Moving from open access extraction to new participatory levels of accountable management Malampaya Sound, Palawan, the Philippines by Jonathan Pilien and Peter Walpole Environmental Science for Social Change (ESSC) SUMMARY Pilien and Walpole observe that conflicts over the use of Malampaya Sound in northern Palawan began decades ago when commercial logging and fishing got under way. Intense resource competition continued for decades, depleting fisheries by the 1970s. Commercial fishing restrictions were imposed periodically. Officials often proposed conflicting policies and programmes for commercial development and resource conservation, usu- ally with little community support. The case study describes recent efforts to incorporate community participation in plans for making the zone part of the National Integrated Protected Area Programme. Efforts have been made to establish links between stakeholders through facilitated public dialogues, community mapping, public hearings and a strategic planning workshop. 252 NATURAL RESOURCE CONFLICT MANAGEMENT CASE STUDIES: AN ANALYSIS OF POWER, PARTICIPATION AND PROTECTED AREAS GUIDING QUESTIONS KEY ISSUES ● How can local communities be participants in conflict management? ● Why do planners and policy-makers often overlook local stakeholders? CONTEXT ● Who are the local stakeholders? ● What other stakeholders are involved in the Malampaya Sound? CONFLICT BACKGROUND OR HISTORY ● What historical trends exist concerning local natural resource con- flicts? ● How does historical analysis help us understand and manage contem- porary conflicts? CONFLICT MANAGEMENT AND RESOLUTION PROCESSES ● How can conflicting parties to a conflict be brought together? ● What role can outsiders play in addressing conflicts? ● What sort of information is helpful in resolving conflicts? CONFLICT MANAGEMENT AND RESOLUTION OUTCOMES ● What did the conflict management process accomplish? ● How has natural resource management changed? LESSONS LEARNED ● Have the conflicts been resolved or managed? ● Does increasing local participation increase or decrease the incidence of conflicts? MOVING FROM OPEN ACCESS EXTRACTION TO NEW PARTICIPATORY LEVELS OF ACCOUNTABLE MANAGEMENT MALAMPAYA SOUND, PALAWAN, THE PHILIPPINES 253 KEY ISSUES The story of Malampaya Sound and its people spans over 100 years and revolves around the resources of the land and sea. From the time the first visitors entered the area and saw the richness of its forests and waters, its natural resources have been continuously exploited, despite the area’s isolation. It is a story that contin- ues today as Malampaya Sound’s aquatic resources, mangrove ecosystem and fragile upland forest all show signs of strain. Fish stock depletion, water quality deterioration, sustained commercial interest in the area, pressure on small fisher- folk to clear the surrounding uplands and small-scale illegal removal of forest products all pose threats to the area’s natural resources. Malampaya Sound is a historic fishing ground, which provides a source of liveli- hood for small-scale fisherfolk, and the basis for a major business enterprise for large-scale entrepreneurs. Yet, it is also identified as a priority area for protection and conservation because of its unique ecosystem, which serves as a habitat for many endangered species. Conservation of a protected area and community subsistence In a natural resource conflict management process, it is important to understand that however pressing conservation may be, it cannot be achieved at the price of the physical, cultural and socio-economic exclusion of the people in the area. Conservation has to be a basic human principle: a value that needs to be factored in at the start of a programme that will be implemented properly. A programmed conservation design that may have worked in other areas of the Philippines or in other parts of the world cannot simply be applied and assumed to be workable in another context. Relearning the need for community participation in programme implementation No particularly fresh insights are presented here, as previous conflict manage- ment experiences and the literature amply illustrate the importance of involving people in any conservation programme at the very start. Yet what is surprising and interesting in this case is that these lessons had to be learned afresh by peo- ple responsible for the national programme, local government units (LGUs) and communities. They came to an awareness that the bottom-up social process in conflict management is crucial; basic concerns of communities were articulated, considered and addressed before the programme design was fully imple- mented. 254 NATURAL RESOURCE CONFLICT MANAGEMENT CASE STUDIES: AN ANALYSIS OF POWER, PARTICIPATION AND PROTECTED AREAS Critical role of assisting organizations Malampaya Sound Protected Land and Seascape is only one of eight areas in the Philippines on which the protected area (PA) programme focuses. It is the largest of these, covering roughly 200 000 ha of land and sea, and may be one of very few sites where the communities provided the basis for the management plan. No external consultants were involved in drawing up the plan, only an assisting group that facilitated the process. Since the area has a long history of conflict over resource access and use, the challenge was to acknowledge the existing conflicts at the outset in a manner that would also recognize and pre-empt any emerging ones. At the same time, there was a need to translate into action the growing knowledge that the resources were dwindling; if not, this object of conflict would soon be gone. Working with existing conflicts Conflicts abounded because communities and local government did not know who to give their information to and whose job it was to process it. The remote- ness of the area and poor communications also created logistical problems. There was an inability to sequence the designed activities properly and the communi- ties rescheduled them. Zoning was designed by communities in great detail to make it more acceptable, but many found the concept of zoning threatening. In addition, the government programme had its own internal conflicts, both in prin- ciples and application. The primary problem was that people did not want a PA, as this was perceived as threatening their survival. For funding agencies and those implementing the programme, the size of the area created too many logis- tical problems. Given this problem, it fell to the assisting organization, Environmental Science for Social Change (ESSC) to manage the situation. ESSC’s basic approach was different from that of those implementing the programme and from that adopted in other PAs. The approach entails going back to the dif- ferent communities on the ground and establishing the context in which they live, identifying the uncertainties they face and the issues that affect them before finding out how they view the degradation of the environment and how they might try to deal with this situation. This gave the communities an opportunity to establish a process of give and take. A step backwards to move forwards Overall, the strategy had been to keep the conservation programme away from local communities and not to let them interfere. This was because, as defined and designed, the programme was more appealing to society in general: it was socially acceptable, yet it was not made clear how the programme would directly affect communities struggling to survive using the area’s resources. The primary diffi- MOVING FROM OPEN ACCESS EXTRACTION TO NEW PARTICIPATORY LEVELS OF ACCOUNTABLE MANAGEMENT MALAMPAYA SOUND, PALAWAN, THE PHILIPPINES 255 culty was social acceptability and the primary concern was protection of resources. This case study is a clear example of where protection was defined in a way that was in conflict with local resource use, in an area that has for so long been an open access area. However, protection can also be defined as building people’s capaci- ties and their ability to be their own guardians in different situations. CONTEXT A history of conflict Malampaya Sound, located at the northern end of the province of Palawan, is a natural inlet with an approximate area of 24 500 ha surrounded by forest land. It is an area with a small indigenous population, rich natural resources, high bio- diversity and unusual ecological features, which contribute to the Sound’s national importance as a source of fish and other marine resources. The Sound has been a stage upon which countless conflicts have developed and been played out, resulting in overextraction, underdeclaration of resource extrac- tion and the irrelevance of government as primary stakeholder and absentee landowner. These conflicts came to a head through the latest intervention, that of the European Union-funded National Integrated Protected Areas Programme (NIPAP), developed in response to the National Integrated Protected Area System (NIPAS) Act of 1992. People and livelihoods Most of the 18 000 people in the 12 surrounding coastal barangays (villages) around Malampaya Sound migrated from Panay Island and the Bicol region in the 1950s, attracted by livelihood opportunities and the relative peacefulness of the area. The main sources of income are fishing and farming. The Tagbanwa, early inhabitants of the area, depend on swidden farming for their livelihood. About 70 percent of the population is dependent on fishing – which is a year-round activity – 25 per- cent on farming, and 5 percent is engaged in other types of livelihood