Ask the Locals: A Community-Informed Analysis of Perceived Marine Environment Quality Over Time in Palawan, Philippines

Abstract

Despite the potentially huge contributions that coastal communities might make in marine resource management and sustainability, their participation in such efforts have only been recognized recently, particularly in Southeast Asia. Involving community perceptions can offer new insights for policy makers and resource managers and can elicit strong commitment and support from the communities themselves. This article aims to understand the perceptions of coastal communities of local environmental issues, specifically how these have developed over time, to understand the expectations and perceptions of trends. Sixteen marine environmental issues were identified during stakeholder meetings in Palawan, Philippines. A co-developed survey was administered to 431 respondents from coastal communities in two municipalities (Taytay and Aborlan) and in the city of Puerto Princesa in Palawan. The results show variation in the perceptions and expectations across issues. We find that communities expect positive trends for mangrove coverage, beach tree cover, and seagrass coverage as well as for seaweed farming and quality of drinking water. The amount of plastic litter, wild fish and shellfish, and the severity of sewage pollution are perceived to get slightly worse. The aquaculture sector is expected to remain unchanged in the future as it had been in the past. We also find significant differences in how people from different areas of residence perceive their marine environment. In the discussion, we mapped these different community perceptions on existing policies and their implementation. We further recommend how community perceptions can be integrated into resource management and policy making in the future.

Building bridges between natural and social science disciplines: a standardized methodology to combine data on ecosystem quality trends

“…We suggest that with sample sizes of n > 252, representing around 10% of the population in each community (as described in Sumeldan et al . [111]), we can assign a quantitative value to community perceptions and define an overall tendency that provides a valid point of comparison with the natural sciences. Owing to economic reasons, our study participants are not fully representative of respective populations (electronic supplementary material, table S12 file for details).…”

Occurrence of COVID-19 personal protective equipment (PPE) litters along the eastern coast of Palawan Island, Philippines

“…It has a population of 939,594. This province is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, plays a vital role in the country's marine biodiversity, and is considered the Last Ecological Frontier of the Philippines ( Gonzales, 2013 ; Sumeldan et al, 2021 ). A recent study reported that the east coast of the capital city Puerto Princesa has a higher plastic density compared to the west coast ( Sajorne et al, 2021 ) due to its greater population density in the western area of the city ( PCSD, 2015 ).…”

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“…Even so, the production of waste from the tourism sector remains unregulated and unsurveyed (Maione 2019). Coastal communities also perceive that the pollution of the environment including plastics will get worse in the future (Sumeldan et al, 2021). Thus, with this profound evidence, local sectors must exert double efforts to maintain these tourist areas plastic-free.…”