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08:00
Speaker not identifiedwhy
In the future, the Navy strengthens not only from within, but also its partnerships within the Navy, with other government institutions, with maritime stakeholders, and with the Filipino people.
The high trust placed in the Philippine Navy by its people is a testament to the commitment to safeguarding the nation's interests.
The modernization of its fleet and advancements in defense technology all work toward one goal, a modern and multi-capable naval force.
Enhancement of defense system forms part of the strengthening self-reliance defense posture to ensure that the Navy meets threats with a robust and secure response to defend the country's sovereignty in any corner of the sea and in the cyber domain.
strategic partnerships with national allies the philippine is reinforcing its capabilities with
the establishment and improvement of naval bases and stations first development by tapping into
the skills of skilled sailors marines and civilian human resources the navy of tomorrow is not only
built on modern vessels or new technologies it is built on the courage of every filipino who
The answer is the call to serve, to stand ready, not just with strength, but with unwavering faith in our country.
I promise that to watch over and the future of every Filipino.
ENS Jerico Quidezhow this is known
Good morning po sa inyong lahat, or should I say a Navy great morning to everyone!
Good morning po and welcome to Las Piñas–Parañaque, Wetland Park.
So I am ENS Jerico Quidez, the Executive Officer of the Civil Affairs Unit of Civil Military Operations Group, Philippine Navy.
And I will be with you this morning, all throughout this morning.
So to formally start, once again welcome you, I welcome you all to NAVYGATE 2025, an Ocean Literacy Forum.
So, to formally start our program, may we invite everyone to please stand for the opening prayer to be led by ENS Carl Jan L. Dayag, Philippine Navy, the Admin Officer of Civil Affairs Unit, Civil Military Operations Group, Philippine Navy.
Then, after that, it will be followed by the National Anthem. National Anthem. And then, yeah, we will just go from there. Okay? Thank you so much!
ENS Carl Jan L. Dayaghow this is known
Almighty and Sovereign God, Lord of the Seas and Protector of our Nation,
we stand before you today with reverence as we begin the NAVYGATE 2025 Climate Change Information and Awareness.
We thank you for the strength and unity you bestow upon the men and women of the Philippine Navy together with our partners and stakeholders.
As we pursue this noble mission of safeguarding the environment, you have entrusted to our care.
Grant us the discipline, clarity, and courage to uphold our duty, not only as defenders of our country, but also as stewards of your creation.
Bless this undertaking, O Lord, and all who participate in it.
May this initiative serve as a beacon of hope, fostering collaboration, resilience, and shared responsibility in confronting the challenges of climate change.
ENS Jerico Quidezhow this is known
Strengthen our resolve to protect our oceans and natural resources
Win the same valor, dedication, efforts
Redound to the service of the Filipino people
And to the greater glory of your most holy
And medyo mataas yung energy ko, I am really sorryAnd I'm really sorry, my energy is a bit high
Medyo excited, I am so excited for this day
And I think I will have a nosebleed
Because we have some friends from outside
I mean from other countries
Welcome to the Philippines
And of course, I hope we will have a great time with you this morning, even though I will have a nosebleed, you know?
Alright, and to continue with our program, let's all welcome the Commanding Officer of Civil Affairs Unit,
Lieutenant Mark Louwie A. Ramos, Philippine Navy, for his opening remarks.
Distinguished guests, partners, and fellow advocates,
On behalf of the Civil Military Operations Group, Philippine Navy, under the leadership of Captain Gregory Gerald V. Fabic, Philippine Navy General Staff Corps, and the Flag Officer in Command of the Philippine Navy, Vice Admiral Josema Ambrosio Kiochon Espeleta, Philippine Navy,
LT Mark Louwie A. Ramoshow this is known
It is my distinct honor and privilege to welcome you all to navigate 2025 Our Ocean here at the Las Piñas-Paranaque Wetland Park Center as part of our Maritime and Archipelagic Nation Awareness Month.
As an archipelagic nation, the Philippines is inseparably tied to the sea.
It sustains our people, secures our commerce, and defines our culture.
Yet today, our seas and coasts are at the front line of climate change.
threatened by rising levels, stronger storms, and loss of marine biodiversity.
These are not distant or abstract concerns.
They are realities that directly affect our economy, our communities, and our national security.
In his message for this year's MANA Mo,
President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr. reminds us that
the sea has been both our cradle and our crucible.
Every century of our history has been measured by its tides carrying the seeds of prosperity and the storms of conflict.
This truth underscores the very reason we are gathered here today.
To ensure the peace which we nurtured, our past will also safeguard our future.
NAVYGATE 2025 is not merely a forum.
It is a call to action to broaden our awareness, to deepen our partnerships, and to transform knowledge into concrete commitments.
Today, the Navy joins hands with the civil society, the academy, government agencies, and private sectors to amplify a message.
Protecting our oceans is a duty we all share.
To our partners, guest speakers, and organizations present, thank you for standing with us.
Your presence proves that the climate resilience and maritime awareness are collective responsibilities,
ones that demand unity, innovation, and unwavering resolve.
As we embark on today's journey of dialogue and discovery, may we open not only our minds but also our hearts.
May this gathering inspire us to protect our coast, to nurture our seas, and to leave a legacy of stewardship for the generations to come.
Together, let us navigate towards a sustainable, secure, and sovereign maritime nation.
Maraming salamat, mabuhay ang Bungdagat ng Pilipinas at mabuhay tayong lahat.Thank you so much for that unifying and inspiring message, and for reminding us also. May the Bungdagat of the Philippines live long and may we all live long.
Thank you so much to my commanding officer for that very unifying message and very inspiring message.
and for reminding us also
that we are all steward of our
of this earth.
Okay? And
before we proceed, we would like
to remind everyone that if you are
not yet connected to the internet, we have
a QR code na umiikot po
sa mga ating mga participants.
If you are not yet connected, we have a QR code.
You could connect to the internet because this
will be an interactive
forum. So now, let's
proceed to the next part. May we all
invite one of the
partners or brain
of this NAVYGATE
25-hour, NAVYGATE
Our Ocean. Let's all welcome
my partner, my kuya. Let's all
Nik Metaxa-Schwartenhow this is known
welcome Kuya Nick.
Good morning everyone.
Oh, oh. I'm Kuya Nick
and from the outer world
I bring already two countries
kasi kalati-kalati. MyMy father was from Germany and my mother was from Greece.
father was from Germany and my mother
was from Greece.
From, yeah, German-Greek.
Very bad. Very bad combination.
Europeans know about that. Here in the Philippines, we have no idea.
Since 2022, I'm a member of the United Nations Ocean Decade Forum.
That is an organization, a structure, which is trying to raise awareness for the ocean.
And I'm also a supporter of the Blue Thread Program,
which is a sub-part of the United Nations Ocean Decade,
and it's called Ocean Literacy.
So this is what we're trying to do here today.
Today, we're trying to do some ocean literacy.
Maya, I mean, I have a confession to do
because even if I'm quite some time in the Philippines,
in Diako, I don't speak Tagalog.
So, for today, we're going to have also foreign guests here
from the outer world.
Where's Kuya Talaga from the outer world?
So, for the first part of our sessions,
we're going to speak English today, if that's okay for you.
Okay lang?
I don't hear you.
Oh, okay lang. Alright.
And from the very beginning, I was always a supporter of MANA Mo.
MANA Mo, I can't ask the question already into the room.
Do you know when MANA Mo started?
Do you know? No?
So let's make a little guess game.
Who thinks it started in 2013? Hands up.
Who thinks it started in 2017? Hands up.
And who thinks it started in 2021? Hands up.
Okay, so the rest of the hands say I have not, the slightest idea.
Actually, it happened in 2017, and pretty much exactly in September, because that's MANA Mo, diba?
Maritime and Archipelagic Nation Awareness Month.
So from the very first MANA Mo, I stood on stage already on the International Coastal Cleanup,
thanks to the invitation of
really wonderful people here in the Philippines
who are fighting for the cleanliness
of our beaches
Kuya Seta Visilia is doing
that for I think 10 years already
before I came to the Philippines
the Philippines has the most
volunteers for ocean cleanups
amazing
let's be honest
when did you hear the first time
about Manamun?
was it 2017 when it came out?
ehh
No?
Was it just this year?
Hands up?
Yes. Many of you just this year.
Two years ago?
Oh, early adopter, diba?
Longer, like maybe four years ago, anyone?
Wow, Derek, of course.
Of course, Sir Derek, you're gonna see later.
And, of course, yeah, and of course.
So, MANA Mo is really important for me
and I think the really great, beautiful thing here
is to understand that
the United Nations Ocean Decade
started in 2021
but MANA Mo was there already in 2017.
So we here in the Philippines
had awareness for our ocean
already much earlier than the United Nations.
Is that an applause for the Philippines?
And here's the second event I went
that was in 2018.
We created,
Ms. Jane is here in the room,
one of the brains of this operation.
We created the ICC 2018 with San Julian Cabataan training camp with the Youth Empowerment Symposium.
And does anyone here in the room recognize a person on this picture?
No, not me. Of course, me is easy.
Someone else? Jerry? Who is Jerry?
Who is Jerry?
No, I mean this guy.
Anyone remember this guy?
There it is, Anson Jerico.
From back then, he was already active.
He came as a visitor and he left as a youth in power.
A few years later, he founded Kabataan Makadaga, together with others,
an organization which was known all around the Philippines
09:00
with thousands and thousands of members.
And then he joined the Philippine Navy.
And now, he helps organizing coastal cleanups, he forms advocacy, he instills the love for the ocean, and he lives the dream.
There is a documentary, you have to help me with the name, Ang Batang?
Well, nosebleed, I told you.
No way!
But you have to watch that documentary.
It shows the situation of Filipino fisher folk struggling.
And Jerico has a really beautiful but also sad story to tell in this video.
For me, Jerico is an authentic voice who is really trying to bridge the different areas.
And then people ask me, and you queer, why are you doing all of this?
I don't get paid for this.
Why do I do all of this? I do it because of people like Jerico.
Because our generation actually was at watch when most of the things happened that made this planet what it is today.
And it is a challenge for the young generation.
This is why our generation has to stand up and try to support as good as possible the young generation in these challenges.
NAVYGATE is a really fantastic concept and idea.
What we try to do is, we try to bridge these three areas together.
We have the ocean, and we have the navy.
Well, the navy is mostly like on top of the ocean, huh?
Do you have submarines?
But the ocean is yours.
That is your element.
Of course there is an overlap where you are protecting our ocean.
But you are not just protecting the territory of our ocean.
you started a new role
you started to understand
that there is more to protect
with our ocean
and the civil society, we have also guests
from the civil society here
which is also having overlaps with the ocean
which is where we come in
with ocean literacy, hopefully
and an overlap with the navy
we're gonna talk about that later a little bit
so you can see a couple of topics
except for our LED screen
so some of our topics
you cannot see
and these topics are really very complicated
but today is not an academic lecture
we have scientists here
and we have academe here
but we are not trying to do a lecture out of it
so relax, no exams, no problem
what we try to do is really
navigate this a little bit
and in the old times
in your place
and in other places
fishermen used the stars to navigate
So this is what we do. We have a little star map here with a couple of topics and there are much more, many more topics we cannot talk about today because we have only half a day for this.
So don't expect this to be a full service academic lecture. It's going to be just a little bit of a trying to find a little bit of a navigation among the stars.
And every year we will have a different focus topic
And this year's focus topic is climate
I just won't even say climate change
Let me just say climate
Because a few days ago, I think two days ago
A very famous president said in the United Nations Chamber
That climate change is a big lie
Well, I invite him to come over to the Philippines
He's gonna see a different picture of it
but just let's talk about
climate as such
so ocean literacy
is in the meantime
a very interesting topic
and I could be super dal-dal
and talk the whole day about it
but I don't want to bore you
so we have a couple of principles
and of course you have to learn them
and know them by later
we just want to watch one of them
I just picked out one of them
and that's ocean literacy principle number 3
the ocean is a major
influence on weather and
climate. So when we talk about
climate, we have to talk
about the ocean. Or
as a D&R
communications executive
says, Ma'am Gamboa says,
our oceans represent a
fundamental aspect
of Philippine identity.
The ocean and the
Philippines is one. And this
is why MANA Mo was a
a fantastic idea from the very
beginning. And last but
least, doesn't it say already
in Genesis? And God said
let the water teem
with living creatures.
Courtesy to one of the free divers
in Pahol, Mam Mariotti,
I have
a picture, it's not so beautiful because I'm
not that beautiful, but I have a picture with
the same sardines. And it's
really amazing, it's fantastic to see
the beauty of the
the ocean. So, what we're
going to do today is really just
take our little MANA Mo boat,
very proud that I have my very own
MANA Mo boat, and
we're taking this star navigation
and we just travel around a little
bit. I don't know if you're
going to have internet. It is
not a really good place for the internet
but should you have internet
then you can
go to our Facebook group which we
just opened a few days ago
and you will hopefully join it
and then you will be with us
and now we take this
boat and we are at the cove now
we start of course at the shore right
so we are on the shore
where is my seaman? Jerico?
where is he?
you come on stage here
let's be there
we gonna go together through this now
so we are at the shore right
and
we would start
That's the point where Jerico has to say something
But he's not here
So I say it for him
Jerico, let's start into the cove
Get people to carry the boat
Because this is what we do here in the Philippines
Di ba?
