Category: environment

“rotting fish as food for thought” 2

here’s more from professor florlaca on the fish kills. before and after fishpens, owned by members of prominent families, including politicians and ranking military officers.

Rotting fish: another food for thought
By Flor Lacanilao

Most of the fish kills in the country are in lakes and coastal waters where excessive fish farming in cages or pens are located. A common cause is pollution build-up from industrial & domestic wastes, agricultural fertilizers & pesticides, and culture-fish feces & excess feeds. These excess dissolved nutrients can trigger phytoplankton or algal blooms and subsequent decay, further causing degraded water condition (e.g., toxic or oxygen deficient) that may cause fish diseases and subsequent death or fish death directly. This brief is excerpted from 1986 and 1987 reports (see Notes below).

The Laguna Lake shows how unregulated practice of aquaculture has given rise to conflict of interest, which caused serious ecological, social, economic, and political problems. Let me tell a story on Laguna Lake frequented by fish diseases and deaths in the 1980s.

Way back in 1961-1964, when there were no fishpens, the annual catch of small fishers in the Lake was 80,000-82,000 tons. In 1968, a survey showed that some 8,000 full-time and 2,000 part-time fishers used the Lake as a communal fishing ground. For shrimps and molluscs, it was about 240,000 tons. The bulk of this catch was used for animal feeds, mainly by the duck-raising industry.

There were 23 species of fish caught in Laguna Lake, with the goby (biyang puti) and perch (ayungin) as the dominant species. Carp, catfishes (hito and kanduli), snakehead (dalag) and tilapia were also caught in the lake in addition to migratory species from Manila Bay, which came via the backflow of the once unpolluted Pasig River.

In 1971, the Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA) introduced fishpen culture with a 38-hectare pilot project at Looc in Central Bay. Milkfish (bangus) was chosen because of its market value, and it feeds directly on phytoplankton, which was abundant in the lake. The project gave encouraging results, like producing 3.5 times more fish per hectare over that in open waters. “The lake fish pen aquaculture has been estimated to have a potential for expansion to 20,000 ha of fish pens having an annual production value of 320 million pesos.” This prompted businessmen and entrepreneurs to go into fishpen culture. Development expanded to 4,800 hectares by the end of 1973; the gross annual value of production in 1973 was P76.8 million.

Data in 1982 showed that fishpens, then 31,000-hectares, produced 62,000 tons of fish, while the open waters yielded only 19,000 tons for the small fishers – or a total lake harvest of 81,000 tons. This was clearly equivalent to the yearly catch of small fishers in 1961-1964 before the introduction of fishpens.

The excessive growth of the fish culture industry in the Lake later proved counter-productive. The milkfish took more time to grow because of increased competition for natural food, the 4-month rearing time had stretched to 8-15 months. This was corrected with supplemental feeding, which also allowed increasing the fish stock. Meanwhile, the catch of the small fishers dwindled to one-fourth that of their pre-fishpen catch, which was predictable from the start.

What the fishpens did was rob the small fishers of their traditional catch — by reducing their fishing areas, competing with phytoplankton that fed the milkfish, polluting the waters, and reducing the fish catch from open waters. Note that the native species depended on the phytoplankton for food directly and indirectly through food chains. Further, water circulates in and out of the fishpens, bringing in food and taking out wastes and excess feed to pollute the open-waters.

The conflict was between the community of poor fisherfolk of more than 15,000 families and the group of a few hundred rich fishpen operators. In a report published in the newspapers, the LLDA identified an elite group of fishpen operators owning 10 of the largest fish pen areas on the lake totalling more than 4,000 hectares (the law says, no person or corporation can own more than 50 hectares of fishpen concessions). The list showed members of prominent families, including politicians and ranking military officers.

The fishpens have also deprived the shrimps and molluscs in the lake of their food budget. This adversely affected the small-scale industries, which use these products and provide livelihood for many lake-shore families. In addition, the fishpens contributed to the deterioration of the lake for water supply and obstructed the navigation lanes.

