Trouble on the Lake

Trouble on the lake right Taal Lake, where mechanised fishing and fish-pens have reduced the catch of artisanal fishers. aguna Lake, the largest freshwater To the south of Laguna is Taal Lake. Lbody in the Philippines, is slowly Roughly oval in shape with an island dying. Bordering on Metro Manila, it volcano, still active, at its heart, Taal is one has been used for decades as a repository of the most beautiful sights in southern for industrial waste. A government Luzon. Its north and eastern shores are survey in 1979 declared that 90 per cent in places densely populated and easy of of the 424 industrial establishments on the access — 70,000 people live in the ten shore were 'highly pollutive'. By then municipalities around the lake — while another factor was also threatening the many of the villages in the south are well lake's ecosystem: fish-pen culture, which off the beaten track and unaffected by began in the early 1970s. By 1983 there industrial or other developments. were 1,034 pens covering 34,000 hectares, To reach Don Juan you must either take or 40 per cent of the lake. That year seven a banca from San Nicolas, on the other side fishermen were killed in the escalating of the lake, or make the knee-wobbling conflict between the fish-pen owners, who descent down 1500 stone steps that zigzag employed armed guards, and the through the orchards and palm groves traditional fishers, whose share of the which clothe the lower flanks of Mount catch had plummeted. Not only were the Maculot. The fortunate visitor may be fish-pens depriving them of water they invited to eat tawiles, one of 25 species of once fished, they had increased competition fish endemic to Taal, in the shade of the among the fish for the lake's food mango trees at the water's edge. resources. As a result of industrial Don Juan has a population of 3,000 and pollution and fish culture 23 species the breadwinners in most families make of fish have become extinct in the lake. a living as gill-net and hook-and-line 26 fishers. Some supplement their income their influence to circumvent laws which by working in the orchards and palm are supposed to regulate their activities. groves. The story the fishers have to tell A quarter of an hour by banca from is little different from the one you hear on Don Juan is the village of Lunang Lipa. the coast. In the 1970s,' explains Virgilio According to Nelson Manalo, a barangay Roxas over a lunch of tawiles and fruit, councillor and a ring-net owner, life for 'we used to catch at least 15 kilos of the villagers is full of hardship. milkfish on each trip. Now we get The ring-netters do at least provide work, between one and five kilos at the most.' says Nelson Manalo. It takes 100 people to The reasons for the declining catch are operate the nets and profits from the catch, various. Purse-seiners, motorised push- which might be as high as 100 gallons of netters and ring-netters have been partly fish a night, are divided between the responsible. These three forms of fishing owner, the boatmen, the pushers, and the are far more efficient, in terms of hauling lamp-holders, each taking a quarter. fish out of the water, than the traditional 'You can't stop people making a living,' methods used by artisanal fishers, who explains Nelson. 'We have no land, no jobs either use a hook and line or small gill- — all we can do is fish. If ring-net fishing nets. Purse- seiners, in contrast, employ was banned, we'd have no livelihood.' massive nets which are set and hauled by In the next village, an articulate old trawlers; in one night a purse-seiner can man rails against all forms of commercial catch as many fish as a gill-netter will in fishing in the lake. He says that the a month. Ring-netting and push-netting government makes laws, but fails to also involve a capital-intensive approach, enforce them as the people who own the although both require more manpower purse-seiners and the push-nets have than purse-seining. friends and relatives in high places. 'What Fish-pens have also affected the catch we need is a revolution,' he suggests. 'We of artisanal fishers. Most are sited at the need a new system. The whole country mouth of the Pancipit River, which flows depends on peasants and fishers for food.' towards Balayan Bay. According to the The artisanal fishers of Lake Taal are artisanal fishers, the use of artificial feed also worried about the impact of in the pens has led to eutrophication: the CALABARZON projects. Industrial nutrient input increases algal growth, which development, water extraction, road causes a decrease in oxygen, especially in improvements, and new tourist sites still water. The use of pesticides in the fish- may all affect the lake's ecology over pens is also thought to be harmful. 