We carry the boat together in the ocean
Yes, of course
So let's start in the cove, sir
Let's get people to carry the boat
Of course, kailangan magtulungan magbayanihan
Bayanihan
One of the reasons I love the Philippines so much
But sandali naBut let's take a break
sandalila
I want something else first
I want to do something else with you first
because we are at the shore, yeah
but, and we are not yet in the boat
but, what if we close
our eyes and try
to envision this shore
line where we are, the boat is here
we can hear the waves
close your eyes
and try to imagine that sea
walang matutulo, no sleeping
and tell me, what do
you see?
You are at the shore.
Anything. What do you see?
Ideas.
Ay, louder.Loud enough.
You don't have microphones.
You have to shout.
Waves. We see waves.
Island. There is an island over there.
Oh, Zambales.
They were in Zambales.
San Antonio.
More.
Plastic.
Ay, nakutipan ah.
Ay, see how you are.
Sorry.
Chinese boat.
No, in my shore is no Chinese boat.
Oh, naman, let's be a little bit nicer.
Where are we now?
Birds, huh?
Birds?
Huh?
Wait lang, what, what?Wait a minute, what, what?
Garbage?
You have also dark ideas, I know, cool.
Ladies and gentlemen,
we are in the DNR Wetland Center
and we are surrounded by mangroves, of course.
So let's talk about mangroves.
Ah, oh, there are lots of birds here.
Mangroves are an incredibly important part
when we talk about the ocean.
So now, you are in the DNR Wetland Center.
I invite you all, right after this,
they have a fantastic museum here
and they can really teach you in detail
everything about those mangroves.
We don't go there because we said,
walang lecture naman,no lecture at all
we don't have a full lecture.
But I invited a navigator, somebody who helps us a little bit.
And I would like to...
Oy, that's too early!
Oh, my secret is out already!
I want a really warm hand of applause for a marine biologist
currently at the Ateneo de Manila Institute for Sustainability,
Ma'am Ethel Vargas.
You cannot read the name but I know it.
Ma'am Ethel.
No, no, no, no.
You come to me.
there you are, fantastic, thank you so much
good morning
so I was doing a little bit about
research about her and I found really
articles, nosebleed
you wanna hear nosebleed, try to
read what that is, Diba
seriously
seriously
I don't understand
no lecture today, okay, yes sir
but I found something else and that is
so beautiful
the unsung heroes of our
coasts. So Ethel, come here.
These are your slides. Tell us
a little bit. What do we see here?
What's going on? Okay, but
before I go there, Nick actually
texted me last night and he was
telling me, your slides are still too
technical.
That's really like a real challenge
between us and scientists. Let's put it
away. Why don't you tell us instead
something about yourself? Well,
good morning.
Maayong buntag.
and Bisaya, kung may mga Bisaya dito.and Bisaya, if there are any Bisaya here.
So my name is Atel, I am a marine biologist
and currently I am teaching in the Ateneo de Manila University
and the Department of Environmental Science.
And I am here today to share with you a little project that we had last year
which revolves around blue carbon ecosystems.
And I'm excited to share this with you today because this is more of like citizen science
And this tool that we are making available to everyone is largely dependent, not on scientists only, but on the participation of different partners and proponents to help save our blue carbon ecosystems.
Fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you.
So we're going to dive into it. First, we learn a little bit about the mangrove.
And I think the most important thing to know is this part.
So what I would like to show you here is the context behind the project which is called Blue Map that we did last year.
So I think it's very important to recognize how important our mangroves are.
in the context of what we call as the blue carbon lens.
So first off, biodiversity, I took a little stroll
canina there in the pathway.
Yes, yes, I did.
You had time for that.
That's beautiful.
I did, I snuck out.
And if you can see there, Nick said that mangroves
are very special and very unique coastal ecosystems
because aside from those mangrove trees
that you can find in a natural mangrove forest,
it actually supports so much more.
If you go there and you take your time to really observe,
you can see many other creatures that are really dependent on the mangrove forests.
You can find birds, you can find fishes, you can find shrimp, you can find crabs,
you can find even in some areas you can find sharks.
And they go to mangroves for various purposes.
Some fishes, they go to the mangroves because that serves as their nursery.
So the baby fishes go there and they spend their time there as what you call as maybe fingerlings or fish fry.
And when they grow into an adult, they go out and go to coral reefs.
So it supports our fisheries sector.
Aside from that, mangroves also serve as food sources.
These are very nutrient-rich, maraming pagkain.
That's the reason why a lot of organisms live there.
So it supports a very rich biodiversity, and this is something that we should be very proud of.
Studies are saying, Nick, that out of the 70 true mangrove species in the entire world,
around 40 to 47 species you can actually find in our country,
and that is something that we are very, very much blessed with.
Okay? So yeah, biodiversity.
And here is a German name.
Schatz.
back in 1991. So it says here that one hectare of mangrove trees produces up to three tons of
litter fall annually. Litter fall is important because that serves as organic matter or food
and that in turn supports our fishes, our shrimps, our crabs, where people are dependent on for food
especially for us where we are an archipelagic country. 1.08, one ton of fish per year
from one hectare of mangroves that's really a lot yeah I will give you some
fun part shots is a German name and the word shots means treasure so as a
scientist it's really cool if you're called shots because all your
publications will be called treasure yeah now I found this and there is
another nosebleed word here sequestration did I say correctly yes
Yes, that's correct.
What's sequestration?
So I guess this is one of the lesser-known benefits of mangrove.
So it's mangroves on the blue carbon land.
So the term blue carbon is actually relatively new.
It was coined around the early 2000s.
And blue carbon, it basically refers to the carbon that is absorbed by coastal ecosystems.
systems. So our COSAT systems, whether they're coral reefs, they're mangrove forests, they're
seagrass beds, they are capable of absorbing carbon, mainly because of the, I'm sorry, it will
sound like a lecture, the process of photosynthesis. So one of the ingredients of
photosynthesis is carbon dioxide. So it absorbs carbon to produce food for our seaweeds, for our
plants. But what is important about blue carbon ecosystems is that these
ecosystems are capable of absorbing or sequestering significant amounts of
carbon and that means they play an important role in climate change
mitigation. That was so scientific. Significant. Just say lots and lots and lots and tons and tons.
All this stuff is coming down into the roots.
So when they do photosynthesis, they absorb all of that carbon.
And this graph that I'm showing here, just let me simplify it.
So this is a study by someone that actually measures how much carbon different ecosystems can store.
Okay, seagrass, salt marshes.
We have seagrasses, salt marshes, we have the estuarine and the oceanic mangroves and the tropical forest.
And just by looking at the graph, you can see that mangrove ecosystems can actually store so much more compared to our seagrasses, our salt marshes, and even our tropical forests.
Wow. Okay, that is powerful.
That is so cool.
That is extremely powerful.
But what I find even more cooler, Nick, let me just highlight here is, can you see the blue bars and the green bars there, or the blue colored portions there?
It actually shows where the carbon in the mangrove is stored.
So the blue bars show that the mangrove or the carbon is not stored in the mangrove tree itself, but it's actually stored in the sediment.
And that little green bar there showing that carbon that is stored within the biomass or in the body of the mangrove.
And for me, that says a lot of a very significant message there that if we allow people to deforest our mangrove forest, to cut down our mangrove forest,
then it would free up this much carbon in the sediment and return it back to the atmosphere, which is very, very bad news.
So the whole work of the mangroves is being turned to nothing if we cut them down,
because then all the carbon comes out again.
Exactly.
I didn't know that one, and I thought, I have lotion literacy.
Oh, wow, okay.
I was wondering, it's called blue carbon, but there are green things here,
and I was not knowing what that is.
Yeah, yeah, so I find that very, very cool,
and I think it's a very important thing that we all need to know.
So we really need to be careful with our mangroves,
which brings us to the next part,
because that is a word which came up a lot in my research for this navigate
here and it says gap and I know mind the gap
And they've done really helpful, great work on mangrove restoration.
So we've had a long history of mangrove restoration here in the Philippines.
Actually, the earliest records was as far back as the 1970s.
So we really had a lot of mangrove restoration efforts since then.
And this means there's so many actors, so many groups that are doing mangrove restoration in so many different places in the Philippines.
But what we found as a gap is a centralized platform where we can actually see, okay, where are these non-growth restorations happening?
And most importantly, to see if they have been successful or not.
Because, of course, we want all of this money that's been, you know, allocated to these conservation initiatives to do its work, to conserve our blue carbon ecosystems.
So those were one of the gaps that we found.
And when we were given a chance to at least contribute to solving these gaps, we came up with the Blue Map.
So our project is, the tool that we made is Blue Map, a carbon restoration database to combat climate change.
So I come here to represent my team. So those are the people behind the Blue Map.
And this was actually led by one of my colleagues, the girl second to your left.
Yeah, and that's Ms. Dawn Satumbaga.
I hope she's watching now.
Hi, Dawn.
So we have Danielle.
We have Lindsay.
She's now working with National Geographic.
Then we have Dawn.
And then we have Nika.
Sir Al knows her.
And, of course, we have Dr. Seb Salmo.
So he's one of the go-to persons for mangrove work and mangrove restoration work.
Let's have an applause for the team.
please because they can watch us because we are online i think we are even live yeah so um the
purpose really of our blue map if we can go on to the next slide is we want to create a tool that is
accessible by everyone for those of you who want to do research on blue carbon ecosystems for
funders potential funders who want to see where can they possibly do manga restoration and
And even for, you know, NGOs or any kind of research or any kind of group who want to have information that will make them design their mangrove preservation programs better.
Smart, smart.
And, of course, provide awareness.
So this is what our map looks like.
If you have internet, you can go there.
But it's best viewed through desktop.
It's www.bloomup.ph.
So this is one of the, when you go there, this is probably one of the first things that you see.
and immediately you can see the total number of projects that we have mapped so far,
the total number of ongoing projects, so may mga finished na na projects,
the average project success rate, and of course the total number of contributions to the blue map.
Question to the audience.
What do you feel when you see these numbers?
Anybody, any reaction to it?
I had a really strong reaction when I saw it first because I was trained in
business and 41% average success rate? That sounds so low. So it's really tough
and difficult to do restoration. Yes, it is. Definitely. It's unnatural for you to do a
100% success rate but in the past success rate has been low
mainly because of wrong planting methodologies.
But there's already been an established methodology for that
on how you should be planting mangrove.
So there should be the correct species to plant,
the correct season to plant, the correct place to plant.
For example, please do not participate in mangrove projects
or restoration projects that plant on seagrass beds.
So that would be completely wrong.
So that is something that groups who want to do this kind of work
Also need to know because you do not want to waste the money that you allocate for this restoration projects, right?
So you say we're learning slowly. We're getting slowly better
Yes, but is it correct to say that it makes much more sense to
Keep the existing one
Yes, that is also correct. So aside from just you know doing
But restoring degraded ecosystems
I think it's equally important to make sure that the ecosystems that we currently have right now that are still in fact
are guarded and are protected and they're allowed to nature is a way of
healing herself if you allow it room and space to grow and you allow it or
protect it to be able to do that so that's one other perspective that you
can that's equally important as well this is why we also saw before when we
cut them down they release the co2 carbon in the air so it's really very
very important not just to recover or to to create this kind of our first
frustration restoration projects but also to protect the existing ones we
have to be a little bit faster because we are of course falling into a lot of
things going on information this is the information that you can find if you go
to the map and you click on those pins there that's not for them that's not
information for them yeah that's really like for people who want to fund exactly
Yeah, exactly, yeah.
And scientists, right?
Yes, that's correct, that's correct.
Let's have a look at the other one that shows us a little bit about how many mangroves.
Yeah, this is basically a map showing how many mangroves or mangrove projects are being done in different regions of the country.
So you can see there are more projects in certain regions, like Mimaropa and Eastern Visayas.
There are less in other regions, including NCR.
are. But I'd like for you to take this with a grain of salt because it is possible that there
are no restoration projects there or it's not just reported. We couldn't find any formal reporting
of any existing manner of restorations there. That brings us to the point. We have one last
slide we want to look at because that's essentially where projects are being implemented and where the
funds are coming from. And these kind of graphics, they make me always crazy because you don't
I said what is going on and then I thought okay okay so here is a Kadeem
and then up there is a Kadeem yeah and then it says proponents and there it
says funders so the money goes from here to here is that correct yeah so you just
basically tell us where the money is coming from and who are implementing
this projects as you can see most of the money is coming from the the national
government and the money goes to the civil society groups and some of them
goes back to the national government, which means they're doing restoration as well.
You are academe, right?
Yes, I'm part of academe.
So this is a very small line there from the local government to academe.
So that means the academe, at least for the data that we have, it's quite a small data,
but we're hoping to expand it, is that the academe is not doing much work on the actual
restoration work.
Ah.
Yes.
I thought they are curipo.
