The policy of protecting the environment and enhancing the economy of Palawan is unequivocally embodied in the Strategic Environmental Plan for Palawan Act (SEP Law). The law specifically states our obligation to the future generations in maintaining our life-support systems through the complementation of development and environmental protection activities. The food and water supply systems are to be secured, and to this end, the zoning of the Environmentally Critical Areas Network (ECAN) is completed in the entire province.
The business of sustainable development is the business of everyone because the concept is designed to achieve one of the ardent goals of humanity, which is the guarantee of our human welfare. The natural goods and services that accrue from our wise use of natural capital will ensure the continuous flow of investment to our economic capital.
The economic sectors from which our provincial and national economies depend on – such as tourism, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and mineral and offshore energy development – are in part dependent on the quality of our ecology. The maximization of our income from these economic activities, coupled with the mitigation and prevention of harmful environmental impacts, is the ideal way that the business of sustainable development operates. Our beneficiaries are none other than the people of Palawan and the Philippines; they are the stakeholders and stockholders of these capital investments. In this context, the present update on The State of the Environment of Palawan (2009) is expected to add to our understanding of the dynamic changes happening in the province. These changes are brought in part by the increasing pressures to our natural ecosystems, driven by the need to extract resources and buffer our economy.
The State of the Environment is a set deliverable of the ECAN Environmental Monitoring and Evaluation Division of the PCSD Staff. It is part of the agency’s Environmental Monitoring and Evaluation System (EMES), one of the support mechanisms of SEP as provided for in the law. Under Section 13 of the SEP Law, the EMES is established to monitor the achievement of the SEP goals. The immediate concern of the EMES is in the measurement of project success by measurement of environmental parameters (e.g., water quality). ‘Monitoring’ deals with providing information at regular intervals while ‘evaluation’ is the interpretation and application of data gathered from monitoring.
The specific objectives of the EMES are periodic quantification of key environmental parameters, early identification of adverse environmental trends and major crisis areas and situations, and recommendation of solutions to counter these trends and crises. We hope that the present document partially fulfills these objectives by painting the current picture of the province’s environment and identifying the trends in the state of our ecosystems. Comparisons can be made with the results and findings of the first State of the Environment Report published in 2004.
Timely and scientific environmental information has been instrumental in supporting the governance of the Palawan Biosphere Reserve. This has been shown, for example, by the declaration of the latest protected area in the mainland, the Mount Mantalingahan Protected Landscape, through Proclamation 1815