Mayors from Eight Nations Discuss Coastal Solutions in Siargao

Wazzup Pilipinas!?



From 25 May to 1 June, delegates traveled to Metro Manila and the Philippines' surf capital, Siargao, to exchange ideas on coastal conservation. After all, the solution to one coast's problems might already have been developed in another place.

Mayors and government leaders from eight countries recently met in Siargao for the first international field immersion of Coastal 500, a global network of mayors and government leaders who have pledged to protect their home coasts. Coastal 500 is the largest network of government leaders working to restore the world’s coasts.

Traveling from Indonesia, Micronesia, Palau, Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras, Mozambique and neighboring islands in the Philippines, the mayors and government leaders visited the municipalities of General Luna, Santa Monica and Del Carmen to learn about the country’s solutions to coastal conservation, fisheries management and climate change.

“Coastal 500 is the largest international platform for mayors and leaders of coastal hubs to share their experiences,” explains Cynthia Castro, manager of the Coastal 500 programme. Launched in 2021, it has since grown into a network of 160 mayors and 150 fisheries leaders, aiming to hit 500 leaders by 2025.

Funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, Oak and the Swedish Postcode Foundations, Coastal 500 is the brainchild of international nonprofit Rare, which was founded in 1973 and works in 60 countries. Its flagship programme is Fish Forever, envisioned to revitalize marine habitats and the livelihoods of millions of coastal fishers worldwide.

“Coastal communities all over the world have a lot in common,” says Rocky Sanchez Tirona, managing director for Rare’s Fish Forever programme. “They work within different contexts of policy, governance, culture and resource availability, but sometimes, local leaders just need to feel like they’re not alone.”




FROM CLIMATE ADAPTATION TO TRIBAL BELIEFS

What is obvious to one nation might not be apparent to another. The Philippines for example, knows how to deal with typhoons, withstanding around 20 yearly. Its solutions range from planting and managing natural storm surge barriers like mangrove forests to relocating vital infrastructure like road networks to less exposed areas.

“We don’t experience many big typhoons in Indonesia,” shares Ray Chandra Purnama of Rare Indonesia. Despite being the world’s largest archipelago of over 17,000 islands, Indonesia sits well below the Pacific Ocean’s often-brutal typhoon belt. “We are not as well-versed in preparing for storms, though we are feeling the effects of climate change through the changing migration patterns of fish, making fishing unpredictable.”

During their weeklong immersion in both Siargao and Metro Manila, Coastal 500 members shared relevant experiences and cultural beliefs.

“In Palau we have a belief called a Bul, where tribal chiefs can stop a particular practice – say, the killing of sea turtles or the overharvesting of certain types of fish,” says Kevin Mesebeluu of Rare Palau, who formerly led the island-nation’s top-billed tourism programme. “We also take ecotourism seriously, going so far as to make visitors sign a declaration that they will never harm our marine life. This declaration is stamped right on their passports.” Ecotourism has paid dividends for Palau, providing 53% of the country’s gross domestic product.




COASTAL 500 READY FOR NEW MEMBERS

“It was comforting to know that the problems we’re facing are being encountered in other countries,” shares Elton Júnior dos Reis Paixão, secretary of Maracanã in Brazil. “Because of our immersion and informal exchanges in the Philippines, we now feel less alone and ready to develop new solutions.”

These candid exchanges are the reason behind Coastal 500, since solutions to one community’s problems might already have been developed in another place.

“One problem stinks above all in my coastal city – garbage that flows downriver from the upper provinces,” explains Hugo Sarceño, mayor of the city of Puerto Barrios in Guatemala. “To prevent pollution from flowing to sea, we use nets and river booms to trap floating garbage, making manual cleanups easier.” Riverine garbage is an issue faced worldwide, from Africa to the Caribbean.

Juan Ramon Manaiza, mayor of the municipality of Limón in the Honduras, highlighted a common theme for small-scale fishers. “One of our biggest challenges is the encroachment of industrial fishers in our municipal waters, which is 12 nautical miles or 22 kilometers from our coast,” Conflict between commercial and artisanal fishers is a common theme in areas where fish yields are waning.