But we still need, of course, funds to do more research that will support better restoration
for blue carbon ecosystems.
Oh, okay.
All right.
So, this is your BlueMap project.
What's next?
What's next?
Well, the BlueMap project, as I mentioned a while ago, is highly reliant on the data
that will be shared to us, and then we can map it in this tool.
In January 2025, we were able to meet with its relevant stakeholders.
I mean, it's a small group, but it's a start where we talk to, we have representatives there from DNR, from the Philippine Space Agency, other NGOs that are doing blue carbon restoration work.
And we ask them what are the, what the website, how the website can actually help them in designing their programs better because we want it to be adaptive really to the needs of the practitioners.
and of course I think this is like to take this opportunity that you or people
who are doing blue carbon restoration work can be part of the blue map we
actually have a button there where you can actually submit your project so that
it can be also reflected in the database and it can be made available to people
decision-makers who need it the most Wow fantastic big warm hand of applause
applause. Thank you so much. That was really, really amazing. And that is exactly what this
NAVYGATE concept is about. Stay with me a moment because what we're going to do now
is we're going to start something which is really the connectivity between what they
call in the United Nations also citizen science. Because I'm not a scientist. I am not an academe.
But I try to do my best to support wherever I can and that is exactly what everybody can.
can.
So.
we have so-called challenges and we want you to accept those challenges so the
simplest challenges you learned a little bit here it was not a lecture you don't
have to learn like complicated things and words like sequestration but you
learned a little bit you know ah there is a map this map is relying on people
really reporting that there so question who has family in coastal areas hands up
please that's quite a few who's living themselves in coastal areas from
province home province so what you can do now is you can already next time you
go home visit your people you can't tell people about it so if you want you can
take this challenge on and we left it open you can say I will tell ten people
five people, 50 people in the next three months, five months, six months, maximum
12 months because next year we have our next NAVYGATE and we want to show you
what has happened in this one year. And so you can do it very fast and quick. We
have our Facebook group which we showed you and there is a challenge accepted
picture and under this picture you can bring in your comments. So first join the
the group, of course. You don't have to. You can't even comment without joining it, I think.
But I'm not a Facebook expert. And all you have to say is, OK, Ethel, blue map, 10 people,
three months. That's my challenge. I accept it. And then over the next three months, when
you start to really talk to people, take your phone out, make a selfie and post it there
too. So what you do is you be our ambassador. Call yourself an influencer. Ethel's new
influencer and you will just tell people about what's going on deba and that is
already citizen science just helping a little bit to support that program
because you read that word before gap and we will hear this word a lot today
so let's help mind the gap close the gap so that's a very easy thing you go to
the website with this QR code you should blend directly on that picture and you
just write what you are promising to us now and of course we're going to come after you with the
whole navy if you are not fulfilling your just make pictures and keep the discussion going on
okay okay okay there is of course a different way it's a harder way to get your hands dirty but this
This is equally enjoyable, I assure you.
It's fulfilling.
But as Ethel said before,
pleased with the D and R accredited mangrove planting activity.
So you could also challenge, accept it,
we are going to participate actively in the mangrove planting
in the next, what, 6, 12 months.
That's just a challenge, and you just support us with that challenge.
And once you're out there with your hands in the dirt,
make a picture with the alligator in the back,
and upload it, okay? So that's our NAVYGATE concept. You will be part of us.
Another hand of applause, thank you so much.
You can make yourself comfortable, please. And I have one last task for you. Close your eyes and see,
look at the beach, what do you see? What is the thing which disturbs you most? And
And I heard it before here already.
Plastic.
Plastic, huh?
You were saying it.
We see so much plastic around.
And we all know about that.
And I have been working on that so long.
Jade knows I could talk the whole day about that.
We won't, okay?
Plastic is a problem.
We know it.
We know it's ugly.
It's really horrible.
And the great thing is to say that when I came here
and we started with MANA Mo activities in 2017, 2018,
nobody knew what manamo is and nobody cared what plastic on the beach means
and now we have more and more activity so that's the good news about it it is
bad and back then in 2017 2018 when I was working on that Pope Francis even
wrote in his letter we cannot allow our seas and oceans to be littered by
endless fields of plastic that's not okay that's just simply not okay and
And later he wrote the Laudato Si, and I think that's really powerful and important.
And in order to get a little bit of an understanding of what's going on, we get another navigator on board.
And for this, I'm going to invite someone here who is a lecturer, DLSU, I think.
I'm not very good at memorizing my things.
And he's also working in an agency, in a consulting agency, which is helping with policymaking.
so he's
A warm hand of applause for Sir Derek Baladjai, Research Manager at Amador.
Derek, nice to have you here. Just say a few words about yourself.
Sure, sure. So, hi, good morning everyone. I'm Derek Baladjai.
I'm the Research Manager of Amador Research, as Nick correctly pointed out.
I'm also a lecturer at the LSU. So I do a lot of policy advocacy work.
I also do academic work on the site but mine is more on the national security
right so I can't give the view on marine pollution as well but I can also give
you the macroscopic of national security that's why you gonna be here later for
other topics right now the one thing what do you know about the plastic
situation and from your point of view is the policy making around it fast enough
just personal opinion what do you think well if we go back about 10 years ago
right the efforts are there and I think this is consistent in my conversation
across ASEAN experts so about a week ago we had a workshop on South China Sea
economic operation and the theme that stand out that stood out to me was that
implementation of regional efforts regionally and there are lots there are
lots implementation at the local level is still this month yes well right now
you're going to ask me there are a lot of efforts at the coastal level yes I
can highlight some of the efforts being done by by weight but that assessment
came because there is still little knowledge about how the seas and the
the land interact that's it why we are here today ocean literacy we need to
know more about that combination Derek we're gonna have you here for a couple
of topics one of the things I would like to point out at the beginning is a word
I read on one of your websites I'm a door website I think it's a Harvard
University term I think it was called climate anxiety anxiety is kind of being
afraid of things my English is not so great I have no speed in English too but
that's essentially some kind of fear right and that's what young people are
feeling right they look into the future and they say oh my god what is all of
this and now there was movement to say I think this university has been has been
getting in trouble now they say ah that's all bad stuff we don't do that
don't tell the young people that it's also bad so one thing we try to not do
today is to be so negative. But just as a young person yourself, can I ask how old you are?
A year, just a year shy of 30.
Oh, wonderful. Okay, fantastic. So from that point of view, would you say there is
some kind of anxiety when you look into the future?
Oh, yes, definitely. It's especially stress if you're a Filipino youth. You have to understand
that the Philippines is an archipelagic country and mind you MANA Mo is at least
for most of us is still a relatively new thing so the awareness of being a
maritime archipelagic country is not as prevalent as we hope but it is our
identity that is what we are ever since ever since our our ancestors so now
Now there is the reality of having to deal with marine pollution.
You have to deal with what you guys are probably seeing in the nightly news
in the South China Sea, West Philippine Sea.
We have to deal with that.
The issue of climate change, much to the dismay of climate change deniers,
it's a real thing here in the Philippines.
And the most affected are those who are living, who are based in coastal areas.
Their houses are always destroyed.
And, you know, the resiliency card is full, but it has to be more than that, right?
So if you take all of this, if you combine all of this, the concerns with climate change,
so the term climate anxiety, is very, very real.
Thank you so much. Thank you.
Thank you, and make yourself comfortable.
A hand of applause for our guest, Derek.
We're going to hear from yourself later.
Jerico, shall we finally take the boat and start?
Yes, let's proceed.
So we will now start in the cove.
We will start in the cove.
Okay.
So there's a question here.
What is the first thing we encounter?
Once again, we would like to invite everyone.
Yeah, let's row the boat.
Let's close our eyes.
Let's close our eyes, everyone.
You can feel it.
Let's close our eyes and think.
Any ideas?
We are now in the Gulf, and what is the first thing you encounter?
Shallow waters? No ideas?
Seagrass! Oh, I don't know. Seagrass it is.
Seagrass it is.
So, seagrass, and seagrass is, again, a blue carbon topic.
So, I don't like seagrass.
First time I went into the water and there was all this seagrass, I was not happy.
because for swimming and stuff and i don't know what's in there maybe there are sharks in there
you said there are sharks and mangroves maybe there are sharks in the seagrass so seagrass
is not something which are like we from the outer world thank you so much jericho for that claim
we are not so happy about it but here in the philippines seagrass is a very very powerful
thing what are you doing with seagrass in the philippines well it's actually also a gap because
compared to like coral reefs and mangroves there's relatively less like
for example the mapping of seagrass all throughout the Philippines we still do
not have that we do have that like the coral map we have the mangrove map but I
think we're still working on the seagrass map so it's kind of that left
out but we use it for food but yes and there are like also large organisms that
are reliant on seagrass like for examples or dugongs are reliant on seagrass seagrass are also
sediment stabilizers okay so they i'm sorry so the roots keep the sediments stable
okay yeah and they also in a way um filter out some form of an extent of pollutants from the
from the land going out to the sea so they can also do that as well that's again our rivers
where we not just push plastic into the oceans we also put all kind of other
bad things in there so seagrass important thing power I learned
something crazy 30 times faster than trees that's a little bit like we saw
with the mangroves before right so blue carbon is really powerful it's faster
than trees can I ask who participated in the past in a tree planting activity
tree planting activities Adiba we all did that tree planting up now imagine
Imagine seagrass 35 times faster.
That's wow.
That's really wow.
So we need to open our mind a little bit into a new area, into the ocean.
Next little thing we are going to see, and I think it's not a little thing,
is, of course, the anxiety is going over there.
It's the corals, okay?
Corals is the main thing.
And corals is something we all know about.
And I like corals.
Corals are beautiful.
This is where all the fish is.
So, let's welcome our next guest, top coral expert, PhD biology, 30 years ago.
Heineko, how old are you?
Los Angeles, California, distinguished professor, full professor, Department of Biology, De La Salle University, a colleague of you.
And the founding director of the De La Salle Ocean Institute, called Brother Alfred Shields.
He has to explain to me who that is.
Prof. Wilfredo Roehl Y. Licuananhow this is known
Let's have a warm hand of welcome for our guest, Sir Professor Wilfrid Licuanan.
I was told everybody calls you Al, right?
Yes.
You can call me Al. It's a song, is it?
Please be so nice and introduce yourself.
Okay. Good morning, everyone. I'm Al Licuanan.
and as we mentioned I teach in De La Salle University and I study corals and coral reefs
two different things related but different so this video is was taken in Tubataha
We've been monitoring Tubataha since 2012.
I've been diving longer than most people here.
I've been diving for 41 years now.
Oh my goodness! That's amazing!
So we still monitor Tubataha and my advocacy is to get more monitoring done
in the country to set up a nationally coordinated monitoring system in the Philippines.
What brought you to the ocean?
Reefs.
Reefs.
My mother is also from Cebu.
My first reef was in Bantayan.
But I actually didn't learn how to swim until a year before I started marine science studies.
So I'm kind of still making up for it.
And now you are over 30 years already at the LSU?
Yeah.
Wow, amazing. You have to work on that.
It's going to take quite some time. That's fantastic.
Just one, two words to that Marina Institute, Alfred?
Brother Alfred Shields Ocean Research Center, or the Shore Center.
So that's essentially what the marine biology from UP is for DLSU.
Long story, but Brother Alfred, aside from establishing the Department of Biology,
Brother Alfred set up our marine station in Leanne, Batangas.
And Brother Alfred also taught in high school.
And one of his high school students, his name is Edgardo Gomez.
Edgardo Gomez is a national scientist, and he established the Marine Science Institute of the University of the Philippines.
Okay, now I was really amused.
So that's the big school.
Over 20 PhDs, over 200 graduate students.
Amazing.
But the founder was a high school student of Brother Alfred.
Wow, fantastic, super. So coral reefs is our topic here and we're going to jump over here.
I learned, I took out a few of your slides, this is what I'm doing with my speakers, I check out their slides,
and I say third largest reef in the world, Philippines, okay, yay.
And Philippines global center of marine biodiversity.
Biodiversity. I heard in some circles at the United Nations, where people talking about things that I don't understand, like your stuff there, that some scientists said it's very possible that life itself darted here in this area, because it's really so rich in biodiversity.
diversity. So this is our treasure, Diba. This is really an amazing treasure. Now question,
how much does this contribute, the coral reefs, how much do they contribute to the fishery
production? Any ideas? Guesses, just guess. Jade? No, you will know it probably. Anyone
a guess? No guess? The question, how much percentage does the coral reef contribute
tribute to the whole fisheries production. So when we look at all the fish, how important
are coral in it? 100%. That's a nice view. Professor Al will give us the correct answer
and explain what is meant with that. What is meant with the 25%?
