Kadluan: Official Research Journal of College of College of Teacher Education

© 2023, ISSN XXXX-XXXX, Vol. 1(1), 19-26

Mindoro State University (MinSU)

EXAMINING LOCAL COMMUNITY UNDERSTANDING OF MANGROVE CARBON

MITIGATION: A
CASE STUDY FROM SILONAY MANGROVE CONSERVATION AND ECO-TOURISM
PARK
Rica Joy Bool Ponsones

INTRODUCTION

Carbon mitigation has been the goal of developing countries, the reason why governments are
putting much efforts to increase the area of forest all around the world by conserving them.
According to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2013 (UNFCC),
reducing emissions into the atmosphere and improving sinks can lower the existing
concentration of carbon dioxide (CO₂), which is the key to solving the climate change issue. One
of the natural forests that contributes to the reduction of CO₂ emissions is mangrove forest. The
potential for mangroves to store carbon is substantial. Mangroves are an essential ally in the
fight against climate change because they store this "blue carbon" (International Union for
Conservation of Nature, 2017)
However, mangrove ecosystems are disappearing from the planet at an alarming rate. The
Global Mangrove Alliance (2022) reported that between 2000 and 2012, almost 250,000
hectares of mangroves were lost in Asia, more than twice as much as the global average. If
mangroves continue to disappear, there would be large amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere and it
would be hard to mitigate carbon. In line with this, UNFCC established REDD+ framework under
Paris Agreement to protect natural forest. REDD+ stands for reducing emissions from
deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries, and additional forest-related
activities that protects the climate, namely sustainable management of forests and the
conservation and enhancement of forest carbon stocks (UNFCC, 2013) Through REDD+, there
is an anticipation that by providing incentives for land managers to more effectively manage
natural resources that sustain ecosystem service provision, economic drivers of forest loss will
be addressed. (Nguyen et al., 2022)
Since development in 2008, global REDD+ schemes have resulted to payments with a total
enveloped of USD 500 million from the pilot run launched by GCF. (Sandker et al., 2020).
Duchelle et al. (2018) noted that there are 12 studies examined land-use carbon outcomes while
26 examined non-carbon outcomes. Currently, hundreds of REDD+ projects are being
implemented around the world (Arts, et.al, 2019), specifically, 523 REDD+ projects and
programs in 57 countries (Shin et al., 2022). The development of markets and funding schemes
targeted the climate change mitigation including international funding programs and international
mechanisms.
Hence, the majority of REDD+ schemes are mostly offered in terrestrial ecosystems and little is
known about the impacts of these schemes in mangrove ecosystem. Nevertheless, the variety
of ecological services (e.g. carbon mitigation) that mangrove forests can offer are used as
leverage to encourage the implementation of more REDD+ programs for mangrove
conservation. Therefore, Aziz (2019) theorize that production of forest can be improved through
REDD+ projects and it will be as effective as those on terrestrial ecosystem. However, out of
147,000km2 of mangrove forest worldwide, only 1,200 km2 are included in REDD+ schemes
(Dallison, 2022).
Most of the REDD+ projects addressed carbon services, for example, the carbon mangrove
management in Nepal, Malaysia, and Tanzania (Vijge et al., 2016). Nepal implemented REDD+
readiness activities to improve forestry as they contributed a total of 0.1% (or 40.6 m tCO2e) of
GHG emissions (Maraseni et al., 2014). Malaysia also used mangrove restoration strategy to
conserve mangrove making it more sustainable. In this strategy, the opportunity cost analysis's
assessment of carbon stock was intended to concentrate mostly on regions that have been set
aside for the extraction of timber (Aziz et al., 2015). In Tanzania, REDD+ projects aim to adapt
and mitigate climate change. However, this becomes an unsuccessful carbon project as the
study conducted by Beymer-Farris and Bassett have demonstrated how the carbon forestry
operations taking place in the Rufiji Delta case study in advance of REDD+ are rife with
environmental injustices that jeopardize the Warufiji people's way of life.
 Wealth Accounting and the Valuation of Ecosystem Services (WAVES) in the Philippines is a
World-bank led global partnership that is used as financing mechanism to promote sustainable
development. WAVES-Philippines issued a technical report to help the government in preserving
mangrove forest. The report's objective is to assess the mangroves' contribution to coastal
protection in the Philippines and pinpoint the areas where these organic barriers offer the most
protection.
Participation in the developing carbon market, such as REDD+ and the Clean Development
Mechanism (CDM), is becoming more popular in the Philippines. In line with that, the Philippines
are making efforts to start REDD+ schemes since 2010. Government measures were created to
aid in the implementation of REDD+. In the same year, the Philippine government promulgated
Executive Order (EO) 881 which mandates the Climate Change Commission (CCC) to
coordinate the various sectors and agencies’ climate change activities, including REDD+ and
other comparable systems. Furthermore, the Philippine REDD+ Strategy was accepted by the
National Climate Change Action Plan as its primary endeavor to improve the resilience and
stability of natural systems and communities in 2011 (Lasco et al., 2013).
While discussions are ongoing regarding carbon trading in national and international markets,
implementing REDD+ programs in local level are still facing lot of challenges. To put it simply,
there is a need to boost local participation in order to achieve carbon benefits on local level
(Duchele et al., 2018). This paper will investigate whether REDD+ programs can be
implemented for mangrove forest in Silonay, Calapan City. To achieve this, the interest of the
local community to participate on mangrove restoration projects to achieve the purpose of
climate change mitigation will be investigated through survey and interviews. Perspective of the
local community about climate change as well as the role of mangrove, specifically in climate
change mitigation, and the level of understanding of local stakeholders about carbon mitigation
will also be investigated in this paper.

