While it is important to understand the partnership network of fisheries management stakeholders at

the national level in the Philippines, it is also critical to examine the partnership network of fisheries
management stakeholders at a regional/local level, as Rare will be working at both the regional and
national levels to implement the organizations Fish Forever program (an international conservation
program with the goal of making the worlds fisheries more sustainable). Region V of the Philippines has
the requisite established marine protected area (MPA) with a no-take zone within the MPAs boundaries. It
has oceanic biodiversity that requires conservation measures. It has the regional political structure
necessary to implement Rares Fish Forever program, a political structure typical of other regions in the
Philippines. Additionally, Rare has worked in Region V before, and the organization has a positive
reputation in the area, which could help facilitate the implementation of Fish Forever. Due to all these
qualifications, it seems Region V makes an excellent test site to implement Rares Fish Forever program.
Before beginning to implement Fish Forever in Region V, however, it was necessary to examine and map
out the network of fisheries management stakeholders within the region in order to confirm our research
and assumptions regarding the regions suitability for Rares work. Using the same methodologies as I did
to create the national level figure (Figure 1), I created Figure 2, which shows the fisheries management
stakeholder network for Region V in the Philippines.

Figure 2: Influence of Fisheries Management Stakeholder Categories in the Philippines: Region V

As with Figure 1, it is difficult to state exactly which stakeholder categories have the most influence
within the regional network. It is much easier to find some of the outliers within this network, however, as
many stakeholder categories do not have influence over the other stakeholder categories, nor are they
influenced by all the other categories. The Department of Interior & Local Government, the Department of
Finance, and the Department of Budget & Management do not influence others within this network, and
they are only weakly influenced by the Media. As such, it may not be critical to Rares work regarding Fish
Forever to partner with the previously mentioned groups at the regional level. It is interesting to note,
however, that from Figure 1, it appears that the Department of Interior & Local government, Department of
Finance, and Department of Budget & Management are medium to strong influencers at the national level.
Also unlike at the national level, in Region V only one stakeholder category has a strong influence
over another, that of municipal local government units over Inter-LGU alliances; the rest of the influencing
connections are either medium or weak. The fisheries management network, however, is still complex. I
needed to break down this data, as I did with Figure 1, into a more manageable visualization in order to
analyze it properly. Thus I created Partnership Map 4, which ranks the average level of influence each
stakeholder group has on the others within the network.