Implementation of local sustainability policies is expected to improve with a recent part-nership between the government and the private sector.
The Philippines National Blue Carbon Action Partnership (NBCAP) which kicked off in Quezon City yesterday intends to bring together stakeholders across all sectors to address challenges that impact the conservation and restoration of blue carbon ecosystems in aquatic areas.
According to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), blue carbon is the stored carbon from coastal and marine eco-systems such as mangroves, seagrasses and marshes.
The DENR said coastal ecosystems, aside from providing essential ecosystem services such as coastal protection from storms and nursery grounds for fish, can also sequester and store large quantities of blue carbon from the atmosphere and oceans to help contrib-ute against the effects of climate change.
The Philippines NBCAP’s secretariat will be handled by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).
Edwina Garchitorena, ZSL Philippines country director, said during the briefing it will come up by June a roadmap that will be vetted by the DENR to become a government policy for future adoption.
She said the roadmap also aims to enlist the benefits that may be en-joyed by the public as well as the private sector in pushing for projects proposed in the plan.
Experts present in the launching also said key areas where enough in-formation is already available in terms of NBCAP implementation include Siargao, Palawan and Tawi-Tawi, among others.
“We need to establish and fill in the roadmap and we like to have it be-fore June. It will be like a living document, it will be improved as we implement,” Garchitorena said.