Notes
1. Flor Lacanilao. 1987. Managing Laguna Lake for Small Fishers. SEAFDEC Asian Aquaculture 9(3): 3-4.
2. Jon Davis, Flor Lacanilao, & Alejandro Santiago. 1986. Laguna de Bay: Problems and Options. White Paper No.2, Haribon Foundation.
3. See also “Extensions of ‘The Tragedy of the Commons” by Garrett Hardin. 1998. Science 280:682-683.

Garrette says:

It is easy to call for interdisciplinary syntheses, but will anyone respond? Scientists know how to train the young in narrowly focused work; but how do you teach people to stitch together established specialties that perhaps should not have been separated in the first place? Early in this century the specialties of biology and chemistry were joined to form biochemistry; similarly, economics and ecology are now in the process of being combined into ecological economics.

My first attempt at interdisciplinary analysis led to an essay, The Tragedy of the Commons. Since it first appeared in Science 25 years ago, it has been included in anthologies on ecology, environmentalism, health care, economics, population studies, law, political science, philosophy, ethics, geography, psychology, and sociology. It became required reading for a generation of students and teachers seeking to meld multiple disciplines in order to come up with better ways to live in balance with the environment.

“rotting fish as food for thought”

this thread on the fish kills, courtesy of marine science professor flor lacanilao, is quite an eye-opener.  more and more it looks like the fish kills are the result of too many fishpens, bad governance (what else is new), and ignorance, as well as disregard, of the limited carrying capacity of our lakes and coastal waters.

the first email starts out with a link to philippine star that has DENR scientists  saying that the fish drowned!  sec. paje?  hello?

From: Raul Suarez <raul.suarez@lifesci.ucsb.edu>
To: PhilScience@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2011 6:38 AM
Subject: [PhilScience] Re: rotting fish as food for thought

Recently, there were a couple of fish kill incidents reported in the Philippine Star:

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=691229&publicationSubCategoryId=63

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=691485&publicationSubCategoryId=63

According to the first report, the fish “drowned”. The second article states “Scientists said the onset of the rainy season led to a sharp drop in water temperatures that depleted oxygen levels in the lake.”

I thought it might be useful to ask students to read these articles and to answer the following questions:

1. What is wrong with the statement that the fish (mostly bangus) “drowned”? (What is the actual phenomenon and what term better describes it?)
2. Can any species of fish drown? If so, in what ways are these species different from bangus?
3. How would a drop in water temperature affect the solubility of oxygen and the oxygen consumption rates of aquatic organisms? (Is the statement above by “scientists”, by itself, a satisfactory explanation for the observed fish kill?)

I will try the above 3 on my own students here. These questions come from my ecological physiology perspective. Of course, there are other relevant questions that could be asked from the perspectives of limnologists and freshwater ecologists.

My quick internet search indicates that there have been a number of journal articles authored by Filipinos concerning the effects of aquaculture on Philippine lakes. In the interest of educating the public and government officials, I hope these findings make their way into the Phil Star.

The scientific literature seems deficient in terms of characterizing the effects of exotic species on lake biodiversity in the Philippines. I wonder, for example, whether the introduction of Tilapia has caused the collapse of populations of local species or even their extinction? What are the community-level effects? In what sense can this kind of aquaculture be considered “sustainable” or “environmentally friendly”?

Below are links to 2 journal articles concerning these issues:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aqc.699/pdf
http://www.aquaticresources.org/pubs/Arthur_etal_2010.pdf

the next email is a response to prof. suarez’s question re the connect between water temperature and oxygen depletion.

On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 9:02 AM, Jose Christopher E. Mendoza <protojcem@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hello Prof Suarez,

…When I read the “drowning” statement in yesterday’s report, I had this sudden cartoonish mental image of myself with my eyes popping out of their sockets in reaction. I think this also suggests that the English vocabulary of our news writers (and gov’t. officials?) is also on the decline… an “asphyxiatingly” worrisome state of affairs (?).

Regarding your third question/point on water temperature and DO, I re-read the scientist’s statement you alluded to, which actually said “It is bad for the bangus when sudden heavy rains cause the temperature to cool at the surface, in contrast with the hot temperature of the water at the bottom”. Just trying to recall my undergrad ecology/limnology now: in a lentic environment with sufficient depth, the cooler surface water would then tend to sink and the warmer water near the bottom would tend to rise, and the resulting convection currents would promote mixis. If the bottom has become hypoxic/anoxic due to microbial decomposition of organic matter (from fish feed, fish waste), then the hypoxic/anoxic conditions may be brought to surface & sub-surface levels where the fish are kept, negating the higher oxygen solubility brought about by cooler water temperature. So in a way po, mukhang tama din naman yung sinabi nung scientist.

