Mangrove Revegetation Potentials of Brackish-Water Pond Areas in the Philippines - Aquaculture and the Environment: A Shared Destiny - page 48

brackish-water ponds are either titled or unaccounted. The appalling state of mangroves
and brackish-water ponds in the Philippines results to continued loss of goods and services
that these two systems could provide.
The strategies being proposed here aims to rationalize the environmental management of
mangroves and brackish-water ponds in the Philippines. These strategies may be divided
into three: 1) for brackish-water ponds with valid legal instruments and fish yield is still
optimal, a more sustainable way of production must be adopted; 2) for ponds without legal
instruments but fish yield is still bio-economically important, production must be
sustainably optimized and legalized, and pond size may be reduced to as small as possible
to maintain mangrove ecological health; and 3) for ponds with or without legal instrument
and production is not anymore necessary, revegetation of the pond is being put forward. Of
these options, the reforestation of idle and unproductive ponds and the practice of
aquasilviculture may bring about the highest total economic values for these brackish-water
ponds. The implementation of these options may not be straightforward and may need a
conscious and concerted effort of different government agencies, academe and private
institutions for an ecosystem based management approaches. These approaches should
include mapping, inventory, status assessment and reprogramming and financing of
existing management program.
With its current status, the vulnerability of mangroves to unsustainable anthropogenic
activities (i.e. conversion to aquaculture areas, wood cutting, clearing for coastal
developments) and the impacts of climate change may continue to degrade this ecosystem.
Addressing these impacts may need the urgent rehabilitation of idle and unproductive
ponds as these may decrease the level of vulnerability of these mangrove areas and the
coastal communities behind them to the ancillary impacts of climate change. In all these, the
government should take a proactive role in consolidating and monitoring these efforts to
increase its efficiency and effectivity at the national scale as the present issues and problems
on mangroves and brackish-water ponds in the Philippines cannot be appropriately
addressed at the local scale.
7. References
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Conservation 29(3): 331-349.
Alongi, D.M. (2008). Mangrove forests: Resilience, protection from tsunamis, and responses
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Barbier , E.B. (2000). Valuing the environment as input: review of applications to mangrove
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Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatc Resources. (n.d.) List of FLAs duly issued by DA. In: Bureau
of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, June 27, 2011, Available from:
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Cruz, P.S. (1997). Aquaculture Feed and Fertilizer Resource Atlas of the Philippines. FAO
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Dahdouh-Guebas, F. et al. (2005). How effective were mangroves as a defense against the
recent tsunami? Current Biology 15 (12): 443-447.