BoholAnalysis

Travelling within Tagbilaran City is such a trouble and a great discomfort that I would rather stay at home than go somewhere else.   If I have a choice, I wouldn’t go to the city centre where the banks are located or report to my office at Step Up Consulting Services.   It would seem that as I drive, I can hear the shriek and the cry of the poor car coupled sometimes with my son’s loud “ouch” when I hit a pothole large enough to have his head banged against the windows. Every person who lives in Tagbilaran City will understand when I say that Tagbilaran nowadays seems like a city left to rot.   I highlight three reasons below why I say so. POINT 1 .   Tagbilaran roads are outrageously bad , the streets within the city center are dirty caused by mud on rainy days or by dust when the sun is out.   If you live somewhere in Janssen Heights and would like to go to the St. Joseph Cathedral, you can never have a smooth ride except when you travel through the ...

 Undated aerial photo of Alona Beach, from www.alonabeach.co . I was reminded of tourism planning, as an aspect of the climate change debate, when I attended a conference on Climate Change and Development Policy in Helsinki last 28-29 September 2012 at the invitation of the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research.   One of the sessions highlighted the need to decongest spaces and make towns and cities compact for purposes of energy efficiency, carbon footprint reduction, and climate change mitigation, recognizing that cities than the rural places, are the largest emitters of carbon dioxide.   While the argument was done in the context of cities, I believe it is also applicable to the pseudo-cities, or those I call spaces where the characteristic of cities (population density and intense requirements of sanitation, utilities, housing, and transportation) are prevalent and where there is a need to ensure that proper planning an...

(Many thanks Liza of boholrepublic.com for the picture) Recent debates on climate change has started to refocus measures from global and national playing fields to local spheres, with the belief that “the “local” is also an important site in governing global environmental problems” (Betsill and Burkeley 2006). The Stern Report in 2007 has clearly indicated that communities need to be empowered so that they can actively contribute in vulnerability assessment and implementation of adaptation. Further, it argues that climate change needs to be incorporated into development planning at all scales, levels, and sectors (Stern 2007). The recent experience of Jagna, Bohol, where a tornado destroyed the homes of more than a hundred families takes to the fore the issue of how prepared are we as a province, and the Philippines, as an archipelagic country, in meeting the challenges of a changing climate and the threat of natural disasters.  While Jagna has its own Disaster Risk Redu...

Sunday morning at the Tagbilaran airport, and flight was delayed.   I had the chance to talk to a student of mine who works in the airport for years now.   He brought my attention to this counter near the exit door of the check-in area   that has a wide sign bannering RA 8550 and a collection of pictures of seashells. RA 8550 is no stranger to me. My sister who is a marine biologist and foreshore management specialist is one of its staunchest advocates that even my mother would take extra care in buying fish as these may still be too young to be caught or are spawning or are taken from the sea by fishermen using fine mesh nets. The law provides, among other things, the reconstitution of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, the specification of allowable fishing in municipal waters, the power of the state to prescribe non-fishing seasons, and the participation of communities in monitoring of fishery laws. What the wide banner and the counter represen...

(This is an excerpt of the paper "Its Just a Buzzword from Above...." which Michael Canares presented in the most recent conference of the Development Studies Association of the United Kingdom, held at the University of Ulster, Coleraine Campus, Northern Ireland on September 2-5, 2009) The review of local development plans of 60% of the municipalities in Bohol, Philippines revealed that climate change concerns are not incorporated into the plans. What the plans contain are environmental projects and policies that are not necessarily related to climate change issues, or drafted not with climate change mitigation and adaptation in mind. There has never been a climate change vulnerability assessment conducted, nor discussions related to mitigation and adaptation policies. Thus, it would seem that climate change as a global problem is never a local concern, precisely because of the reason that there are significant knowledge gaps that constrained problem recognition and solution....

(This is an excerpt of the paper to be presented by MCanares in the upcoming United Nations University Conference in Kolkata India, 15-17 December 2008. The conference topic is "Beyond the Tipping Point: Asian Development in an Urban World. Mr. Canares' paper is titled "The Excluded Poor: How Targeting Has Left out the Poor in Peripheral Cities in the Philippines.) In 2004, the Provincial Planning and Development Office conducted a poverty monitoring exercise to determine the levels of deprivation of every local government unit in Bohol. Tagbilaran City was part of this exercise which sought to determine the poverty condition of the barangays using a set of indicators including malnutrition, mortality, crime, disability, access to water and electricity, food shortage, health insurance, income, housing, literacy, sanitary toilet, house and lot ownership, and garbage disposal systems. Interestingly, in the survey, all of the houses in the city were found to have environ...