Then again, the writer of the article could have done more research (kahit Google man lang) and put more science in the article to explain the deleterious effects of excessive fish farming to the natural environment. I remember a few experiences where I or a colleague would spout out a lot of “science stuff” (already conscientiously couched in layman’s language) to a reporter only to have the intent or meaning still distorted in the final report. Which is why I think media may have to share the blame when our local science workers come out with low credibility & gravitas.

P.S. I’d also like to share a blog post on a similar incident in Singapore last year, for comparison.
http://wildshores.blogspot.com/2010/01/dead-fish-zone-hits-pulau-ubin.html

Jose Christopher E. Mendoza, M.Sc., Ph.D. :: Systematics & Ecology Laboratory :: Department of Biological Sciences :: National University of Singapore :: 14 Science Drive 4, 117543 Republic of Singapore

and finally, from prof. lacanilao, a letter to the editor he wrote in 1997 that was published by the inquirer, philippine star, and manila chronicle.  good as new.

Re: [PhilScience] Re: rotting fish as food for thought
To: PhilScience@yahoogroups.com,philmarsci@yahoogroups.com, taxo2006@yahoogroups.com

Pollution and fish kill
The NBI report on the Manila Bay fish kill (PDI, 1/21/97) again confirms the industry’s continued disregard of the environment and the government’s failure to enforce pollution laws. Unless these two are given serious attention, fish kill from various causes will recur. And to find out the cause each time this happens is to continue evading prevalent pollution problems.

Organisms have a capacity for tolerance to environmental changes, like pollution. The tolerance, however, is limited and varies among organisms and with the kind of change or pollution. Some species are affected more than others by a given pollution. The organism’s tolerance is widest for survival, narrower for growth, and least for reproduction.

A given level of water pollution, for instance, may prevent an organism to reproduce, but it will continue to grow. A higher level may arrest growth but allow the organism to survive. At the limit of tolerance for survival, any factor of environment, man-made (e.g. pollution) or natural (e.g. temperature), can trigger fish kill, affecting all species with similar tolerance properties.

Hence, at some pollution level, certain species are inhibited to reproduce. Others are prevented to grow or to survive. The overall effect is lower fish catch. The slow and gradual damage to fish stock causes more losses in fish harvest than the occasional fish kill, which is just an indicator of the pollution condition. The gradual but widespread losses caused by pollution are partly responsible for the country’s decreasing fish catch in inland and coastal waters recorded since 1991. These water bodies provide subsistence livelihood to 90 percent of our fisherfolk.

The NBI suggestion to prosecute violators is long overdue. Perhaps the Senate committee on environment and natural resources can look into the possibility of dealing with suspected polluters in the same way suspected common criminals are treated – arrest (or stop operation) first, then investigate. – FLOR LACANILAO, professor of marine science, UP Diliman, Quezon City

read too
Unregulated Fish Pen and Cage Operations Mess Up Coastal Ecosystems by ALECKS P. PABICO

environment 9: sustainable devt

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AS
SPIRITUAL AND REVOLUTIONARY PRAXIS

Junie Kalaw

Toward the end of this century as of the last one, dramatic changes have taken place under the impact of, among others, the industrial revolution, two world wars, struggles for political independence, the internationalization of economics, and the globalization of mass media.  These forces have had shearing effects on the fabric of political and economic society, some appearing first as part of the solution, even a boon (like pesticides), and only later as a problem.   Through all these changes and upheavals, the structures of oppressive domination have persisted on different levels occasionally changing external form but otherwise entrenched firmly enough in society to continue denying Filipinos and other Third World populations their freedom and autonomy.

Today’s Revolutionary Conditions

Poverty remains the Philippines’ major problem, aggravated by the depletion of our natural resources, the impending breakdown of our life-support systems, and the high rate of our population growth.  With our remaining forests down to less than 800,000 hectares, only 20% of our coral reefs in good condition, 18 major river systems biologically dead, 13 provinces severely eroded, fresh-water reservoirs drying up, and the population requiring 40% more food by the year 2000, we face a critical situation and time is not on our side.

