Peter Drucker, considered the father of modern management, is often credited with the quote, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

This statement rings resoundingly true in the Philippine context, where the economic contribution of ecosystems is insufficiently reflected in established national measures of economic growth, such as the gross domestic product, and renders invisible the considerable economic contributions of ecosystem services while putting greater emphasis on conventional economic variables.

A pitfall of this framework is that rising national wealth might already come at the expense of environmental health as national and local planners and decision-makers remain oblivious to this unsustainable economic trajectory.

A team of researchers from the UPLB Interdisciplinary Studies Center for Integrated Natural Resources and Environment Management (UPLB-INREM) aims to address this gap by promoting natural capital accounting (NCA) as a tool for natural resources management and as an input to economic planning and decision-making, particularly for coastal and marine ecosystems.

Led by Professor Asa Jose U. Sajise of the UPLB College of Economics and Management, the project team of the Natural Capital Accounting of Coastal and Marine Ecosystems in the West Philippine Sea Project (RE-INVEST WPS Project 2) is developing a framework for coastal and marine NCA in the West Philippine Sea (WPS), which can guide current and future ecosystem accounting efforts in the country.

RE-INVEST WPS Project 2 adopts the United Nations System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (UN-SEEA) framework in its ecosystem accounting efforts. UN-SEEA is a globally accepted statistical standard for measuring ecosystem extent and condition and flow of ecosystem services, i.e., how the value of benefits that ecosystems provide changes over time.

Through NCA, economic planners and decision-makers can better quantify the benefits derived from nature to ensure holistic, science-based policies, management, and investment decisions.

In the Philippines, the need to mainstream NCA as a tool for sustainable local coastal and marine natural resources utilization and management has gained impetus with the recent passage of Republic Act No. 11995 or the Philippine Ecosystem and Natural Capital Accounting System (PENCAS) Act.

Accounting for nature’s benefits

Ecosystems provide various users with a wide range of benefits. These services can be classified into four major types: provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services.

RE-INVEST WPS Project 2 focuses only on the first three ecosystem services since supporting services are intermediate services that do not provide final products with explicit market values.

For provisioning services, the project will estimate resource rent from fisheries, which represents the remaining value after the cost of all inputs, such as capital and operational expenses, is deducted from the revenues from fishing-related activities.

Regulating services, meanwhile, will be measured by estimating the cost of damage avoided from natural hazards as a result of the natural barrier provided by coastal ecosystems, especially mangrove forests.

Moreover, the economic value of coastal blue carbon, or the amount of carbon stored and sequestered by mangroves and seagrass beds, which contributes to alleviating the effects of global warming, will be approximated using the InVEST Coastal Blue Carbon model.

Lastly, the project will estimate the recreational value of coastal and marine ecosystems as part of the cultural services they provide.

Aside from ecosystem services valuation, the project will also establish the socio-economic profiles of resource users of the West Philippine Sea, particularly fisherfolk and coastal residents, using the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach.

Examining the stakeholders’ physical, human, social, financial, and natural capital assets will help to better understand the interaction between human societies and coastal and marine ecosystems.

Collective undertaking

An important lesson learned during the implementation of RE-INVEST WPS Project 2 is that NCA needs to be a collaborative effort among various stakeholders of coastal and marine resources. These include coastal communities, local government units (LGUs), national government agencies, and academic institutions.

During its first two years of implementation, RE-INVEST WPS Project 2 established formal partnerships through memoranda of agreement with the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development, Palawan State University, Western Philippines University in Palawan, and the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority.

The project also actively engaged the local governments of Occidental Mindoro, Oriental Mindoro, and Kalayaan Island Group during its fieldwork and post-fieldwork activities.

In March and July 2024, the project partnered with Bataan Peninsula State University (BPSU) to implement fieldwork activities in Morong, Bagac, and Mariveles, Bataan. These activities included secondary data gathering and focus group discussions with fisherfolk and municipal LGUs, as well as capacity development and primary data gathering activities, such as enumerators’ training and household surveys.

For the second phase of the Bataan fieldwork, Jonna Abistado-Biong, center manager of BPSU’s Research and Innovation Center on Climate Change and Sustainability, led the BPSU focal team. She was joined by Ma. Anna O. Feliciano, Marianne N. Gonzales, Lucky Sonny A. Ligsanan, Lizette B. Tapang, Marz Linnaeous L. Rabadon, Elmar P. Egarta, Allen Iverson M. Saromo, and Alfie M. Agas.

For its Zambales fieldwork, which took place from November 25 to December 5, 2024, the project team collaborated with President Ramon Magsaysay State University’s focal team. The team was composed of Dr. Rowena R. Sazon, the focal person, and Vivian O. Ecunar, Girlie Mae S. Calimlim, and Edna M. Padre, the focal members.

In coordination with the LGUs of the municipalities of Santa Cruz, Candelaria, and Palauig, the team conducted focus group discussions with various WPS stakeholders, key informant interviews and household surveys among fisherfolk and coastal residents, and recreation demand surveys among local tourists.

Ways Forward

RE-INVEST WPS Project 2, in partnership with Pangasinan State University, will conduct the final leg of its fieldwork activities in Pangasinan in early 2025 in the municipalities of Bolinao, Anda, and Dasol.

The research team will consolidate the province-level natural capital accounts to establish coastal and marine natural capital accounts for the entire WPS, which will then be validated with relevant stakeholders.

These accounts will serve as a basis for demonstrating the use of physical and monetary accounts for policymaking and decision analysis and for recommending policies toward the sustainable management of WPS natural capital. Capacity-building activities on NCA among partner state universities, colleges, and LGUs are also in the works.

RE-INVEST WPS Project 2 is a three-year project funded by the Department of Science and Technology-Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic, and Natural Resources Research and Development.

It forms the second component of the “Resource Inventory, Valuation, and Policy in Ecosystem Services under Threat: The Case of the West Philippine Sea” or RE-INVEST Program, which is co-implemented with the UP Marine Science Institute and the UP Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea. RE-INVEST WPS Project 2 is also part of a suite of research projects implemented by UPLB-INREM under the leadership of its founding director, Dr. Juan M. Pulhin, which promotes integrative and interdisciplinary approaches to ensure sustainable economic development and environmental integrity (Christian Ray C. Buendia).

This article was first published on the UPLB website and can be accessed through this link.