The number is 25, so that means that you have four kilograms of fish. About a fourth of
that is dependent on reefs somehow because even the more oceanic species
like tuna they spend part of their lives in reefs or even mangroves so for a
fourth segment if I have a family with three children then one and a half
children are already feed just by the coral reef that's that sounds like a
small number compared to 100 percent of course but it is a significant number to say it very clearly
i should add that that number also applies to the proportion of species of marine species
that are associated with reefs so a quarter of all life in the ocean comes from the reef
even if the reefs only occupy less than one percent of the ocean now comes the painful
question and how much do we have mapped during the last 15 years continuously
mapped like your blue map monitoring monitoring how many reefs in the country
what do you think been monitored say 100% okay the last 15 years or at least
the data ended up somewhere waiting for some suggestions then I hear 10 who has
more? 10 is a good start. Let's look at 10. Ouch. That figure came on the latest
report of the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network which is part of the
International Coral Reef Initiative and the Philippines is part of ICRI and in
their latest report there's a table there where the Philippines contributed
distributed around 11,000 surveys to the database, but there was no monitoring.
So the word gap that we heard before with Ma'am Esther, the word gap comes up again and again and
again. We don't have enough monitoring. And that's a huge problem. But at the other hand,
we have only so many scientists, right? Let's have a little bit of a look at what you're doing
here I have this article I found this article that makes me really kind of
scared global coral crisis that was from 2024 New York Times is that is that a
little bit hysteric or is there really something behind that that's that's
really a big deal you might have heard this 2024 is the warmest year ever and
so warmest year on record and at the start of our summer this came out and
it's a warning that the oceans are heating up something like this happened
in 2010 and we have monitoring in near our Marine Station and in 2010 May of
2010 the water seated up three degrees and stayed warm for 30 days and by the
end of that period we lost half of the coral in one reef in 2010 as well in
reef system in Palawan northern Palawan you go to the center of the reef you do
do a 360-degree turn, and as far as the eye can see,
all the corals, they're all dead.
And so earlier, you mentioned Laudato Si.
If you read Laudato Si, there is a quote in Laudato Si.
And the statement goes, who turned
the wonder world of the seas into underwater cemeteries
bereft of color and life?
That papal encyclical statement is talking about coral reefs, and if you look at the
footnote where that statement comes from, it came from the Catholic Bishops' Conference
of the Philippines.
So that's a big deal.
We get marine heat waves, and three-degree dries can kill off large tracts of coral.
so there's urgency but there's no monitor no consistent sustain and when
we look at the 25% from before like a quarter of our food a quarter of life
comes from there then these things are really severe that's not that's not
small that's a real big problem quick question into the room we have it
before already can I see it again who comes from a coastal community coast
directly coastal communities? Families at coastal communities? Thank you, Paul. Who
goes often or regularly to the ocean? Oh, I want all hands off. You are Navy. You go
regularly. The question is not okay in the Navy. That doesn't work here. And who has
zero connection with the ocean? Right? I see you. I see you. So we are all connected.
Can I just, because you probably don't realize you live in a coastal area.
If you live in a place, the side of land that's fixing the sea,
and everything behind you is higher elevation, that means you live in a coastal area.
Wait, Marikina is a coastal area now?
Yeah, I live 15 kilometers from here, but I essentially still live in a coastal area.
Because you spill something onto the streets, that will get to the sea.
So I would guess almost all of you live in a coastal area.
You just don't realize it.
After all, we are Manamu, we are maritime and archipelagic.
So the big message of Professor Licuanan is you cannot manage what you cannot count.
If we do not have a correct monitoring, if we do not start to do more work in the monitoring,
we will not understand what is happening.
This is what the blue map is and this is what coral maps are.
so I found this fantastic concept here we don't have a lot of time we will not
show it in detail but you will tell us just quickly what you're doing here and
it's called again citizen science look at that so what are we doing here so we
develop a set of methods where we look at what we call indicators organisms
without backbones a certain kind of reef associated fish that are easy to
recognize and they're not too skittish when you swim after them and the centerpiece of
our monitoring is the focus on corals because corals build coral reefs and without corals
you will not have coral reefs but I mentioned earlier those are two separate things we already
have coral reefs without coral. That's also something we don't understand
because we always think that corals are these stones but in fact the coral is an
animal and when the animals die we just have what looks like corals it's a coral
reef but it's a dead coral reef and then you use now really just people and train
them how to use this thing and I think it this is that one here you came up
with this idea of a certain tool which now can be used by simply trained people
in order to do that measuring and that monitoring so so the centerpiece of our
citizen science monitoring is taking pictures of the reef following a certain
way a certain process and we bring those pictures to the community by the way
it's the community members who take those pictures to do those counts of
indicators and so on we bring those pictures to a public setting barangay
hall a town hall and this year we started bring them to public high
schools and teaching people and high school students how to recognize coral
and essentially count what they see in the pictures and then we get the kids to
to process the information into scorecards.
And the ultimate aim there is for the community members
themselves to explain to their officials
what is happening to the reef using scorecards like this.
In that actual photo there, the high school students
are explaining what is going on in the reef
to an official of DNR, an assistant bureau director, using this scorecard.
I think that's exactly what we need. We need the young people to teach the old people, right?
And this scorecard is being developed by the DLSU?
Yes, it's already out. We have a manual for the methods, a trainer's manual.
it's really available we have about 2,000 downloads already if you search
for the DLSU Shore Center on YouTube you'll see a channel with eight videos
teaching all this citizen science is applied so you don't have to work with
us to get this done but if we could show that video at least oh I deleted it we
said before we don't have the time for it it's essentially an explanation how
to do it with two swimmers and you have been creating this kind of pattern so
it's relatively clear for the swimmer yeah go into a direction survey area is
about the size of four basketball courts you can see our boat for scale here
And you can see the snorkelers.
Our method does not require scuba.
You can do this with an action camera.
So and the monitoring station is only six meters max.
So fishers can do this, young people are very much into this.
We just have to follow a certain procedure to make sure the data is valid.
that requires some randomization it requires some training on where to do
the surveys but basically it's a very accessible method we estimated it takes
around 15,000 pesos to do a survey okay and we were trying to convince
government to make this part of government programs to pod up livelihood
programs so that instead of just cleaning roadsides and so on some people
could be doing this in our reef areas okay again reminder the Philippines is
has the third largest reef area in the world 24,000 square kilometers there are
only two countries with more reefs than us and guess which those two countries
are Indonesia Australia is number two that's not number one Indonesia is
number one so it's the Coral Triangle we are here we are in the center so we need
to teach young people to teach the old people to support everybody as a
citizen scientist to go in the water and to help us with that kind of thing and
then we I just have the one of those scorecards here so it's relatively easy
once you learn this how long does it take to train like a class of people for
this for for the survey the training is half a day the survey could be done in
in the afternoon of the training.
We can start right now, what's the matter?
It takes a little longer to train people
to recognize coral, because it's very important
10:00
that that is consistently done.
And the reason it takes longer is
because we have so many species of coral in the Philippines.
If I may add another number, we have
around 600 species of coral.
Just for context, the Hawaiian chain has around 30 species of coral.
What? Hawaii?
Hawaii. The entire Caribbean basin has around 50 species of coral.
And we have 600?
And we have 600.
Great Barrier Reef?
The Great Barrier Reef is 500 kilometers longer than the Philippines.
But the entire Great Barrier Reef has around 450 species of coral.
We have that many species of coral in one town.
Talk about being blessed. This is really what we say, being blessed.
We are so blessed and we cannot let that drip.
Which is why we have another challenge.
And it's again the easy one, please.
You heard about this method now.
that means you can tell people in coastal areas and now that means you can
come to me Marikina and tell me to jump in the water and we can do a little bit
of information dissemination okay so challenges I will tell so and so many
people in the next so in so many months about coral monitoring and it's a
citizen science act it's we do it ourselves we can train the communities
it is to do it themselves. And the tough one and the hard one? Oh, sorry, this is a wrong
slide. I made a mistake. Don't look, don't look. I made a mistake. The hard one is participate
in a choral monitoring yourself, because that could be possible also, right? We could say
I am spending six weeks of vacation in Batangas. Why don't I make myself useful for the Philippines?
Yes, if you're doing that and you really want to participate in monitoring, I would go and get in touch with either the municipal environment officer in that coastal town or the municipal agriculture officer.
And by the way, because you have to say this, the name of the citizen science methods is Alwan, not because I'm Al Licuanan.
because if you look up
aluan in Tagalog, it means
to ease, to be,
to put in a more comfortable position
and the idea is we want to
improve the condition of the reef.
So, just to nice natin umaluan
ang kalagayan ng atingthe condition of our coral reefs
mga bahura.
Wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you,
thank you. And you have it
a lot easier because once you go to
our Facebook group with that link and
you just set up your challenge,
over the next 12 months, we
will get in contact with you and we will remind you hey you have an open
challenge by the way here are the contacts so you don't have to do your
own research just do the challenge and the rest will come from us
Marami Salamat thank you so much make yourself comfortable another projectThank you so much, Marami Salamat, make yourself comfortable, another project.
where we can do things relatively easy together and so we were out there and we
were on our way and now it would be time to go into the open sea let's go to the
high seas. Where are we going? Where are we going? Where are we going? Where are we going?
We don't go anywhere because we have storms all the time. So much about climate. There
is a huge storm coming and we cannot go up to the high seas. Storms and I didn't know
when I planned all of this that we would just have this weekend behind us but
You're like that, rain, no problem at all.
Two days ago, yesterday, I had to drive in the heavy rain on Essitex
and I almost crashed because my car was really not managing
the amount of water anymore, not possible anymore.
And the last thing is, prepare.
How do we prepare?
And this is the context in which we're inviting our next navigator here.
here. It's someone who has really made it a business to understand. He's a professor
at the Institute, at the Asian Institute of Management, and he has such a scary title
that I'm going to let him explain it himself. Please have a warm hand of applause for Professor
Dr. Chad Briggs, that you have this kind of tough thing, but you have to do it, you have
to explain it yourself so please tell us what you're doing I all the trouble in
the world I had and by the way thank you all of you for coming my own apologies
my background is more with the Air Force also my father grandfather my brother
was a sailor he was a submarine you're excused so I started with a much more
traditional national security background although i was always interested in environmental issues
and for the past 30 years i've worked on the intersection between climate change environment
and conflict and security i've worked with the militaries with nato with governments
much of my career has been in eastern europe but i came here to the philippines two years ago
in large part because I needed to learn something new. I grew up very far from
the ocean about as far as you could get in North America and now my job so I
lead the disaster risk and crisis management program at AIM and that's a
program for executives most of my students are between 40 50 years old we
have people from all backgrounds because with disasters you can't just look at
your own duty, your own job. You have to know the full spectrum of everything that's happening
and how to work with others. And incidentally, I would ask for, because currently in my new
cohort, I have six Air Force officers, one Marine, no sailors, soldiers, or Coast Guard.
So that needs to be changed. And last year, we really shifted the curriculum to focus
much more on climate change in fact we are now funded we have 20 scholarships a
year from the climate change Commission so for all of you who know that AIM is
expensive yes but we can fund you and we also have scholarships from PNP DENR so
it's we get a lot of support both from the government from communities and the
nature of the students are to the really practitioners Ateneo is very good
disaster program it's more technical and scientific we focus more on the management leadership
so how do you take charge whether it's an ics whether it's in risk assessment whether it's a
strategic planning and it's not easy right because to make the connection between these large-scale
environmental changes and your own duties because you may be sitting there thinking well i'm i'm a
navigator I'm a weapon system operator this climate that's that's way far out
but my job has been as a translator to take what other people do and to try to
explain why this affects their duties their jobs their missions and it's it's
fulfilling I admit I haven't slept since 2008 that's when I first started working
for the US government more seriously because it's scary it's when we look out
into the future and I focus a lot on abrupt climate change so not the
gradual changes but when things really change overnight when we're surprised
and I know that we've all experienced this last year during Carina for example
very little early warning of all the rain that was going to hit from the
Habagat right and and Metro Manila was just flooded all of my students many of
them are first responders were just out of the soup and it was it was
distressing because we couldn't get to the people who needed help because we
didn't have the plans in place we didn't have the infrastructure we didn't take
account of how serious it's really become say it one more time slowly for
me so it's master of disaster risk and crisis management EMD talk about
about nosebleed again, okay?
Filipinos love long-term care.
I thought the Pentagon was bad.
You guys really take the cake.
EMDRMC, how do you say it very fast?
EMDRCM.
EMDRMCM.
Disaster, just to have the word disaster
in your job description, is that nice?
I don't want to have that, my God.
That's horrible, but I see interesting things.
Assessment, of course, climate impact assessment.
We see security risk analysis.
That's what we essentially also do, right?
we learn that we need to be prepared for risks and for that we need to analyze
them first so it's an amazing thing on a right higher level you said already most
of your students are coming from the executive and it's from that point of
view how long is your training going what is that it's it's a part-time
program it's 18 months it is very intensive when people get into it
especially because all of the students working groups to do capstones where they
They really do deep dives into something that keeps them awake at night, that they want to fix, and they make practical recommendations.
And usually when they come to the final defense, the people responsible in government, the military, the police for that policy are sitting in the room.
And then they make it happen.
So it's not enough.
And this is something that we'll talk about in a bit, right?