“A great practice we learned about in Siargao were Fish Forever Savings Clubs,” says Juma Cateria, a district administrator in the province of Nampula in Mozambique. “We definitely want our coastal fishers to adopt this.”

Patterned after the Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLA) model of many countries, Savings Clubs reach small-scale fishing communities that do not have access to formal financial services, the traditional requirements of which are often too imposing for fishers. By pooling together funds, members have a readily accessible pool for emergencies, such as the surprise family sickness or when fish don’t bite during lean seasons or bouts of bad weather.

Rare has since established over 700 Savings Clubs in six countries, creating a financial security net for hundreds of fishing communities. “We are trying to strengthen social capital and protect coastal assets,” explains Christopher Lomboy of Rare Philippines. “If fishers have cash during a family emergency, then they will have fewer reasons to resort to illegal and potentially destructive fishing – protecting them and our coasts at the same time.”

The Coastal 500 members visited marine protected areas, coastal communities, tourism hubs and exchanged ideas with local leaders at the National Inland and Coastal Fisheries Summit (NCFIS) in Metro Manila from 25 May to 1 June 2024.

The connections forged by Coastal 500 led not just to the exchange of ideas, but real friendships. The trio of mayors Te, Jabagat and Calonge from Libertad, Bindoy and Mabuhay was inseparable. “I realized just how progressive Philippine laws are, allowing our local communities to safeguard our coasts,” says Edreluisa Calonge, mayor of the municipality of Mabuhay in Zamboanga Sibugay. “Other nations have a top-down approach that doesn’t make it easy for coastal residents to feel ownership for the sea.”

The delegates were Edreluisa Calonge, Alfredo Corro, Eniego Jabagat, Mary Jean Te, Romina Saljuga and Arwela Dolar from the Philippines, Henaro Polloi from Palau, Hugo Sarceño from Guatemala, Juan Ramon Manaiza and Edgardo Ramirez from Honduras, Elton Júnior dos Reis Paixão and Edgardo Ramirez from Brazil, Juma Cateria and Jubeta Mamudo Namaneque from Mozambique, Bachrun Labuta from Indonesia, plus Lara Williams and Jamie Staugler from Bloomberg Philanthropies.

With its first field immersion completed, Coastal 500 is getting ready to expand its membership. “We’re building the learning resources and communications platforms that can benefit local leaders even in areas where Rare isn’t working. These will be ready for new members by the end of the year,” says Castro.

Applicants interested to join the Coastal 500 can send an email to Coastal500@rare.org.

“We’re excited to relay our experiences back to our colleagues at home. We’d love to share what we know and we’d love to learn from others,” concludes Jubeta Mamudo Namaneque from Mozambique. “Please come and join us.”

Operation Blessing Turns Over ‘Community of Hope’ Common Areas to Tacloban LGU

Wazzup Pilipinas!?

More than a decade after Typhoon Yolanda, survivors continue to build back better as Operation Blessing Foundation Philippines, CBN Asia’s humanitarian arm, officially handed over the Community of Hope (COH) housing project’s common areas to the local government unit during a turnover ceremony held at Tacloban City Hall, on May 31.

CBN Asia and Operation Blessing President Peter Kairuz, along with Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez, graced the turnover ceremony, which featured their signing of a Memorandum of Understanding and Deed of Donation for Lot No. 4109—a parcel of land and a building within the COH resettlement area in Palanog.

“We warmly welcomed the visit of Operation Blessing President Mr. Peter Kairuz, along with other officials, for the ceremonial signing. Their ‘Community of Hope’ project symbolizes their continued support and collaboration with our local government to provide additional assistance to Taclobanons,” Romualdez said.

Aside from building 100 resilient homes, Operation Blessing has helped most families become self-sustainable by providing livelihood assistance. The organization has also offered free healthcare during various medical missions and partnered with Divine Word Hospital for health checkups. Moreover, deserving students have received scholarships through the Back-to-School program.