'We the coming years. Some municipalities don't like fish culture,' says Mrs Milagros see tourism as the best way of generating Chavez, president of KMMLT, the lake's wealth and jobs. However, the fishers are organisation of fishers. 'We don't want less enthusiastic. Midway through 1996 Taal Lake to go the same way as Laguna.' they heard rumours that an American Besides the polluting effects of fish culture, consortium was planning to build a golf- she fears that the pens in the Pancipit River course on land which had been acquired are hindering the passage of migratory fish. by a Taiwanese company and that several The fishers of Don Juan speak scathingly families faced eviction. Lack of of those who control the commercial information is a perennial problem in the fisheries in the lake. Over half the fish-pen Philippines; it is hard for people affected owners, they say, are outsiders from Manila by development plans to challenge those and elsewhere who care little for the lake's plans when developers and government long-term future. Many are military agencies fail to supply them with detailed officers and politicians and they have used information. 27 Pushed to the limits Several hours' walk from Bagtok, perched on a hillside with spectacular views of the Arakan Valley, is the settlement of Paco-paco. Its datu, Tahalyong Sulayman, has a similar story to tell. Encompassing with a sweep of the arms the great bowl of largely treeless land below the village, he says: 'When I was a child all this was thick forest. A lot of lowlanders say that it was our slash- and-burn farming that did this. It wasn't. The settlers started it, and the logging companies did the rest.' A generation ago the Manobo were the sole occupants of the 70,000-hectare Arakan Valley; today all but 10-15,000 hectares is in the possession of non-tribal settlers, and above This family in New much of the rest has been degraded Paco have a small-holding on which they grow a by logging. variety of vegetables, and Paco-paco is picturesque and poor. keep a few animals. Ten families, most with seven or more children, live in a scattering of thatched right Tahalyong bamboo huts. The huts are spotlessly Sulayman, datu of New Paco village. In his clean and tidy. Families sleep together lifetime, he has watched in one room and cook and eat in the other. the forests of the Arakan Pigs and poultry search for pickings Valley being destroyed. around the huts, and in the fields beyond grow maize, sweet potato, cassava, and adang Layoran is the datu of Bagtok gabi. Having lost so much of their land, Bvillage. 'When the settlers first came the Manobo have been forced to change here/ he explains, 'our ancestors welcomed their farming methods: the fields are now them. They even gave them land.' continuously tilled and in places the soils Badang's people, the Manobo of Mindanao, are becoming exhausted. were later to realise that such largesse — Paco-paco has no electricity or piped with plots of land being exchanged for water, and the nearest school and health tins of fish and bags of rice — was a clinic are many miles away. However, the mistake. 'Yes/ muses Badang, 'we were modern world is impinging on their lives: fooled by the settlers. But we've learned they listen to American pop music on the our lesson — the land we have now will radio and there is a netball hoop where remain ours. We can't move again, and the young play outside the datu's hut. The besides there's nowhere else to go.' wealthier among them buy fertiliser and 28 pesticides to put on their fields, and goods as indigenous cultural communities, such as shag tobacco — which they roll in hill tribes, ethnic minorities or indigenous old newspaper — and kerosene lamps are peoples, the latter being the preferred found in many homes. term now. Forty separate ethnolinguistic According to datu Tahalyan, his people groups fall into six major categories. The were better off in the days before the largest, with over 2.1 million individuals settlers and loggers came. 'We were never and 18 ethnolinguistic groups, are the hungry when I was a child,' he recalls. lumads of Mindanao. The second most 'There was always food in the forest. Now populous group, with a million members, we've joined a new sort of economy. We comprises the indigenous people of the can go to stores and buy things, but you Cordillera, the mountainous backbone of need money for that.' northern Luzon.

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