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Press
Release from ScienceNewsPhilippines
LOS BAÑOS – Watersheds bear the brunt of climate change.
“Alongside
agriculture, it is the watersheds that bear the brunt of the impacts of climate
change affecting in particular the natural resource base,” said Dr. Gil C.
Saguiguit, Director of the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study
and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA).
“This in
turn affects the livelihood of farmers and stakeholders who are highly
dependent on these resources,” he said during the Seventh Executive Forum on
Natural Resources Management: Watershed Governance in a Context of Climate
Change.
“Inevitably,
climate change is here to stay and we are constrained to find alternative and
effective means to cope with the effects of this phenomenon,” Saguiguit said.
It is in
this light that SEARCA is proud to have co-organized with the ASEAN Social
Forestry Network and the Regional Community Forestry Training Center for Asia
and the Pacific the forum “that will hopefully equip land use planners and
policymakers in the region to better respond to issues on watershed
management,” he said.
This
will enable the even distribution of “the costs and benefits of watersheds
across stakeholders and address barriers and challenges to rural poverty
reduction and food security,” he added.
“With or
without climate change, watershed management remains a vital issue in daily
life,” said Dr. Rex Victor O. Cruz, Chancellor of the University of the
Philippines Los Baños, during a colloquim prior to the forum proper.
He
defined a watershed as an extensive area stretching from ridge to reef, from
mountain to sea, a continuum of interrelated ecosystems, from headwaters in the
forests, downstream to the lowlands and the coast.
“It is
not something that is nebulous but defined by topography with a definite
physical limit,” he said. “It is defined by land and not by law, a delineated
area that collects water and is drained by rivers.”
The
largest in the country, for example, is the 2 million-hectare Cagayan Water
Basin in North Luzon which encompasses rural towns and urbanizing settlements
as well as natural ecosystems and agricultural land that grows a lot of rice
and corn.
The
usual suspects in watershed degradation are upland agriculture, land
conversion, destructive mining, illegal logging and erosive upland agriculture,
Cruz said.
But if
one digs deeper, he said, one finds weak policies and governance; conflicting
development priorities between upland and lowland management of natural
resources; failure of enforcement; lack of public awareness and participation;
and unequal access to resources.
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Governing
and managing watersheds for multiple purposes involve making trade-offs across
stakeholder interests, ecosystem functions and ecosystem goods and services,
Saguiguit said at the sidelines of the forum.
“How
decisions over resources are made, who makes them and to whose benefit, these
make up the essence of governance,” he explained.
“One of
the most significant challenges of watershed governance and management is the
fact that the costs and benefits of interventions tend to be unevenly
distributed, and security over the rights to ecosystem resources and benefits
is often uncertain,” he pointed out.
“This
sets the stage for potential conflict,” Saguiguit said.