a good start. But the project is unlikely to succeed without creating foes--and crushing them.
© US News & World Report written by Steven Butler