You can't do warning without linking it to action.
because warning without any sort of response or response capability is it's
too scary people will retreat they won't want to believe it they'll try to
minimize it so we always have to link it to actionable options that's essentially
what we have before Derek when we talked about anxiety if anxiety turns into fear
it makes me freeze and that's not what we want and even if it's participatory
mapping even if it's working in the communities these are things that are
important because it's already action and when we do action we are confronting
the risks right because not everyone is a responder and everyone has their own
strengths and comforts I'm getting told to be a responder I'm not out there
anymore I took a picture a screenshot from one of the activities from your
website and I see you went to be called oh well there was a lady from be call
here but i think she went to the bathroom um it's not just climate right we have other risks
and you are really looking into all kind of disaster tactics right and the big challenge
is how you do multi-hazard assessments how you do multiple risks and do comprehensive assessments
of what this means in the future and then linking it to scenario planets different possible futures
because it's never linear right there's never just one future there are possible futures and a lot of
of that depends upon which actions we take. So the work in Bicol is actually, and this is being
live streamed, I'm not sure if it's official yet, but no, we did volunteer. One of, so the person
to my right, Jason Boniaga, he's a former U.S. Marine, he's faculty at AIM, and from Bicol,
and he and I are working on developing an early warning system for Bicol, working at the community
level so local knowledge right because very often it's top-down it's
hierarchical we think oh we'll just take the information from bagasa we'll give
it to the communities and then hopefully they'll react but as you all know the
communities know so much already whether it's the fisher folk the farmers the
divers and their information needs to be translated that into what this means for
people in the national capital region for for people in the departments which
brings me to this dealing with existential existential climate risk and
disasters what are the options so the comprehensive risk assessments and this
is difficult because it means moving out of your comfort level it means taking
what you know but working with others and we have learning groups where we
have people who are you know you have one group with an attorney with an
engineer with with a pilot and then with the police officer and they all have to
address the same issue but from their own perspectives their own experience
and that's really what's necessary if you're dealing with disasters because
it's never one thing right and we always said in the Air Force that typical
aircraft disasters are never just one event they're improbable combinations of
probable risks well that was very easier so you take a number of things happen in
at once and if you look at them individually so I can handle that I can
handle that but in combination they can overwhelm I know that one that happens
to me every Friday morning I can manage all of these things yeah I can manage
this this this and this but if they all come together suddenly I'm slipping Oh
taxing resilience climate changes warning must be linked to actions i think this is a really
really interesting thing very very powerful and it's something which i think on a lower level
not we are not all executives so we will not all come to your school obviously but on a lower level
i think the same the same techniques and the same structures should be applied right and it's
important to remember that climate change is not one thing right it's it's
a fundamental shift to the energy balance of the earth and a lot of what
happens we're not seeing partly because we're not monitoring it right but also
because and I teach climate science at AIM as well and just our lesson last
week was that of the excess energy excess heat that's trapped by extra
greenhouse gases 90% of that goes to the oceans right only one to two percent is
in the atmosphere and yet the atmosphere is what we focus on because it's what we
experience every day but climate change taxes it puts pressure on all our
institutions whether it's the Navy whether it's the DILG whether it's local
communities whether it's ecosystems and we have to do comprehensive policies to
address this thank you so much I have for one last picture that shows you that
was the one from the first slide so how many of you know where this is you
should run Palawa yeah meet near El Nido I by the way I love I just love oceans I
didn't I didn't experience it so I was 16 years old and became exchange student
to Norway and much of my work has been with Arctic oceans which is probably
scary for everyone of the Philippines, ice floating on. But there was a
point in my life when I almost turned away from politics to study marine
biology instead. We understand that. So that's in Palawan, right? Yes. It looks
pretty relaxed here. Don't get this wrong. This man is also pretty serious.
Serious, totally serious. So for all of us, that is the course in the Asian
Institute of Management executive master in disaster risk and crisis management
blew my mind when I saw that and I was so happy to invite you here because I
really understand that essentially as I say in the high level but also in the
low levels this is exactly what we need to do we need to really start to learn
to handle disasters in a different way I have a QR code that's going into the
same direction as usual so spread the information and and the interesting part and thing for me is
here and that's true for for all of you so there are career paths just like you know accounting
most of the young people i was working with said their mother told them go into accounting you're
gonna have a good job you're gonna have money and then here there are people who are doing
something completely different, right? So what is your teaching?
What do you teach at the LSU? Well, I just teach with the Department of
International Studies, so more on consultancy and then more on the academy.
Okay, and you are a marine biologist, so you also not get filthy rich, you don't
drive Lamborghinis around, but you do something with a purpose. So I came to
the question, is it possible that when we do our decisions about what we want to
choose as a path for our profession and what we teach our children, the next
generations, what they could do for their future? Does it maybe make sense to
pursue a career with a purpose would that be an alternative for our youth to think about something
which is actually changing making sense well an interesting thing about our students is that they
didn't necessarily choose the path it was either chosen for them we have physicians who said look
i was just an emergency room doctor and then suddenly i'm put in charge of covet response
for the province no one trained me for this right and i'm sure many of you have been put in
positions where it's like suddenly I have a responsibility what I'm not ready
for this I don't feel prepared so all of our students join because they just want
to do their jobs better they're not in it for promotion they're not in it for
salary they they just really want to help communities awesome fantastic thank
you so much a big hand of applause for make yourself comfortable you have your
microphone and we are still
Myles Delfinhow this is known
in my community in the philippines we have personally i've met around a hundred thousand
volunteers uh there's more now but that that is the number that i've met i i saw the number later
i i just had sorry i i took his slides because he had really definitely no time to even talk to me
um this slide shows just a little bit of the history of those so you started in Yolanda
and and when we look at it we have almost every year really something which is
Just maybe for us here in Metro Manila, not so bad because we have Sierra Madre, thank you so much, protecting us from most of it.
But in other areas, it's really brutal.
And it's not just the typhoons with the Taal Volcano situation.
We have the pandemic, we have the earthquakes and these things.
I have took another slide, which seems to explain a little bit.
Can you tell us here what's going on?
Yes. So one of the main problems in the Philippines is that we don't have access to technology.
all of the things even our social media is made somewhere else and our
technology is not really designed for us if you take a look at us Filipinos when
we walk in the shopping mall and we love going to the shopping mall right I mean
you know so when we walk if you take a look at the Filipino by Nagisa when he's
alone or her when she's alone we usually walk this way we look at their
feet we try to avoid contact with other people because we're shy that that's in
our nature but the moment we get together and you put the karaoke machine
in the mix, then, you know, suddenly it's an explosion, right?
We become noisy.
And the thing that shows us is that Filipinos are all about community.
Without community, we are nothing.
Whether we realize that or not, we are nothing.
And so when we started out, we realized that we needed technology.
But when I approached people, especially in the U.S., and I asked for support,
they told me it was impossible, it was impractical, it couldn't be done,
it required a lot of money and so because we have by any hand in the philippines what basically what
we did finally we decided that hey why don't we just look for engineers and other people people
in the community who would be willing to help build things for us and over the past 11 years
we've been working with that with zero money because we have no funding we've built our own
six kilowatt uh prototype uh solar energy trailer and solar tower which are now the prototypes are
are now deployed in various places in the Philippines.
Because one of the main problems is that, yes,
we do have Starlink.
It's fantastic technology.
But the moment that the power grid goes out,
it does absolutely nothing.
We've solved that.
We've solved that.
We've built our own solar energy trailers
with its own water filtration and pump.
Because these are basic essentials for survival
in the aftermath of disasters.
We've also built our own mesh network.
and we actually sort of like took existing technology reverse-engineered
that wait wait wait wait I'm an old man what is a man people so basically it's
like she's me she's me I understand so you go to your neighbor you share
information and don't goes around and all of a sudden everybody knows that
someone's daughter is getting married but wait we don't have telephone because the electricity is
gone my mobile phone is not working yes no that's a that's the purpose of uh mesh network mesh
networks are very low cost uh devices low very low power also low consumption of power and what they
do is it's basically peer-to-peer it sends a radio signal and we can message each other but we're
working now on a way so that we can integrate wi-fi as well so that there would be some level
of data that can be integrated into the mesh network and the good news is that
because in the Philippine context nobody can actually afford technology everyone
always announces that we invented this invented that but none of us can afford
it so our plan is to give it away for free because it's the only way that we
can have our own connective connectivity resilient connectivity I'm sorry I'm
sorry you said for free yes that's actually one of the challenges where we
can't find funding every time i approach someone and i've talked to a lot of dc especially from
the u.s the first thing they ask me is where is the slide the deck that's that shows me how to
make money and they said it's either we are going to solve the problem first or we're going to make
money we can't do both it's just impossible that's impossible because of the situation
the Philippines we are we have been ranked the most disaster vulnerable
country in the world for 16 consecutive years in fact 73% of our land area and I
would bet that in the places where you live there would be flooding there would
be some kind of disaster that happens that sort of like interrupts your life
or poses like existential threat right and so that's why this is absolutely
necessary we've had to build our own technology using just our own
talent through Bayanihan so that we can have actual, genuine, local resilience.
Mind-blowing. Thank you. But this is not about me. I'm just the one talking here, but this was done
completely by the community. I'm not an engineer, I'm not a scientist.
No, no, that's the idea again. We come together, right? And we bring everything together, what we
have and our talents together, and suddenly we can create something.
That's actually the power of Bayanihan because, for example, I speak in English now and you may think that, oh, he's very fluent.
Maybe he's like, you know, went to some fancy school.
Well, I did.
But I was a scholar.
So I went there for free.
All my life, public school.
I went to public school.
I come from a poor family.
We're not really poor as in we don't have a house.
We did have a house.
But most Filipinos would realize that even if you have a house, a lot of times we struggle with food.
for example, where to find groceries, where to find money so we can go to school,
where to find money so we can have shoes when we go to school, right?
I think most of us have had some kind of experience like that in our lives.
So that was my life. We had nothing.
But, you know, the thing that I want to share with you today is that
basically even if we're like that, even if we think that we have nothing,
there's so much that we can do together just using Bayanihan.
Bayanihan is not some abstract concept. It's something that actually works.
And that's why we also built our own app because, as I mentioned in the beginning,
all of our social media is actually built for dancing. It's built for making money.
It's built for becoming a celebrity. None of it is built for bayanihan, right?
And here in the Philippines, if you're not familiar with it, if you run out of rice,
you can go to your neighbor and ask for some and you'll probably get some.
And they wouldn't even expect to hear anything in the dirt, right?
By any means, in daily life.
Okay, so what you want, I understand one thing,
you are able to bring communication in and out of disaster areas.
That's a really powerful tool already.
And then you even now venture out
and trying to really even create the kind of technologies
that we don't have.
I have to ask now, but I don't know if it's allowed to ask.
Do you have a mesh in the Navy?
Do you have something like this?
We can give you one.
But it's a smart idea.
It's from small-level devices, so they make a network.
I heard about that.
But the idea here is really to create it
and use it for the disaster we have it.
Actually, I want to add something very quickly
that's not in this slide.
So we took our Bayanihan work a little bit further,
and we looked for other engineers,
other talented Filipinos, basically.
basically, and non-Filipinos in the Bike Scouts community, and lo and behold, we found engineers
in UC Berkeley in the US.
And so now we're building our own low-cost modular sensor network, so, sorry, big words,
and even I don't really fully understand it because I'm not an engineer, they had to explain
it to me many, many times and I still don't fully understand how the technology works.
but basically but like for example this morning I check the weather and usually
we get information like oh today we're going to have 10 millimeters of rain so
if you're a mom or your dad you're going to take your kid to school you're
holding your umbrella and you're opening it and you know the kid says oh dad
there's 10 millimeters of rain and you're thinking okay let's go anyway
way and you get stuck in the flood. So that's a problem because we have a lot of, information
is not the problem. Information is online and it's for free. We get free satellite imagery
in real time from JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency, and from our partners in the disaster
response system in NASA in Virginia. But the problem is that if they give that to us in
raw format, none of us would be able to interpret it. It has no use in our daily life, basically.
basically like for example my question is should I ride this bicycle or maybe
should I stay home simple question because we live in real life right okay
so that's the thing that we want to do with a sensor network is directly give
the information to us ordinary people so we can find a use for that data for that
information in their daily lives and how are we going to do that hey I because hey
AI can actually do that.
It's one of the rare cases where AI actually does something good for people.
And it's going to be absolutely for free, by the way.
It's not a subscription service.
Because again, bike scouts, our core purpose, solve the problem first.
If we do good work well enough, if we do well enough, benefits will come in, in the future.
And I hope it does, because I haven't been paying myself for the past 12 years anything.
I've been spending my grocery money
for the past 12 years to keep this running
and then when you face the people
in their distress you give your
last price to them because
of course when we look at that we are still
blessed, we are still very blessed
we are not out there in Batanes now or in
areas where really the destruction is
brutal. And we have a team in Batanes by the way
and I saw the videos from
this weekend, oh my god, oh my god
ok, I have another slide here that is just
more or less saying ok, this is the collective
Is it just a fancy picture?
It's just a fancy picture. They like that, right?
No, because I'm a designer, so I like making fancy pictures.
I don't like that. Fancy pictures. Let's have something else.
Oh my God!
Yeah, these are the numbers you said before and they blew my mind.
100,000 members.
Nationwide, yes.