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The purpose of this study is to describe the level of understanding of the local community in
Barangay Silonay regarding mangrove carbon mitigation towards implementing REDD+
programs and schemes in the local level. It will also try to determine the knowledge of local
community as well as some environmental agencies about the importance of mangrove
ecosystem in combating problems about climate change.

METHODOLOGY

Study Area
Silonay Mangrove Conservation and Eco-Tourism Park is located at Silonay, Calapan City,
Oriental Mindoro. Silonay is situated at approximately 13.3992, 121.2248, in the island of
Mindoro (Silonay, Calapan, Oriental Mindoro Profile – PhilAtlas, 1990). Out of the 13
municipalities in Oriental Mindoro with mangrove ecosystems, Calapan City has the largest
area, with 618.13 ha. There are 62 barangays in Calapan City and one of them is Silonay,
having 41 hectares of mangrove (Lakbay Oriental Mindoro, 2021) protected by the local
community.

Data Collection
Data will be obtained through a series of interviews and questionnaires of three
stakeholder groups, including the potential financing agencies for REDD+ programs (World
Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility and UNFCCClinked Green Climate Fund), local
community, and mangrove forest management board in Silonay, Calapan City (Sama-samang
Nagkakaisang Pamayanan ng Silonay). For potential financing agencies, a list of agencies in the
province will be provided by the community heads and then a systematic random selection will
be used. To obtain contact with other targeted participants, collaboration will be developed with
the community organization (Samasamang Nagkakaisang Pamayanan ng Silonay) which is
responsible for mangrove conservation and research. For local community, a systematic random
selection technique will then be used to select participants to be interviewed. For the forest
management board, all members of SNPS will be listed and a systematic random sampling will
also be used to select the participants that will be included in the study.
Both closed-ended and open-ended questions will be included in the survey and
interview because the former will give information for quantitative analysis while the latter will
reveal the respondents' points of view. A discourse guideline will be created to guarantee
comprehensive comparability among diverse stakeholder groups. The questionnaire will have
four main sections: (1) general information; (2) information on ongoing activities; (3) awareness
of the roles that mangroves play in the environment and climate change; and (4) perspectives
on how REDD+ should be implemented as well as the participants’ willingness to participate on
carbon restoration projects. To investigate group characteristics, however, several additional
questions will be added for each stakeholder group. The study will be conducted at Silonay
Mangrove Conservation and Eco-Tourism Park located at Silonay, Calapan City because there
is a high number of households practicing mangrove protection and selecting most of the
participants will be done at this barangay.

Possible Financing Agencies for REDD+ Programs

Financing agencies are important aspect to successfully implement REDD+ programs in the
Philippines. Tropical Forest Conservation Fund (PTFCF); Foundation for the Philippine
Environment (FPE) Fund; Integrated Protected Area Fund (IPAF); People’s Survival Fund (PSF);
and the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (Department of Environment and National
Resources, 2017) are some of the financial mechanisms in the Philippines who offers valuable
insights into adopting a multi-stakeholder approach to governance for public funding. Because of
that, they could be an important stakeholder that can sustainably finance the implementation of
REDD+ programs in Barangay Silonay, Calapan City.

Forest Management Board and the Local Community

The local community is the most important stakeholder for this study as majority of data
that should be collected for the study will come from them. In the other hand, SNPS will be the
one responsible for making a link between the researcher and the financing agencies. Mangrove
regions have not been distributed to homes in large enough quantities. However, under
subcontracts between the SNPS, forest firms, and/or households that use the forest in the
barangay, a sizable area of mangroves has been indirectly assigned to households. The daily
administration of mangroves is mostly delegated to households, despite the fact that state-
owned enterprises and forest management boards are in charge of mangrove forests and forest
areas. A maximum of 20% of the forested land may be harvested by them (Melana et al., 2005).
In exchange, there are certain rights, such as the ability to access forest ecosystem services
(such as carbon) and investment funding from the government for the establishment and
preservation of mangroves.

Data Analysis
The researcher will gather survey data and conduct a qualitative analysis. Additionally,
information from the interview will be gathered, and the audio files will be transcribed. Only
significant material regarding the local community's viewpoint on carbon mitigation, opinions
regarding the implementation of the REDD+ program, and other important information will be
included. Some of the recordings that are unrelated to the subject or irrelevant will be removed.
This study will use descriptive analysis to understand the “who, what, when, where” (Schoch,
2020) of the subject that will be studied. The researcher will make a series of coding to ensure
common understanding and consistency of the data. The analysis will have initial stages which
involves “open coding” (providing overview of the categories found in the data), accompanied by
“axial coding” (identifying connections between initial categories identified during open coding)
as these two goes hand in hand (Corbin and Strauss, 2018). Selective coding, referred to as
creating a “storyline” (Cresswell, 2007) will be the last step in the coding process that will enable
researcher to link the previously identified categories to build larger categories. The coding
process will be used by the researcher to describe and explain the participant’s perspective and
understanding of mangrove carbon mitigation and their willingness to participate in REDD+
programs and schemes.
After identifying the codes, the researcher may need to make comparison about the themes
that emerged from the data or to compare the data across different cases. However, if this is not
necessary, the data identified in different categories from the coding process will be analyzed to
generate reliable and consistent findings.