The deterioration of the Philippine environment is traceable to economic activities designed to support the consumption needs of other countries.  Ecological footprints of the development of industrialized countries are to be seen not only in our degraded ecology but also in the waste that is exported back to us.   This historical trail of international trade based on the exploitation of our natural resources by former colonial masters has piled up ecological debts that remain uncompensated.   Sadly, this system of “ecological colonialism” has been institutionalized in the present international economic order.

Highlighting the crisis are new perspectives from ecological economists like Herman Daly and Robert Goodland.  They see our economic system as an open system functioning with the closed system that is our planet’s biosphere.  With the current global economy amounting to about US$32 trillion, we are consuming 40% of the primary production of terrestrial photosynthetic energy from the sun.  This means that in one doubling time, we will be using 80%, a condition that with its attendant waste may exceed the “carrying capacity” of the planet.  Thus it is posited that there is no room for aggregate economic growth and that sustainable economic growth for everyone is not possible.  This raises such issues as the rights of poor countries to their equitable share of remaining clean space, access to their own natural resources, access to information and technology, and bargaining power in markets.  Further, inasmuch as the relationship between rich and poor is a function of power, there is nothing to stop the rich from using this self-same power to maintain their wasteful consumption patterns and perpetuate an inequitable system.

Revolution Based on Reconciliation

Pope John Paul II in Rome calls it a “moral crisis,” the lack of a “morally coherent world view.”  A lumad datu in Mount Apo ascribes it to a foreign belief system that has exiled God to the heavens so that we no longer see God in the trees, streams, mountains, and animals, nor in our fellow humans.  The reference is to the same fundamental gap between our personal ethics and the system’s ethics, and the need for a systems ethics which translates personal decisions in to decisions for the common good.  More concretely, it is the gap between what is an honest living for loggers and what is good for the environment and the common welfare.   The gap is widened not just by plain greed but also by a moral and ethical blindness to, and lack ofcomprehension of, the norms for a just and sustainable functioning of bigger systems.

At its worst, the gap renders futile church teachings on honesty and love for the poor on account of its inability to translate doctrine in terms of land reform or equitable wages or conservation of forest and marine resources.  In the end we realize that we have not yet found our wholeness.  We have yet to manage successfully the integration of personal and social transformation.  The exception was the EDSA Revolution, when a critical mass of Filipinos got their inner and outer values together and created the spiritual and political space that made the sharing of pan de sal across military defenses an operative Communion of the People, and that produced transformative political change, but which, unfortunately, we were unable to sustain.

Nowhere is the fundamental gap between personal ethics and systems ethics more dramatic and disastrous than in the policy of equal access to the benefits of creation.  Whereas in an ecological system life flows, sustaining and fulfilling the lives of all in a process we can call “ecological justice,” in the current system control over and access to life-giving natural resources are awarded to a privileged few — a situation which has produced the poverty and resource depletion that imperils our life-support systems.  Moreover, we have cast the responsibility and accountability for these effects to the impersonal free enterprise and market systems.

The conflict between our economic system and nature’s ecological processes has been a fundamental cause of the destruction of our ecosystems.  While natural systems consist of organic unities such as families, communities, cultures, and ecosystems, we manage to evaluate and reward our economic activities according to functional sectors and enterprise organizations.  We gauge national development by adding the production of these sectors and industries into a gross national product (GNP); not measured are local community welfare and ecosystem enhancement.  This has resulted in a big normative gap between the welfare of corporations, both transnational and national, and the welfare of local ecologies and communities.  The bridging of this gap requires more than just environmental protection measures or community projects by business enterprises.   It requires a whole re-orientation of the way we do business and a re-discovering of the true essence of hanapbuhay, a truly Filipino concept that searches for the life-flow, like the Kalinga concept of wealth that is based on the enrichment of life rather on a life of personal enrichment.  We cannot relegate this revisioning to our economists and government planners alone.  We need to take responsibility for our country’s economic development models, policies, and practices, and to participate in the political processes that will enable us to create a just and sustainable future not only for ourselves but for the generations of Filipinos to come.

