Music, Dance and Dramma

 Information on conservation and better farming methods is being disseminated through Music, Dance and Drama.

 

Our philosophy is that music speaks to to Soul and in doing so, attitude change will be achieved.
 

1. Tree Academy Groups are in place to do practice and carry out music, dance and drama competitions on conservation.

 

2. Access to relevant information on the cultural history of the area.

 

3. Availability of Music, dance and drama equipment and costumes.

1. Drama and the performing arts allow an avenue to develop cognitive abilities that complement study in other disciplines. For example, drama students learn to approach situations in an array of different manners which can help to develop creative thinking and new study techniques. Further, it builds confidence which benefits public speaking opportunities.

 

2. Communication between peers is accelerated as students are exposed to group activities. This experience also provides opportunity for students to display cultural leadership qualities.

 

3. Students gain important life skills as they learn the value of critical feedback, both positive and constructive.

 

4. Children have the opportunity to celebrate the richness and depth of human expression in all of its forms. Through creative expression students learn to comprehend our world better and are therefore better equipped to navigate the challenges they might be faced

 

5. The Arts can also be a source of solitude – a place where a child is able to shut out its surrounding and immerse itself in a creative environment.

Using Native Trees in the restoration sites

Restoration of the forest has a higher success rate if native trees are used/planted.  Native tree species will allow the forest to recover and conserve natural habitat. This will optimize the supply of forest benefits and ecosystem services; reduce the risks of natural hazards such as landslides; and enhance options for sustainable livelihood.

The use of native trees for reforestation activities were adopted and promoted by the networks, champions. 

Our forest lands (i.e. denuded and forested) have been reforested with non-native or introduced species such as Gmelina, Mahogany and Falcata tree species. These introduced trees species  were planted because they grow faster, and could be harvested sooner than native hardwood trees. Past and present “reforestation” activities, whose intention were primarily market driven rather than conservation, have replaced the original trees and resulted to a monoculture, and decline of plant and animal diversity. Monoculture of exotic tree species is susceptible to attack of pests and diseases and may eventually wipe out the entire reforested areas.

Adopt-A-Seedling (AAS) Program

The AAS Program of the Forests for Life Movement bridges the support from the corporate and individual donors to the community partners on site. AAS is being tapped by the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs of the different companies, and supported by concerned individual donors and volunteers. These partners provide resources to implement the stages of forest restoration, from seedling production, site preparation, actual tree planting and the three-year maintenance and monitoring.

Awareness of the public and corporate sector on the need to contribute in the restoration of the Philippine forests and in the conservation of biodiversity.

Communication, Education and Public Awareness is crucial to get the engagement of the different sectors of the society to achieve the targets of the movement of restoring the Philippine forests and providing sustainable livelihood the local communities.

Community-based Maintenance for Sustainable Livelihood

The Community-based maintenance began by educating and capacitating the partner communities that will be in-charge in ensuring the successful survival of the trees in the rainforestation. The capacity building program of the local partner community entailed teaching the participants with farming techniques, monitoring tools and organizational development skills to ensure a sustainable partnership and high survival of the trees planted.

Alongside the capacity building of the community partners is the opportunity to earn additional income, not only from the activities on restoration, but also facilitates other livelihood activities aligned with the objectives of the movement like seedling production. This substitutes the risk of the local community to engage or allow illegal activities that provides them extra income. Furthermore, the government, through the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, tapped people’s organizations to produce native tree seedlings in support of the National Greening Program. This contributed to a more stable and continued form of livelihood to the project’s community beneficiaries.

Partnership building with key stakeholders to ensure participatory approach in achieving a dignified Ecosystem and human well-being, by having a well restored forests.  Farmers and forest dependent communities were assisted and capacitated because of their crucial role as the main actors on the ground. By providing the community proper restoration technology and promotion of biodiversity conservation and biodiversity friendly agriculture, the ecological benefits that need to be sustained has a higher probability of being achieved.