The latest turnover marks a significant milestone in Operation Blessing's exit strategy, ensuring that Community of Hope and its residents will continue to thrive under local governance. Nonetheless, Operation Blessing's support for Tacloban continues, ready to provide assistance whenever needed.

There is much more to be done and many more lives to be changed. Be part of Operation Blessing’s humanitarian efforts in Tacloban and across the nation by visiting operationblessing.ph or contacting 09399215543 or 09189067754.

Why Do Science? CERN Physicist Answers

Wazzup Pilipinas!?


Above photo shows Dr. David giving a talk at UPD-CS  (Photo credit: Maria Alexandra Marmol).

There are scientists whose works are immediately appreciated by people: molecular biologists and pharmaceutical scientists who develop medicines and vaccines and find cures for cancer; climatologists and environmental scientists who monitor the weather and fight climate change; engineers who invent thinner gadgets and faster electric cars. And then there are those like particle physicist Dr. André David, whose work veers into the more unfamiliar realms of science, the kinds that elicit unimpressed comments like “What for?” and “How will this help me in my everyday life?”.

Dr. David works at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire), located on the border between Switzerland and France. But last February, he was at UPD College of Science (UPD-CS) giving a talk to students of the Science, Technology, and Society (STS) course about the very reason we do science. Judging solely from his familiarity with the weather (he wore khaki shorts and a beige shirt to reflect the heat) and his almost-natural interjections of parang and ano between his sentences, he is not unaccustomed to the Philippines.

Back at CERN, he and thousands of researchers from across the globe are demystifying the fundamental particles that make up the universe, particles much smaller and more elusive than the familiar protons and electrons. Using ring tunnels that span kilometers in diameter, called particle accelerators, they accelerate protons to near lightspeed and smash them together. The particles that unfurl from the collisions are what they study, revealing not only the most fundamental building blocks of matter but also the interactions that govern them.

In 2012, CERN announced the discovery of the Higgs boson, a particle that had eluded scientists since Peter Higgs theorized its existence in 1964 (Higgs sadly passed away on April 10, 2024). The Higgs boson gives particles their mass, allowing everything – stars, planets, life – to exist. Because of its significance, CERN’s discovery of the Higgs boson is considered one of the biggest scientific achievements in recent history.

But some still wonder why it’s even necessary to look for these particles, a sentiment that has only grown more prevalent after the discovery. Beyond the mental calisthenics and existential what-ifs, what has the Higgs boson contributed to our daily lives? Did it make our coffee taste better, our days cooler, our sleep deeper? One might even argue that there’s no discernible difference between their lives before and after knowing the Higgs boson exists.

When I asked Dr. David if he has one-liners in response, developed from having been confronted with these questions countless times, he was quick to clarify he doesn’t. “I’m no Richard Feynman,” he said. But in his lecture at UPD-CS, he had passingly said something that I thought, in hindsight, summed up his points succinctly: “You won’t see if you don’t look.”

That is, discoveries come from exploring the unknown, not from working on what’s already known, and “should you not seek, you are guaranteed to not find,” he explained to me. "The importance of new findings is that they can only be rendered useful if they are brought into the light of our collective knowledge. No amount of applied research on candles would have made the electric lightbulb possible.”

Indeed, when William Gilbert was investigating why amber attracts straws and chaff, he didn’t know he was laying the groundwork for what is now an essential component of our modern lives. He was examining how static electricity works and had devised the first electrical measuring instrument called the electroscope – a simple pivoted needle that revolves when drawn near a lightly rubbed amber. During his time (the 16th century), the world was run by horse-drawn carriages and manual labor. At the time, there were no apparent applications for the phenomenon that made amber sticky, nor would there be until 200 years later when Ewald Georg von Kleist and Pieter van Musschenbroek independently invented the Leyden jar, a device used to store electric charge. Even then, Gilbert’s, Kleist’s, and Musschenbroek’s works would not be fully realized until the 19th century, when inventors such as Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison developed the first practically usable electric devices such as the telephone and the incandescent light bulb.