But 100,000 is the number of people that I personally met during our events nationwide.
You didn't have that. No.
No, I did. I've been doing this for the past 12 years.
I've talked to people in basketball courts, hospitals, clinics, barrios, off-grid
barrios where nobody even doesn't even show up in Google Maps. So we have this
number but it looks a bit like a big number but we actually had a cheat kind
of. So what we did was we just engaged first with cycling clubs because cycling
clubs in the Philippines can have membership ranging from 500 people to all
all the way to 30,000 membership.
So that's basically how we did it.
Okay, okay, okay, that makes sense.
And the other number, of course, is 11 years,
it's now 12 years already, right?
It's only, in two months, it's going to be,
we're going to be 12 years in existence.
And the 700,000 people that we've served
over the past 12 years, it's actually not a number
that came from us, it's actually from Deloitte in Singapore,
so they did the study on the bike scouts.
We didn't even know that we've done this,
because we don't even keep track of it.
I did my research and I found out
that there was this study about here
and the question is
what can
community work
really achieve
if we just work together
and it's amazing
and what it needs is just
the will to work together
which brings me again to that question
you had a great job
we come from the same sea
you had a fantastic job, you got well paid
when do we leave?
and what are we doing and why are we doing it I want to ask that question
really around why why did you choose the job as a marine biologist well for me
even as a kid I live in Cebu right it's a pretty narrow piece of pretty narrow
island where the sea isn't really very very far away so even as a young kid
even before I discovered that there's such a thing as marine biology I I
I already understood how important the sea was
to the life of my neighbors,
or the life of people that I know, my family.
And even at that time, I already got the appreciation
of how important the ocean is.
Wow, thank you so much.
Professor Licuanan, why did you start to go into your job?
I mentioned earlier I signed up for a marine biology course,
but I didn't know how to swim.
I did that because I figured that program would involve a lot of traveling and I'm an explorer by nature.
Earlier, when we were waiting and they were showing a video of the West Philippine Sea,
we were the first Filipino scientists to explore the Spratlys.
And you may have heard coral was discovered there.
Yeah, I read that. And you discovered it.
That's me. I was the one who discovered that.
I love exploring, so there's so much to explore in this.
Dr. Briggs.
So I was originally going to go to college to be a biology major,
but my teenage rebellion was to become an exchange student.
And when I went to Norway, it was 1989, so I saw the Berlin Wall come down.
I went to Eastern Europe and I just yeah I wanted to travel I wanted to just I
realized there were people who actually lived abroad for a living I was like
wow this is I have to do this but I always kept my love for the environment
I grew up on a farm and eventually I found a way to really integrate
everything I didn't I didn't have a job with the tidal disaster until two years
ago when I came to the Philippines it was always I'm relieved now I thought
I thought your whole life you were a disaster guy.
Jerry, could be so nice.
Can you get the chair here?
Because I just realized that I'm even so stupid to count.
You know, I have the spaces here,
and then I realize, oh my God, you're one of the coolest.
Another, let's have first, Derek,
just what makes you go into all these policy things?
Sure, so we noticed that there was a vacuum of sorts
in the policy space.
We do have the 1994 National Marine Policy, but that was 1994, and building on what Chad
here mentioned earlier that we do need the right set of policies, I agree.
So the advocacy of AMADA Research through its Advocacy Week, the Waypoints Project,
we were able to secure a funding with the fat with our Australian partners the Asia Foundation and we
really managed to push policy you know to have the government have a decent policy in you know
our maritime zones if you guys were aware about last year about the maritime zones app that was
the waypoints project we tried to negotiate we tried to engage in public policy we tried to get
our policy champions and we were able to secure the policies because we saw a need to have you
know clear policies that's harmonized um not you know not just harmonizing the the existing policies
updated policies but also harmonizing it international law yeah which was very
important and you personally know you you get like this kind of you have a
success you really create something you really made something which has a
meaning right that's really wonderful miles before you sit down we know
already you're being taken seriously by a lot of organizations but I also want
to offer a challenge
Challenge? Oh! Where's my challenge?
It's hard to see of this thing every year again without crying.
Before I go, can I deliver a message from the people behind the videos,
the people who are doing this right now, especially in Batanes,
the Buin Islands and other places that are affected by the storm.
Before I came here, the bike sales community wanted me to send a message
to the Philippine Navy and from the bottom of our hearts,
we just wanted to say thank you for showing us the bravery that you do every day in the name
of the Filipino people. Thank you so much. When I started to address and select the people which I
wanted to have here today to speak to you, I was thinking to myself, wait a moment, we're talking
about the ocean and we're talking about climate debate. What do I do with a bike person, please?
That has nothing to do with the ocean. But you have seen in that video already, and that's
something which is really important to understand in the MANA Mo sense whenever
we are in trouble in the Philippines with something help comes through the
ocean those guys they go with their bikes on a boat and drive there because
we are all island that means we are always coming through the ocean when it
comes to help and this is where you are you are the ones who very often bring
the health to those islands, to those places. So even if it is a bike person, he
really has a place here. Thank you so much. Maraming, maraming salamat. Thank you so much.
Speaker not identifiedwhy
So please accept the challenge. Tell people about the Bike Scouts. Maybe you
have friends who are bikers. Or just sign up directly yourself. I would do it but
my knee is really not okay anymore. But it's really something which can be done
everywhere in every place so again bring it home to your provinces tell everyone
about it and I think it makes sense in so many levels and again this is our
Facebook group in the Facebook group there is one challenge picture and there
you just say what you are willing to do in the next so in so many months thank
you so much we were talking about the storms and you saw in our picture before
this this whole kind of star thingy everything is kind of connected with
each other and I just want to come back to two things which I found in other
presentations of my guests from before and one of them is from my bed miss
Ethel here that mangroves are actually helping us with storm searches they
really protect our coasts right deba and professor iguana even has a number here
here, it says 97% wave energy. Is that true? So, mangroves, again, don't forget our mangroves.
Okay? Alright, guys, it's time for a break, but first I want something completely different,
and that's going to be a military organization, so all the civilians here, please be very
careful and listen to what we're going to do. I'm attempting something really crazy
now. I want you all on a picture up here. And that's kind of difficult, because this
is a very small place here and we are a hundred people over there but I have a
plan I'm going to explain it to you and then you're going to tell me if it's
possible or not because we have security issues of course too so here is my idea
okay we have like the senior people that's the one with the gray hair okay
elder ones all right and all of the senior people you can sit in your chairs
you have the easiest place here all our senior officers are senior people I
I want to line up here in front of this.
Don't get up.
Listen to the plan first, okay?
Because somebody will make a picture from up there,
so you can stay all the way till here.
Don't stand behind the flags.
So that's one row.
And then we have a row here,
which also please do not stand on the boxes here.
There is another row of people who can stand here in front.
And if necessary, a second row could kneel down there.
now you heard already my knee is bad I'm not gonna kneel down there okay so the
younger ones are pleased being the ones and the younger ones who are still fit
and feeling good for it are going to sit in a cotis panaculis us are going to sit
just in front of all our guests here on the floor so we have one line back there
one or two lines down there and the rest is going to sit here on the floor and
then we have a picture with all of us because it's not about the speakers
here it's about all of us is that okay lieutenant all right let's do that so
first senior officers get up please we invite our deputy commander of the
civil military operations group is here Colonel
of course we also have here the deputy commander of the civil uh chief of naval staff for civil
military operations group captain tiffany tikao political navy general staff corps
of course we would like to invite the representatives from the coast guard we
also have here commander thank you so much good morning ma'am also our chief of staff of the
the Civil-Military Operations Group, Commander Sumbeling Ma'am, and the Civil Affairs Unit, Ramos.
Other senior officers, or other officers aboard, please proceed in front.
Officers, all officers, all officers present.
Sir, be the first to pass it.
We still have another session this afternoon, so while we are preparing, we also have some announcements.
Later, once you go out, while we are waiting for the catering services, or what the others are,
online for the others could line up for gifts that we prepared for you we have
some t-shirts and keychains for all of you so just present your your
dreams tab and of you will receive a merchandise from civil-military
operations group another time a proceed the double second line mom sir but
We can now stand in front of you, ma'am sir, from the first line, please.
First line, please.
We can now stand up.
Let's stand here.
For those who are still young, let's stand here.
For those who are feeling young, let's stand here.
You can now stand here at the bottom of the two lines.
Those who are interested, you can now squat down here at the bottom.
For those who can squat, if you can squat, you can just sit down here in front.
Those who can squat, let's stand here in front.
Do you guys have a picture?
Okay, that's one.
Yeah, okay. So, this one, let's do this one. So, we will raise our hand doing this kind of sign saying, West Philippine Sea. And then after that, we will put it on our heart. Then we will say, Akin ka.
We are the West Philippine Sea, okay?
So let's practice.
One, two, three.
West Philippine Sea, you are mine.
Okay?
Let's do that with a loud voice.
Okay?
Let's be proud that the West Philippine Sea is ours.
So you can now vote for the video.
Wonderful.
And I have to also ask for one more, please.
Yes.
Okay.
How do we say it?
Speak in Cherokee.
You are our meme master.
Come on.
Let's just say MANA Mo, and then, um, sir, can you help me with this?
MANA Mo is enough. MANA Mo.
Okay.
Let's just say this. What time is it? It's MANA Mo.
Okay, what time is it? It's MANA Mo.
I will shout what time is it, and then everyone will shout, it's MANA Mo.
It's MANA Mo.
Okay, yes, sir.
Okay, let's do it.
Sige, mag-count na lang po.
What time is it?
It's mine now!
Okay, fantastic. Thank you so much.
We will be back here.
So just make sure that you
present your claims tab.
We have prepared a
table for the
all of the merchandises.
Also, we have prepared
a sticker. We have a commitment
board.
That's right.
12:00
All right, Sir Nik, so we will now proceed to the next part of our forum this afternoon.
So this time, we already talked about from, you know, from shore to the coves.
Yes, and now we will now proceed to the high seas.
It's time to go in the high seas, so for this, we get ourselves another navigator.
So you mean high seas, really like out there?
Yes.
Oh, where does that get us?
That's gonna get us.
to a broken system are you ready to go with us into the west philippine sea
all right so now we are heading to the open seas and we arrive in the west philippine sea
it's my now time to introduce our next navigator we are very honored to welcome today the acting
chief of staff of the civil military operations group of the philippine navy she is a seasoned
naval officer with a dynamic career that bridges frontline security and community leadership.
She served with distinction in the Presidential Security Group, and she was honored with a
presidential citation for her dedication.
In 2003, she was honored as one of the top 10 outstanding women in law enforcement and
national security, and was recognized for her outstanding performance in law enforcement
and national security.
which positively impacted her community and the public.
In disaster response efforts, she coordinated with local officials and Navy reservists to deliver aid,
for instance, mobilizing the Navy teams and volunteers in coastal barangays after typhoons.
Her leadership style, empathic and inspiring, and mission-focused,
has made her a role model with the Navy, especially for younger officers and female service members.
She personifies the modern warrior diplomat, breaking her barriers and encouraging more women to take on active, impactful roles in law enforcement and national defense.
CDR Lady Chatterly I. Alvaro-Sumbeling PNhow this is known
Let's give a round of applause for Commander Lady Chatterly Alvaro Sumbeling, Philippine Navy.
So now, ma'am, I have a question for you. For you, Commander, most Filipinos have heard the term West Philippine Sea now.
I think do you want to introduce yourself first ma'am or your introduction is generous enough
thank you so much yes ma'am so we will not proceed to the west will have been seen
ma'am the last months we were full of reports in the news can you quickly describe the situation
for our guests yes of course actually I'm quite nervous I don't know why but um I've been talking
to these kinds of forums. We do our WPS campaign to various schools from
elementary, high school, college, and other organizations. But here, as what you've
said earlier, I'm not worried about the lecture, or I mean our conversation
today, but I'm more worried in delivering it and finishing it without my nose
bleeding particularly the cerebral parts of my head hemorrhaging after this
because you know we have to consider that we should
bravely tell the story that our guests will be able to understand so that's why
I am nervous sir. So, well anyway, so just like what you're telling us a while ago, you're asking us about the situation there. I'm just here to discuss what the China is actually doing in the West Philippine Sea because, you know, as part of our national security is the defense.
So it is also right for us as a member of the Philippine Navy that we have to tell the stories, the right narratives of our rightful claims for our West Philippine Sea.
Because if we are not going to tell the story rightfully, we know that China is also aggressively telling their lies aggressively.
And so in the information environment or in the internet, we all see that they're actually telling us that our claims or the 2016 arbitral award is not true.
So they want to actually destroy our national resolve and our national will to actually fight for our rights.
for them to justify their illegal presence in the area.
So that's why I just also want to tell you that the Philippine Navy,
together with other government agencies like the Philippine Coast Guard.
Hello, Philippine Coast Guard!
