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With a minor in environmental studies, I decided that it was about time for me to visit an environmental organization in the Philippines. After hearing about an organization Project Seahorse from a Peace Corps volunteer I ran into during my travels, I looked into the organization and decided to head out to Cebu City in the Visayas, where their headquarters was located.
Project Seahorse is an international organization started by a Canadian woman after conducting research on seahorses in the early 1990s. The organization is a non-profit which uses seahorses as a flagship species for communities relying on these ecosystems. The project combines biological research with community monitoring marine ecosystems and developing conservation initiatives and alternative livelihoods for development in the Danajon Bank—a double barrier reef located off the northern Bohol Island, which is the only in the Philippines and only one of three in the Indo-Pacific. The Philippines has recently been coined the “center of the center of marine shore fish biodiversity” in the world and the Danajon Bank has historically been an evolutionary source of fish and coral species to the Philippines.
Clearly, in a region coined the “center of the center of marine shore fish biodiversity” there is a need for conservation efforts—which must take into consideration the implications which these efforts may have on the local community. Project Seahorse, I was told, does just that.  In the Philippines, local government units (LGUs) sponser Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) which are created in different municipalities to protect the marine species. However, while these MPAs are created, whether they are monitored is a big problem. Project Seahorse helps establish incentives for fisher folk communities to form alliances to protect these MPAs. These incentives include alternative livelihood projects like seaweed farming, in addition to education and awareness campaigns for the benefits of responsible fishing techniques. Mobilizing these alliances is a big portion of the work that Project Seahorse does. This mobilization costs money, and I found from talking with the representatives from Project Seahorse that funding is the biggest issue that they are facing. As of yet, there is no real sustainability in funding and support of the organization. As a non-profit organization, they are subject to waiting for funding (most of which is foreign)—because the Protected Areas (MPAs), large donating bodies. One representative of Project Seahorse explained that you really have to haggle for the attention of the government on environmental issues—a common theme amongst environmental initiatives around the world.
In my disappointment from hearing about the lack of funding for an organization, which seemed to be successfully addressing a broad range of important issues surrounding marine conservation in the Philippines I reflected on ways that small NGOs such as Project Seahorse could tap into larger pools of funding. As fate would have it, I met another researcher, who like me, was asking herself the same question. Becky Skeele is a graduate student in the Philippines doing research for her master’s thesis on local NGO involvement in the “Coral Triangle Initiative”—an agreement between 6 countries in Southeast Asia which are home to the highest diversity of marine life on earth. The Coral Triangle Initiative on coral reefs, fisheries and food security is a commitment by the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Timor Leste, Papau New Guinea and the Solomon Islands to implement high-level political commitments and proactive actions to support the private sector, international agencies and civil society (NGO) partners in conservation efforts. Becky explained to me that the Coral Triangle Initiative has been in the works since December of 2007, but was officially launched in May this year. The Initiative is an attempt to make conserving marine areas a regional effort, to emphasize that the whole Coral Triangle region is one big ecosystem. The Initiative has sparked the creation of a regional plan of action, in addition to national plans of action. The Philippines is the fist country to publicize a national plan of action. Because of publicizing these issues in Southeast Asia, more funding has been allocated to the cause. USAID has agreed to support 3 major NGOs in the Coral Triangle area—Conservation International, Worldwide Wildlife Foundation and the Nature Conservation—with $42 million over the next 5 years. Out of these three NGOs, Conservation International and the Worldwide Wildlife Foundation are the only two present in the Philippines, and we will see over the next years how this funding really translates into action on the ground.
I was excited to hear that these larger NGOs such as the WWF and CI were receiving greater funding, but I was concerned. The Philippines has a huge civil society sector, which implements innovative ideas to a wide array of causes—but if these organizations are not supported by the government or by the church, there is little to no alternative option for funding. Money to the WWF and CI is great, but what does this mean for an organization like Project Seahorse? With such great potential, Project Seahorse is overlooked because they are not as public as organizations like the WWF or CI. The WWF and CI often follow particular recipes when addressing environmental problems instead of adapting them to certain regions—unlike smaller NGOs like Project Seahorse, which have been present for years, giving them time to specialize projects to certain regions. If somehow these larger NGOs with the opportunity for greater funding could network with smaller non-profits that are struggling to sustain themselves, there could be a more efficient allocation of resources to  address these environmental issues. Over the next few years we will see how the WWF and CI choose to spend their money from the USAID, and hopefully it will be used to help assist organizations like Project Seahorse and others which are working to conserve the coral triangle as well.

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