The selection of eligible community partner is also very vital to ensure the success of the restoration initiatives. With the realization that land claims are rampant in public lands, it is important to prioritize sites where perpetual protection can be ensured (i.e. protected areas). In fact, the social aspect of restoration greatly dictates its success or failure than the biophysical aspect as these (social factors) might bring unforeseen problems if not carefully considered. One must always remember that forests can naturally be restored by the natural processes, only human interventions (social) prohibit these natural process.  It is also important to ensure that provision of support is aligned with the main activities of the community partners, and promotes the objectives of the movement.

Forests for Live Movement (Network Building)

Forests For Life is an environmental conservation movement/network that envisions the restoration of Philippine rainforests using native tree species with support from various sectors. It began as a movement called ROAD to 2020, which worked with communities, local government units, indigenous peoples, academe, like-minded groups and the youth to bring back the lost forests. Through the movement, Haribon was able to empower local communities, build native tree nurseries, provide guidance in establishing conservation areas, influence policies, organize tree planting drives and encourage the public to take part in citizen science. To date, 13,416 Volunteers and 14 community partners in 30 Municipalities have been mobilized, which significantly shows raised awareness on biodiversity.

A Rain Forest Restoration Initiative (RFRI) Network was formed during the National Consultation on Rainforest Restoration in November 2005, which has initiated forest restoration efforts since 2006; Government Policy-Memorandum Circular 2004- 06; Executive Order 23 and 26; Support from Local Government Units, Peoples Organizations; Corporate and Individual donations

The clear targets of sustaining the ecological goods and services of our forests for the present and succeeding generations can only be achieved if we restore our forests using native trees. Engagement from the different sectors of the society is vital. This can be achieved if stakeholders share the same vision, and understand how biodiversity is interconnected and affects their everyday lives. It is important that the corporate sector and local government units understand their big role in providing assistance to the different stakeholders, which in return favors the sustainability not only of the local communities, but of the bigger population. Government priorities and policies that favor the improvement of livelihood and capacities of the communities will help in attaining success of restoration initiatives

Upcycling glass bottles on a touristic and party island of Gili Trawangan

The Gili Eco Trust created a service and product in 2012 that stays within a circular economy that not only increased employment opportunities in waste management on Trawangan for the local community, but started to drastically reduce the size of the landfill, whilst offering beautiful handmade unique personalized products to businesses and tourists alike. On top of this, all glass that can’t be upcycled into new glassware, crockery and gifts, gets crushed into a sand, which is then used in the production of bricks (mixing glass sand, fresh water, a bit of glue and cement). The "glass sand bricks" are then sold on Gili Trawangan for buildings. This means that 100% of all glass waste produced on Gili Trawangan can then be used in other projects, to reinvent this originally single use material as a valuable product once more. Using these different techniques, not only providing employment to the local community in the fast growing waste management sector, we are reducing the amount of glass going to landfill and educating the local businesses why and how they can separate all of their waste to create a zero waste to landfill initiative.

The success of this building block is the combination of projects that garantee that glass waste is fully reused, recycled and upcycled, and do not end up on the landfill. Only local beer bottles (BINTANG) are refilled, all the other glass bottles, jars are all ending up on the dump, with no future except piling up. To enable these glass projects, we learned about glass upcycling and invested in machinery to cut, polish and crush the bottles. We trained 5 people to be safely handling glass and now they are proud of their projects.

Our sole intention of our glass upcycling campaigns is to limit the amount of glass making it to landfill, now that we have proven that we can recycle 100% of glass waste we create. We used to received glass waste from neighbour island, Gili Meno. So we decided to teach them with training in glass cutting and upcycling. We also donated them a glass crushing machine to aid their independent work. This demonstrates that these campaigns can be shared, expanded and work in many different locations giving local communities a source of income and solution to previously unrecyclable and undegradeable waste.

- Upcylcing glass bottles into glass ware and glass sand

- Protecting material for our employees to not breathe glass dust

- Educating local communities about possibilities of upcycling glass bottles / jars

- Marketing and promoting our upcycled glassware and glass sand bricks for a revenue from waste.

- Empowering local communities with new skills and jobs from waste

Tree Academy Groups (TAGs)

Tree Academy Groups (TAGs) are grassroot community led groups of people, formed at parish level under the Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) model, championing conservation. 

 

We form these groups to build on social networks to spread support, commitment and changes in social norms and behaviours.