The Philippine Coast Guard, we call them our sister company
because we are there hand in hand together we are protecting our seas we are protecting our
territorial waters but in the part of the Navy we are our primary mandate is the defense at sea so
those are some parts of what we do there and of course we also do multilateral or joint
exercises with our like-minded nations or countries who also want to advocate the freedom of
navigation and of course to advocate and promote the rules-based international order in the seas
or particularly in the West Philippine Sea so those are the things that we do and of course
one more thing we continue to establish the naval presence in the area okay your
Navy together with the Coast Guard are there 24 7 in our West Philippine Sea
area and of course in the Kalayaan Island group our Philippine Marines are there
there too, months, 24-7, disregarding their safety and, of course, being away from their family.
So these are also our way of saying thank you and praying for them, for their sacrifices, for the sovereignty of our nation.
And lastly, while maintaining our presence in the area through the maritime patrols, sovereignty patrols, we do our reprovisioning and rotating activities there.
We do our anti-access area denial operations, deterrence operations there.
Of course, in the information environment, through the civil military operations, like we have the public affairs, civil affairs, and psychological operations unit, we are also in charge in countering the disinformation, misinformation, malinformation, and the propaganda of China about our rightful claims in the West Philippine Sea.
So, practically, those are the things that's happening right now.
Yes, ma'am. Thank you so much for that information, ma'am.
So, yeah, let's give a round of applause for Commander Sumbeling.
Of course, the Navy has been doing a lot of things in making sure that we are safe.
We have an open sea or high seas that are safe for sailing for Filipinos.
Dr. Chad Michael Briggshow this is known
And right now, we have here Sir Chad.
So, in connection to what Commander Sumbeling said, I have a question for you.
So how would you describe the climate impacts on the West Philippine Sea?
Sorry, it's easier if I stand up.
Yeah, so the question is, how would you describe the climate impacts on the West Philippine Sea?
So oftentimes we think of climate change just in terms of the immediate impacts, right?
You all know that there are maritime operations, that it's a transit zone,
whether you're talking about the areas to the north, Luzon Strait, Taiwan Strait, Bashi Channel.
but increasingly we're finding that climate changes in other parts of the world end up impacting us here.
We did a study that came out last year, two years ago, which showed how melting ice in Antarctica
affects how earthquakes in Alaska create tsunami risk to Los Angeles.
Now that will make your nose bleed because to think in these larger systemic terms is very difficult
and you have to work in large teams different different structures for
working on things but also for all of you in the the Navy Coast Guard you all
know how important the Sierra Madre is for maintaining presence in the West
Philippine Sea right so what happens if a typhoon hits that ship and sinks it
are you prepared for that because I will tell you the PRC is they have a scenario
for that and right now and what we heard from climate scientists is that there is
technically no longer a storm season in the Philippines meaning the ocean
temperatures are now so hot year-round that we can have tropical storms at any
time of the year in any part of the Philippines and not just coming from the
east they could come from the West Philippine Sea and then hit places like
Palawan we're not prepared for this either in terms of planning in terms of
of information and communications.
So if we think about the impacts from climate change,
then it's on infrastructure, it's on operations,
it's very importantly on livelihoods.
So all the fisher folk,
and that's the lifeblood of the Philippines, right?
And other countries, especially China,
they will know how to take advantage of that
and how to exploit it.
So that's what I'm worried about.
But the other thing here is that this also contributes to climate change.
So the fact that there's a conflict, there are tensions over oil and gas resources in not just the West Philippine Sea, South China Sea in general.
And whether it's China, whether it's Malaysia, whether it's the Philippines, this contributes to climate change.
So we also need to be aware of how our own actions, our own policies, might contribute to the problem and take corrective action.
Invest in renewables, invest in energy efficiency, but do something different than what we're doing now.
I heard a lot of things about the possible impacts of the climate change on the West Philippine Sea.
Of course, we have disrupted maritime transshipment, strained natural resources, habitat loss, and coral destruction and pressure on local livelihoods.
Do you have any additional info or anything you wanted to say regarding the possible impact of climate change on the West Philippine Sea, ma'am?
Actually, I'm more worried about what China is doing there in terms of the marine biodiversity destruction because just like what they're telling their narrative that we are the ones destroying the marine environment there, but it's actually them.
so it is their lies versus our truth because first and foremost they lied to
us when they told us they'll just be building temporary shelter for their
fishermen there but what they do they build artificial islands and according
to research, reef formation will not just take you 10 years, 20 years, but it will
take you a millennia. It's 1,000 years. So building those artificial islands there
and so many islands were built already, how many years, how many thousands of
years were lost and wasted? How many billions or millions of species have
have died in those areas.
So practically, they're also part of degrading
or destroying the marine biodiversity
in the West Philippine Sea, which will also, in turn,
what Sir Chad said, it has a great impact
in terms of the climate.
Yeah, you mentioned, Ma'am Commander Sumbeling,
regarding the coral destruction of what
we have in the West Philippine Sea.
And also earlier, Sir Chad is talking about coral destruction.
Now let's ask Dr. Licuanan, who had several expeditions in Spratlys.
I think he already mentioned about this, the new coral species there that you discovered, Sir Licuanan.
Licuanan.
Licuanan.
Licuanan, Sir.
Yes, again I'll stand. One of the things that I challenge everybody to do is look at portals like Google Earth or there's now Allen Coral Atlas.org.
And when you look at the Kalayaan Islands, look closely at those satellite images, what
you will see is that the islands are actually parts of giant rings.
They look like rosary beads.
The islands are the beads, and they're linked by what looks like a string.
The reason they look like that is because they are atolls, A-T-O-L-L-S.
Yes. And atolls are very large reef systems.
And the reason I start with that is one piece of the atoll could be occupied by the Philippines.
The other piece could be occupied by China or Malaysia or some other nation.
But what most people don't realize is those islands are connected because they belong to the same reef system.
Which means that if, for example, you're holding a rosary, and something happens to the part, like the string gets cut, then the whole thing falls apart.
It's a boomerang effect, sir.
Yes. And that's what we have in the Kalayaan. Those are apples.
battles, even the activity, even if you do not interfere with any other nation's activity,
what you do in the island you occupy is going to affect the whole system.
So he mentioned you have to have, you need to step back, you need to look at these things
as systems and and with biodiversity with climate in the ocean things are
more connected than they are online and so what they do there affects everything
even the supply of larvae to Palawan Luzon but having said that what we do in
luzon what we do in palawan will also affect the other nations in the south china sea basin the
broader basin so that's what systems thinking means we have to put everything in some very
broad context that what happens in norway what happens in north america or in more local terms
what happens in Luzon in Palawan will affect everything else in the basin just
maybe one more piece of information to help you appreciate that connectedness
if a coral reproduces in Panama Central America you wait three weeks three and a
half weeks the larvae will be in surigao that's it that's a nice uh fact to know about sir
yes mom uh since you discussed about this uh what's happening or this kind of situation in
uh in the in what we have right now in the corals so we would like to ask what can we
do about the coral situation on in those areas sir um earlier i pointed out um my advocacy is
for us to set up a nationally coordinated reef monitoring system
because like the slide said you cannot manage you cannot conserve anything when
you don't know what's going on okay but I'll give a very local example and this
is an example of why we're doing citizen science last year I mentioned warmest
year on record we had Kristine we had these images where you have three
typhoons hitting the country in a row in the case of Kristine it dumped two
months of rain in two days and then it demolished the reefs in Western Batangas
There was one reef in the town of Lian where we have our marine station.
And in May of 2024, about 55% of the surface of the shallow part of the reef was covered by living coral.
When the community citizen science team visited that reef in December, this was after Kristine,
the coral cover was down to 16% so the reef was demolished the mayor was
informed and during the campaign season for the recent local elections during
the campaign season the mayor signs an order closing a section of reef to
to tourism and fishing to give a chance for that reef to recover.
Our initial worry was the seaweed, certain kinds of seaweed that are not edible will
take over the reef and that will slow down the recovery, the natural recovery of the
corals.
And that's why that temporary closure was really important.
But the town did it.
why because they knew what was happening in the reef and they responded and in my
mind the mayor did the right thing and fortunately he was reelected but that's
what citizen science can do that's what information will allow you to do you can
respond we may not be able to fix that reef overnight we may not be able to
avert what's going on but one thing you will eventually realize if you talk to
scientists studying natural systems most natural systems can take care of
themselves even in the face of climate change but what they cannot handle is
climate change and human impact superimposed on top of that so when you
manage a reef you're actually not managing the reef you're managing the people that interact
so i hope that helps that you see the context of why even uh citizen science efforts are so
important in a maritime archipelagic nation like ours thank you so much sir
so i i think we really need to be a citizen science now sir right uh and i know that the
The Philippine Navy also, Commander Sumbeling, is doing a lot of things in support with the West Philippine Sea,
and of course, with the coral preservation.
And I know personally also, we have here Lieutenant Ramos, who is also, before working with the UP MSI,
they are doing a lot of things in the West Philippine Sea.
Do you have anything to add, Commander Sumbeling, regarding that?
Just anything to add, because even if I'm in the Navy, we're all here, we're in the Navy,
but with the volume of knowledge that we've learned right now, it's still not enough.
We still lack that knowledge in, of course, primarily in preserving our marine biodiversity and environment.
So I think we should also take that into our hearts right now as Navy personnel
that we're not just in charge of the defense at sea,
but also in protecting primarily the marine biodiversity, marine environment, and the marine preservation.
So I think we should seriously incorporate that in our mandate, and personally, we should be advocates of that, being the defenders of our seas.
Thank you so much, ma'am. Also earlier, Doc, he explained something, he mentioned about the policy making, or the policy that the mayor made.
Now we will go to Sir Derek. Sir Derek, I have a question for you about policy.
So, how can you tell us about policy efforts in the West Philippine situation and how will
that affect climate impact?
Perhaps I will also stand because my colleague stood.
With regards to policy, and I'm going back here to what we do not know, and I'll be building
on what Professor Licuanan mentioned, what we cannot count, we cannot manage.
that is because we actually have a term for this and I'm sure the folks and the
coastal coast guard folks are aware of the term maritime domain awareness it's
very very important because it gives us a bigger picture of what we have the
extent of our jurisdiction right the extent of where we where our stewardship
ship goes all the way up so in terms of policy it's very important because it
gives us this space it gives us the space to talk about the relevant
questions say for instance in terms of early warning systems where are the
provinces that can you know best adopt this in terms of marine pollution we
We also need policies as well.
If we're going to talk about the seas, how do you develop the policies?
You need maritime zones.
That's why last year we were able to pass the Maritime Zones Act, actually in conjunction
with the Archipelagic Sea Lanes Act, which actually improves, it gives the government
the world without so to speak to a lot the areas where commercial activities
can be undertaken also right because we have policy frameworks in place we can
penalize those wrongdoers right so certainly back to what commander
mentioned earlier about illegal activities from foreign countries the
The existence of policy frameworks actually gives us the word without to act, right?
To tell them, no, we're not going to allow that.
That is illegal.
But at the same time, having these policy frameworks in place is also a responsibility on the part of the Filipinos.
We have to tell them, hey guys, it's Panama.
We have a law.
We have to follow this as well.
so policy really is very important to give us the scope to extend right where
we cannot thank you thank you now I hope you are now seeing why our speakers are
selected on the forum or on this forum and how they are connected from to each
other so right now I know Commander Sumbeling you are also doing a lot of
things personally with regards to the West Philippine Sea campaign and one of those
schools are creating music or creating songs about West Philippine Sea.
Do you would like to discuss that or do you would like to share that to our participants?
Yeah, I can. Do you want me to sing this for them?
Yes, of course, ma'am.
Okay, so actually the West Philippine Sea song is part of the Navy's WPS campaign
for our rightful claims in the West Philippine Sea.
During our forums in different schools, it's really hard to actually conduct lectures because WPS is actually technical in so many terms.
And so in order to mainstream it and for it to be easily understood or easily digestible by our audience, we translated this into a song.
So I'll be very happy to share it with you.
so can you sing with me also let us sing together so yeah I know we prepared
the song and they know we are ready for the song yes let's proceed to the song
yeah
and of course
Speaker not identifiedwhy
We just had our lunch, sir.
No, that was tonight when we took them in the room.
We will have a snack after.
So we have two pledges, two challenges, right?
One is to talk about the West Philippine Sea,
and the other one is to talk about the song.
And I think you have to live for 10 years in the Philippines
to understand how much a song can really mean to the country.
Some, what did you call us?
Outer, other worldlers?
People from other worlds?
Jerico I heard you
for us that would be
in Germany that would be like frowned upon
you want to sing what is that
so they don't understand
how deeply emotions
play a role in all of this
I get it I really totally get it
and I think science
is keeping up now because
I keep reading scientific
reports especially coming
from New Zealand from
Maoris how singing
is actually an act of togetherness and how the Western world with creating an
entertainment system where we are listening to music rather than singing
ourselves has changed our whole behavior very interesting study but we don't have
time for science today we have to travel on thank you one more time please a
A round of applause for our captain, thank you very much.
Sir Nik, if I may, since I'm quite very much absorbed in this particular day,
don't worry, I will be making a song for MANA Mo or for this NAVYGATE.
Oh!
For that next time, it will be the theme song for NAVYGATE or MANA Mo.
A MANA Mo theme song.
That we'll be playing here.
But make it simple so I can sing them, huh?
