The Tourist

“Samar Island isn’t God’s present, but His bequest. Not just in feed us, however for us to feed. Avoid our waste, but with our care.”

So goes the preamble to the Samar Island Council on Climate Change, a document that reflects the Samare?os’ drive to serve as stewards to the abundant expanse of resources that define the Eastern Visayan province of Samar.

As the third largest island in the Philippines, Samar is among the top 200 eco-regions of the world declared by the Planet Wildlife Fund (WWF), a leading international organization for wildlife conservation, and is this kind of filled with unexplored vistas of sea and terrain. Because it is mountainous, majority of Samar’s population and agricultural lands are found along the coast and downstream of river methods – putting it vulnerable to rising sea amounts due to climate change.

This vulnerability, in addition to understanding that future progress inextricably lies on the way they deal with their atmosphere now, have led the residents of Samar’s fourth-class municipality of Calbiga to consider the phone call to action in preserving Calbiga’s lots of natural wonders.

“In the following ten years, [we envision] Calbiga [to] have become a far more livable and prosperous local community,” stated Calbiga Mayor Melchor Nacario, “where people today reside respectable lives within an ecologically balanced, protected and safe atmosphere — being a center for trade and commerce, along with a well-known eco-tourism vacation spot.”

A passionate environmentalist, Mayor Nacario is one of the leading advocates of a Samar island-wide, ecosystem-based approach to what’s needed of sustainable improvement.

It had been beneath his leadership that in 2003 Calbiga was named probably the most livable communities on the planet when it joined the annual Nations in Bloom, a prestigious worldwide competitors endorsed through the United Nations Environment Programme, which addresses the management of the environment and also the enhancement of the standard of living.

Now, Calbiga is constantly on the confront the climate change trouble with mitigation policies, adaptation initiatives, and other proactive countermeasures.

Included in this are keeping the Samar Island All-natural Park (SINP) with its 333,000 hectares of lowland tropical forests that function as a sink for carbon sequestration (whereby carbon within the atmosphere is taken away and deposited inside a reservoir e.g., forests); the reforestation of its watersheds; mangrove rehabilitation; river desiltation and erosion manage; sustained advocacy versus mining, illegal fishing and logging; and lastly leveraging on its myriad of all-natural points of interest as potential eco-destinations.

The latter component it sets to accomplish by becoming a member of the government-led very first Philippine Worldwide Eco-Show (PINES) debuting this August, an international trade occasion centered on driving up interest in the nation’s environmental goods and services, most famously of which includes the promotion of eco-tourism particularly for well-endowed localities.

“[Through PINES], hopefully to improve our understanding of climate change-biodiversity linkages,” said Mayor Nacario. “The environment is our most important, and eco-tourism is our conservation and economic technique.”

Among Calbiga’s eco-destinations are: the Langun-Gobingob Gives up Barangay Panayuran, a twelve-chambered cave system touted to become the second largest in Asia, boasting of impressive rock formations and underground water courses that function as habitat of blind crabs and also the extremely rare blind gobinee fish (Caecogobius cryptophthalmus); the Lulugayan Falls in Barangay Literon, dubbed by visitors as a mini-Niagara for its countless cascading waterfalls; Calbiga River, which can serve as transport byway and drinking water supply for 17 barangays; and Calbiga’s mangrove forests, the richest spawning grounds for fish and crustaceans within the Eastern Visayas.

Putting these locations on the map for guests, Mayor Nacario believes, could pave the way for greater measures to be enacted towards greening the Samar landscape and broadening the base for environmental advocacy and activism.

“By placing the spotlight on our country’s eco-tourism locations, we appeal to investment into our LGUs that will hopefully enable them to be more environmentally responsible and much more driven to safeguard these gems of nature,” stated Thelma Dumpit-Murillo, Project Director of PINES and Deputy Executive Director from the Center for Worldwide Trade Expositions and Missions (CITEM), a connected company of the Division of Trade and Industry (DTI) as well as organizing body for that display.

“PINES hopes to exhibit that safeguarding the environment is also a method of protecting our heritage, which provides us much more pride with what we are able to offer the world,” she additional.

Set on August 26-28 in the SMX Convention Middle in Pasay City, the first Philippine Worldwide Eco Display is staged in cooperation using the Un Improvement Programme (UNDP), the Philippine Green Constructing Council (PhilGBC), the Philippine Business for the Atmosphere (PBE), and the Development Academy from the Philippines (DAP). It’s also supported by the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Business (PCCI), the American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (AmCham), the Haribon Foundation for the Conservation of Organic Sources, Inc., and the Reliable Waste Management Association from the Philippines (SWAPP).