Politics, whose primordial function is to serve the welfare of the whole, is the human activity that should be most spiritually informed.  Most efforts at political reconciliation have as their objective the consolidation of power under the ruling regime.  Thus, one presently sees accommodations being made with the forces of he past dictatorship under the pretext of hastening the healing of the nation.  What needs reconciliation and healing is not the gap between contending politicians with vested interests but the gap between their interests and the welfare of the people, between the welfare of the state bureaucracy and the welfare of the environment and local communities.   This requires the relocation of authority from the ideologies of political parties to the reality of the interdependence of life in an ecology; the re-vesting of power from the centralized bureaucracy of state, party committee, and church to persons in communities; the affirmation of the subsidiarity of parts and the ecological and spiritual solidarity of wholes; and the establishment of a local citizenship and a global polity.

It is a reconciliation that needs to find a new concept of security and management of changes in the shift from national security based on militarization and armaments to a “natural” security based on securing clean water, fertile soil, fresh air, and food.  It requires a fundamental re-orientation of power from one based on the accumulation of goods and information to one based on the capacity to make goods and information flow, where power becomes something one does not hold on to but something ope opens up to for the life process to flow in service to others.

Such a reconciliation gives witness to the great lesson of ecology that all life is interconnected and echoes the teachings of all great spiritual traditions that the governance of communities is a sacred task, whether we call it the Christian Mystical Body, the Moslem Uhma, or the Kalinga ili.

Conversion and Renewal

Christian churches are now seeking an alternative to the ruling anthropocentric model of man subduing the earth.  The new theological understanding of creation spans a spectrum of interpretations: the sacramentalist model, where everything is a manifestation of God; the stewardship model, which argues for the sustainable use of power, knowledge, and natural resources; the creative model expounded by Matthew Fox, where God is ever “birthing and nurturing creation”; the Franciscan model of kinship of “brother sun and sister moon”; and the evolutionary model of Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry.  They all have broadened the praxis of faith to include “justice, peace, and Integrity of Creation” and redefined “a spirituality that integrates our faith and our daily lives and all of Creation.”

Here at home, in defense of what we Filipinos call lupang hinirang (beloved country), the Philippine Independent Church recently announced its advocacy of a total ban on commercial logging for 25 years.  Following the Catholic bishops’ pastoral letter “What Is Happening to Our Beautiful Land?” and the involvement of bishops and parish priests in blockading logging trucks on Bukidnon, picketing DENR offices in Nueva Ecija, and apprehending illegal loggers in Cagayan, there is clearly an escalation of activism among Christian churches and a growing concern for the integrity of life on earth.

A more concise expression of the revolutionary message of the Gospel has yet to be made by any church group in the Philippines, but it is important to remember that the times call for a new conversion.   In the past, conversion was brought about by mediation between people and the Divine, or between people and other people.  Today’s need is a mediation between people and nature, a mediation we call “sustainable development.”  It is a conversion that comes from revelations through nature, revelations that link polarities into higher levels of integration and renewal, revelations that affirm the integrity of God’s creation whose truth lies beyond contending ideological positions and is encompassed in an ecology.  It will come from re-remembering what our indigenous Filipinos knew about the sacredness of the land, our lupang hinirang.  It will come from re-experiencing the tradition of nurturing the Earth, our tipan sa Mahal na Ina.  It will come from responding to the biblical revelations to be stewards of the earth.  A conversion where “carrying capacity” becomes the operative term for compassion, and the patterns of community life a metaphor for wholeness.  It will require the devolution of power away from its institutional sites in the bureaucracies of state, party, and even church, and into people in the communities as the locus of the Mystical Body.   It will empower people to participate in the creative act of sustainable development by witnessing the Spirit that runs through all life.

This kind of conversion will gain its meaning from the operationalization of sustainable development strategies, programs, and projects.   It will need to find expression on the level of communities, affirming their cultural identity while cherishing diversity by upholding (1) indigenous rights to ancestral land, (2) equal rights for women, (3) social equity through agrarian, aquatic, and urban land reform, and social forestry, and (4) an ecologically sound economic system that is community-based and exports only ecological surplus or excess carrying capacities.  It will practice the sustainable utilization of natural resources, clean production technologies, and the proper recycling and disposal of waste.  It will come from governance that is based on moral values translated into public good, a democratic participatory process, a system called Pamathalaan — Pamamahalang nakatindig sa sariling taal at nakahandog kay Bathala.