Many scientists in the Renaissance were working on things that offered no immediate improvements to their quality of life, nor any apparent use until much later. When Isaac Newton was investigating why apples fall to the ground, he didn’t know his law of gravitation would be used to shoot satellites into orbit. When Robert Hooke and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek created the first microscope to observe the curious life of microorganisms, they didn’t know their work would become the backbone of modern medicine. “What seems abstract now may become commonplace later,” Dr. David said.

And what type of world would we have without them? Had Hooke and Leeuwenhoek not created the microscope, molecular biologists and pharmaceutical scientists today would not have any means of developing vaccines. Had Newton not investigated gravity, climatologists and environmental scientists would not have spatial heat maps and typhoon images generated from space. Had Gilbert not cared for amber, engineers would not have gadgets to make thinner or electric cars to make faster. One might even argue that virologists and climatologists and engineers wouldn’t exist.

Still, that’s not to say applied researchers are inferior to scientists like Dr. David. “I equally respect those who prefer to exploit what is known and make it better instead of exploring the unknown,” he clarified. “I suspect that eventually, the best for humans as a whole is that both proclivities coexist.”

Humans have prospered precisely because both types of endeavors have existed since antiquity. While at certain moments cavemen were hunting for food and fighting predators, at other times they investigated the glowing orb that appeared when lightning struck the ground, which gave succeeding humans the knowledge to control fire. Our instinct to explore the unknown is hardwired into our nature in much the same way as caring for our well-being is, and it is inhuman to disregard one over the other.

Science, as we now know it, is the fulfillment of our human nature, achieving both goals of improving our lives and exploring the world simultaneously. “I would say the scientific method is probably one of the least bad ways we’ve found to actually learn things about this reality,” Dr. David said.

Now, scientists like Dr. David are taking care of half the job. But just because their works may only be useful later doesn’t mean they are futile now. For instance, in a cost-benefit analysis conducted by researchers at the University of Milan and the Centre for Industrial Studies in Milan, they estimated a 92% probability that the benefits of CERN exceed its cost, with an expected net present value of about 3 billion euros. And that’s not including the unpredictable economic value of discoveries.

Beyond the numbers, the impact of CERN on its thousands of collaborators is priceless. “Year in and year out, I can see the impact that passing through CERN has on people from all walks of life and stages,” he said. “That impact on their lives and careers is very tangible and one of the largest added values of projects like the ones that only a transnational organization like CERN can host.”

We don’t need to look any further than our scientists for examples. Dr. Marvin Flores of UPD-CS National Institute of Physics (NIP) and the High Energy Physics & Phenomenology (HEP-PH) subgroup have been collaborating with CERN scientists since 2021. “Being part of the ATLAS Collaboration at CERN is a surreal feeling,” he said. “It greatly skyrocketed my love and appreciation for fundamental science and curiosity-driven research.” For Dr. Flores, the collaboration is also a source of inspiration. “Our first baby boy, who was born recently last April 15, 2024, is named Atlas partly because [of] it.”




Above photo shows Dr. Marvin Flores, Dr. Andre David, and the HEP-PH NIP subgroup (Photo credit: HEP-PH, GANAP, NIP photo archives).

The ATLAS collaboration at CERN, which involves 9,000 collaborators, transcends borders and brings people together. “Here is a collaboration made of scientists from all around the world who have come together regardless of nationality, race, religion, political stance, and societal status, to ask the fundamental question: at the tiniest of scales, what is the universe made out of?” Dr. Flores said. At the very least, these scientists who dedicate their whole lives to the pursuit of the unknown deserve the same level of respect as applied researchers.


On a personal note, Dr. David still finds it difficult to articulate why he does science. “It is not easy to explain why I enjoy working on things that I may not be around to see the fruits of,” he said. “I am doing my best now with a common interest of learning more about what matter is made of, that may come only to fruition after I am gone.”