 

To build local capacity to identify and address community environmental needs.

 

To strengthen capacity for shifting of power balance so that the community gains a voice in decision making, increased access to information and services while addressing many of the underlying social causes of their vulnerability (discrimination, poverty, low self-esteem and self –efficacy, low social status, violence etc).

 

To mobilize local and external resources to address the issue and establish coordination and monitoring systems to ensure transparency, accountability, and effective management of these resources.

 

To motivate communities to advocate for policy changes to respond better to their real needs.

 

To  link communities to ecosystem services, helping to define, improve on, and monitor quality of care from the joint perspectives of community members and service providers, thereby improving availability of, access to, and satisfaction with ecosystem services.

 

Willingness by community members to organise themselves into groups.

 

A better political environment and government policies that allow people to form associations and unions.

 

Access to information, guidance and advice provided by Tree Uganda Academy.

 

Increasing climate change and the demand by government to engaging everyone in the conservation programs.

1. Programs that carry out all of the community mobilization steps but do not embrace its values and principles will not empower communities to achieve lasting results. They may also run the risk of setting poor precedents that leave communities feeling co-opted, manipulated, and reluctant to work with external organizations in the future.


 2. When communities do not develop the skills necessary to leverage their own resources, the problem arises when the external support comes to an end and members refuse to work on their own because future programs cannot or will not meet the established expectations.

 

3. It is a challenge to develop/adapt and document in a user-friendly way a methodology that any facilitator can pick and use, manuals that serve to provide guidance on how to facilitate each phase of the action cycle.

 

4. Through their participation in the process, communities establish necessary organizational structures and relationships, and people develop their knowledge, skills, social support networks, and ability to access and manage resources to sustain and improve their lives. 

Intergovernmental Collaboration at the Groundwater Basin Level

Even though the national law does not cover the groundwater system, the groundwater management has been governed through a series of ordinances, comprehensive plans, and action plans for more than 40 years. Groundwater Preservation Ordinances was established in 1977 for Kumamoto City and in 2001 for Kumamoto Prefecture. The city and prefecture governments jointly developed a comprehensive plan to control groundwater in 1996, incorporating collective input from 17 municipalities in the catchment area into the plan. Later, a second version of the plan in 2008 was developed by the group of 15 municipalities in the catchment, identifying four prioritized areas: 1) improvement of the balance of inflow and outflow of groundwater, 2) protection and improvement the quality of groundwater, 3) raising awareness of citizens for the conservation of groundwater, and 4) establishment of a common goal among stakeholders. A detailed five-year action plan was also developed the following year in order to implement mitigation measures in a timely manner. 

  • Intergovernmental collaboration at the basin level for groundwater management

Given the characteristics of groundwater, governance of groundwater management system requires intergovernmental cooperation at the basin level and their long-term commitment to the conservation activities. Moreover, region-wide plans should cover multifaceted aspects of groundwater management, including flood management, water utilization, environmental and ecosystem protection, culture and education, and economics while meeting various local needs and mobilizing diverse expertise.

Conducting ecological monitoring

Monitoring was first put in place by ZSL, WWF and finally IUCN. The UniLúrio supported with different roles until now that it became the leading institution for monitoring and sharing of the results. “Against facts, there are no arguments” is a Portuguese saying, but better than facts are when people can see in fisheries and in diving the result of their efforts . Certainly seeing more and bigger fish coming out in their nets is the best argument for LMMA support.

Progressively the community saw the results and became more supportive of the LMMA. Local government became proud of the LMMA which is now a show case.

Results need to be discussed with everyone. Failures need to be addressed and fully discussed between all partners.

Locally-based organization providing sustainable technical support

The active engagement of UniLúrio in all the phases of the process, especially in the education and monitoring, was essential to keep the community involved. The local people don’t know reading or writing, and few know how to speak Portuguese (national language). Unilúrio obviously is the one keeping records and publishing the most important information related to the LMMA.

Local University (UniLúrio) involved from the beginning with the LMMA monitoring, turtle conservation, fisheries monitoring and shark education.

International organizations normally come and go. Unless the support is given through a local organization (UniLúrio) there is no stability to the technical support.