In the final analysis, sustainable development depends on the personal conversion, commitments, and communion of everyone.   It needs a conversion that translates into personal choices regarding what to consume and what lifestyle to live.   In a post-modern age, it will mean making a conscious choice from among the diversity of options brought about by modernization.  Many of these options will be offered by expert systems where people have little control over processes, whether these be biogenetic systems that program the sex of our offspring or communications systems that tell us we are what we consume.  They will involve matters disembedded from space-time locality so that we no longer directly experience the consequences of our actions.  Such will be the landscape of a “post-modern revolution.”  The future will therefore need the wisdom of our historical traditions, the moral anchors of our faith, and our living communion with all people and God’s creation.

Enviroscope, Haribon Foundation Bulletin, December 1993

environment 7: denr & the poor

THE DENR & SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
(Why The Poor Will Always Be With Us)

Junie Kalaw

In Mindanao, two years after her historic succession to the presidency, President Aquino, a very religious person, appealed for the help of the citizenry, especially institutions like the church and other non-government organizations (NGOs), in reaching “the poorest 30% of the population,” and offered the work of some monks as a model of what can be done.  Appropriately enough, the monks of the Monastery of the Transfiguration in Bukidnon, where the President made the appeal, are involved in reforestation and adapting farming methods to sloping lands, and literally lived with the bottom 30%.  These Filipinos occupy government-owned “forest land,” do not have access to government agricultural extension-work benefits or credit, and survive off the beaten track taken by the health-services delivery system.  They are under the sufferance of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) which, in its capacity as representative of the state, controls 50% of the country’s land area, all its forests including the flora and fauna therein, and all other natural resources.

In callingfor assistance to the country’s poorest 30%, the President could not have done worse than to refer the matter to the DENR which has always treated these 14 million Filipinos as problems, absurd as that may sound, and not as constituents whose poverty may have developed in them the prayerful habits commonly associated only with the likes of President Aquino and monks.

… The rural development strategy of Philippine policy-makers confirms government’s alienation from the people. The Department of Agriculture, for example, bewails the following:

Trade, tariff, and tax policies which strip agriculture of its attractiveness to private investors;

Monopolies and excessive government regulation of agricultural markets which steal from the farmer his fair share of returns from his produce and foster inefficiencies in the marketing system;

An exchange rate policy that overvalues the peso and thus makes exports less competitive than they would otherwise be in the world market;

The insufficient and declining share of government expenditures going to rural infrastructure and support services needed to pump-prime the rural economy;

These policies combining to create a biased incentive structure which favor the urban and industrial sectors and penalize agriculture and the rural sector.

It might help in planning as if the poor really mattered to flesh out impersonal technical terms like “rural sector” and call them what they in reality are: farmers, subsistence fishermen, kaingineros, and landless laborers.  It is they who are penalized, not a “sector.”  It is defective policies, not their poverty, that drive them to insurgency. Bureaucratese has its own way of annulling the government’s best intentions by reducing questions of ideology to technical cover-ups.

Consider the policy prescription of “fashioning a policy environment conducive to private investments in income-enhancing and employment-generating agro-based rural enterprises.”  Thus worded, it effectively masks the fact that the biggest investors in our rural areas are our farmers, upland dwellers, small fishermen, and landless laborers who toil and sweat it out.  They should be given control and tenure over the resources they work with.  They are the ones entitled to support and incentives to make their investments profitable.  A value-added increase the equivalent of Php1,000 per person of our rural population is about the same as a US$10 billion investment in the rural areas and amounts to a scenario far more honorable than foreign investments or even grants.

It was correct of the President to call on the church and NGOs to extend a helping hand, even though in the course of heeding this call many of them will have to develop alternatives to existing policies of government departments and to contend with being stigmatized as “subversive.”  But perhaps the President should have first looked around her to see why, given the policies of the men she trusts, the poor may always be with us.

Philippine Daily Inquirer, 5 September 1990