Yes, yes.
Not really.
No scientific terms, okay?
Okay, so we were in our cove, we went out with our MANA Mo boat.
Can we have the boat again?
I am very proud we have our own MANA Mo boat, nobody else has that.
And we went to the high seas, which meant for us mainly now the West Philippine Sea,
but there is other high seas and we have other problems out there.
it's not just those we were talking about and I think it's a really
important message that we got to know here about how everything is connected
with each other so what I would like to do is I would actually take the boat now
and go really around the world let's go out really around the world I realized
that some people over there cannot get the QR code because Jerico is standing
right in front of it and this monitor monster there so don't forget it's very
easy to find Facebook group is just called navigate with a Y nobody else has
that word so what the gentleman here said before I would like to show in a
visual way okay so what you see here very simplified is a I think a NASA card
which shows a little bit how the whole system of the hot water and the cooling
down of the water and then getting hot again it's really like a huge
13:00
interconnected system and something which was mentioned before here I I know
it because I'm European you're American you have a different point of view we
Europeans we see everything just from Europe's point of view okay so Europe
Europe actually gets something from the Philippines.
It gets warm water, and that warm water goes all the way up to there,
and you see, I cannot reach it, I'm too small, I need to be taller,
to England, the east coast of England, Ireland, right?
So correct me, but as much as I understood with my little citizen science,
it's called the Gulf Stream in English, Gulf Stream,
and it brings warm water to them.
This warm water makes their life easier
because it makes everything warmer.
So they have what we call a relaxed climate.
It's not so cold because actually they're pretty high up in the north, you see.
It's not so far from the ice up there.
But it's kind of okay now, warm, okay?
They're not super cold.
And this is because of the warm water.
That warm water flows, I learned that in physics 40, 50 years ago, is high up, right?
Deep up.
The water which is warm, like with the air, is high.
And the cold water is underground, right, so in the deep waters.
So this is the whole cycle and it goes and it goes and it goes, and it brings warm water
to those people there.
Now if this very fragile system breaks down, then those people don't get warm water anymore.
more. So instead of having it warm, it's going to get really cold today. It's going to completely
change their lives. Their agricultural systems will not work anymore the same way. And everybody
thinks climate change means it gets hotter. Yeah, it gets hotter for us, but not everywhere. This is
one of the big reasons for the misunderstandings everywhere, because people say, it's not true,
look at this look at that but Sir Briggs said it very clearly before and all the
other speakers also it's a very fragile system super complex super complicated
oh I learned there's a difference between complicated and complex complex
is even worse the bar so it's really complex and if it gets disturbed it can
really tumble and then the effects are what I would call unscientifically crazy
crazy. It's getting really crazy, out of mind. We don't even know what's going to happen.
So that's a little bit in pictures what happened before. Now, I, in school back then, have
learned from my teacher, there are four oceans. The Pacific. Jade, next one. Atlantic. Pacific.
Atlantic. Next one. Indian. Next one. Arctic. Fantastic. Wow. I had forgotten them. I had
had to look them up actually before. So it's four oceans. But do you know what? That's
not true. That's actually not true. Now what would a fish do when he would draw a map of
the earth? It would draw this map of the earth. And it's actually existing as something where
you can go with your kids. I don't know where it is. But it's really beautiful. And the
whole idea is it's one planet and it's one ocean where everything is connected with each
other as we saw in the picture before pretty much the same it's one ocean
debug everything is connected so there are not four oceans there is one ocean
and I said before that I would not bother you anymore with literacy and
knowledge but one more rule is an one more assignment that's rule number one
of the literacy or principle number one of the ocean literacy principles of the
United Nations the earth has one big ocean with many different features in
some places the water is so warm we can jump in there try that in the Arctic
you have been in the Arctic right Sir Briggs it's one ocean and it has very
different, very different features. And that means everything is connected, as
our gentleman and the lady before all said. That's about it for literacy. We
spoke about anxiety at the beginning and I realize now the whole day, except the
time when we were eating, we were giving you really bad news, right? Are you already
frustrated that was really bad stuff and it's true it's true there's a lot of
really really difficult challenging things and so I decided that for the end
of our time together I would like to ask our speakers to say what makes them
think positive what makes them think of good outlooks so Briggs can I start
with you please of course and this is the hardest part I've often been the
worst-case scenario expert but but there are opportunities as well and that means
that we can we can rethink our relationship to the oceans to the
ecosystem to communities we can we can widen what we do whether whether your
You're soldiers, sailors, coast guardsmen, marines.
By the way, commander, amazing singing.
No, what I want to get across is that there are many tools that are available.
In terms of local engagement, which is what I know is the purpose of civil military organizations and units,
there are opportunities for early warning, which I mentioned earlier in terms of B-code.
And we want to do this as well with West Minkong.
and it's worked in the past Tracy and I have done this in Hawaii I've done it in
Ukraine and it means that we're not lost there's so much knowledge out there and
it's just up to us to engage with people and to listen and to have the ability to
take that information and not just scare people but to say no there are things
things you can do. And whether it's... Okay, Miles just disappeared, but like the...
We brought him. He's behind you.
Oh, sorry. Sorry, Miles. I mean, the bike scouts. To me, as a cyclist, that's amazing.
And it's so empowering because it's just simple tools. It's things that people can do.
The narrative-driven solutions means that so much of what we do is storytelling. And as you are all aware,
where stories can be scary, but we can also give empowering stories and songs.
Okay, I can't sing.
And the stories have to be comprehensive, they have to be inclusive,
and you have to have, if not a happy ending, at least a workable ending.
Working with these complex issues, it's very difficult, it's very challenging,
but let me say, the two years that I've been in the Philippines,
my students, I have learned so much from them.
And it's because if we realize that it's not simply our responsibility to tell other people what to do, but to listen to them, what's their perception of the risk, what are they worried about, what do they feel that they can do, that there are so many solutions available for us.
Because as I said before, climate is not one thing.
It's many things.
It expresses itself in many ways.
And our job is to be able to listen to those communities, to those people, and figure out
what they need and what they feel that they're capable of doing.
And this is the final part, is identifying what communities are strong with.
Now, I do deal, as I mentioned to one of your colleagues, so I mentioned I deal with cognitive
warfare as well which is a really dark part of information warfare that it's
where you take community strengths and actually turn it against the community
but there's so many things that Filipinos are so strong with in terms of
compassion in terms of feelings of belongingness feelings of obligation and
duty those need to be leveraged and not just to be taken advantage of not just
to say, all right, you should follow what we say, but to understand that communities
from the Purok level all the way up to the national level, they do have strengths.
And if we build upon those strengths, that means that we have very complicated but a
very diverse set of tools that we can use and responses that we can give to people.
And I know that in the future for NAVYGATE, you want to work on food security, right?
Right. Which means that we're not going to just talk about the big bad things, but things that are really meaningful at the local level for fisher folk, for farmers.
And again, it's all interconnected. I've worked for many years in Ukraine.
And many of you understood that when the wider war with Ukraine broke out, there were food impacts even here in the Philippines.
So we have to just broaden our view of things. We have to be aware of how things are connected.
but then also how that means it's not just the the risks that are connected
but it's the strengths they could be connected to and with that I would just
challenge all of you to think more broadly don't just think of climate
change as something on the outside that brings bad weather it's much more than
that and it's going to affect your jobs your mission so figure out what those
are and figure out what you can do thank you powerful message thank you so much
miles you want to go next hello and before before we end I just want to say
thank you to everyone for being here for taking the time for having listening to
the story of the bike Scouts actually I'll keep this very very short because I
really don't have anything to share that might you know really inspire everyone
but this comes from how we do things in the bike Scouts it's actually very very
simple. It starts with the Filipino habit of adapting, of adaptation. A lot of
times we call it resilience. But wherever we go in the world, and there will
be Filipinos anywhere in the world that you go, we don't stand out, if you
notice. We don't try to be something, you know, something different. We adapt. We
figure out how people live in their own country, and then we fit in. That's, I
I think, the superpower of the Filipino, and also something that can really be bad for
us at some times. But this really goes back to our culture of bayanihan, and that's why
we adapt. We don't tell people that you should do this so that you can be better. You should
do this so that you can have a better life. We don't really do that. That's not in our
culture. In fact, if we find someone in our neighborhood, in our community, who is struggling,
Yes, we have opinions. We do have chismes and everything.
But the first habit that Filipinos have is to ask,
Oh, what do you need? How can I help?
Which in English is, what do you need? How can I help you?
And a lot of times, bayanihan involves not expecting anything in return.
And to tell you the truth, and based on what I've seen from the past 12 years,
bayanihan is actually the solution to almost all of the world's problems.
During COVID-19, we've seen how ordinary people did extraordinary things to solve the problems that they have in their own communities.
If you remember Yung Community Pantry, right?
And then when frontline workers like doctors and nurses and others needed mobility, everyone just gave away their bicycles so that people with important jobs could go to work and save people's lives.
that's that's something that's already ingrained in us from birth that's what we do right and when
it comes to climate change when it comes to resilience that's actually the very solution
that we're looking for it's not yes fancy technology and everything else is nice to have
but about but at the very very basic level there will be people and why because the scale of the
problem and the challenges of climate change and climate driven disasters is bringing to the world
can only really be addressed or matched by the scale of people, us, taking action in our own communities.
So I will leave you with sort of like a slogan of bike scouts.
And I wish that you will do this in your work in the military and for the rest of us in the civilian world.
Please help deliver courage where it's needed and hope where there is none.
So we are bike scouts. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
I'm really I'm really tired already. I let all the men speak and I forgot completely. It's called ladies first. I'm so sorry
Ma'am Ethel, would you like to please? Yeah, thank you
Maraming salamat din for inviting me. It was a pleasure to be here and to meet everyone
Being talk about being hopeful. I remember my former boss. His name is Dr. Perry Aliño
He mentioned that he has a love-hate relationship with science
because, you know, when you're in the middle of the ocean
and you're one week down
sa two-week diving trip mo
and you're nauseous and you're tired
you really hate what you're doing
but then again, there are these
bright spots
wherein you get reminded
of why you are doing what you are doing
and my career is fairly, fairly short
compared to Sir Al's
but I've had my fair share of disappointments
as a scientist, as a marine biologist
here in the Philippines, but
yeah, you need to ask yourself
why you are doing what you are doing
and I guess I'm fortunate enough
that I am also teaching and I get to
interact with young people because when
you're with young people, your
hope gets ignited and it
makes you realize that you're doing this
for the future generations
although you might not be able
to see something big
happen in your lifetime, but
you do this with the hope that it will change
change in the future. So it's just basically that's the reason why you're doing what you're
doing. So that's it from me. Thank you.
Oh yeah, you have your own microphone. That's okay.
Thank you, sir. It's more on, of course, the Navy perspective since we are mandated
to protect our seas and of course as I've said earlier that from now on we'll
not just be like focused on the defense but of course the defense and protecting
our marine biodiversity and of course our maritime zones especially we are
very much particular about what's happening in the West Philippine Sea and
How are you going to protect them? So I guess we should also know the importance of it
How wealthy our country is particularly in that area so that will be more
something any lab of
a lot more quantity in the lab
Must allow motion Papa. Hello. That is Tagalog. So I think if you know what you are fighting for
You will value more of it because the West Philippine Sea is full of wealth.
I mean, it is the source of income of our fishermen community, Filipino fisher folks.
It provides 1.6 million jobs.
It gives 10 to 15 percent of the entire fish caught in our country.
and also it can be an important source of energy because as our Explorer says
said it has like energy resource sir time away on potential very much and it
can help us in our future of course will be very much will become an independent
nation in terms of energy resource. For example, the Reed Bank and the Panatag Shoal, they are
identified as full of energy resource. And of course, the area there is an important
part of the international trade. So it provides 24% of global trade passes there. So that
is how wealthy we are so the more that we need to to protect not just in the
Philippine Navy's and the defense side but of course in protecting the marine
biodiversity and environment that is there because you already know that it
is ours and it is ours also to protect so as a call to action in the Philippine
Navy perspective, protecting our seas or defending it is not just ours to take
alone. Hindi namin kakayanan. So we need the help of every Filipino citizen. Everyalone. Hindi namin kakayanan. So we need the help of every Filipino citizen. Every Filipino should be part of protecting and defending what is our side, of what is ours, especially this is for our future.
Filipino should be part of protecting and defending what is our side, of what
what is ours, especially this is for our future.
And we know that we have the right, so that's all.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much, .
Now I have three gentlemen sitting here.
30 years in the same university.
I thought you studied four years, and then you're out.
Well, please.
Before De La Salle, I was in youth,
and that's in kindergarten.
Kindergarten. Yeah, my kindergarten to master's degree from the same school. This is very hard for me because, one, I'm a pessimist.
Oh, okay.
And in my discipline, a well-known ecologist in Stanford University
had a term for us biodiversity scientists, which is what I am.
He called biodiversity scientists the obituary writers of nature.
So a pessimist and a biodiversity scientist, that's why this is hard for me.
give you a message for hope. But in a way, I already did that.
I showed you an example of people
acting on information that they themselves
generated to do something good for
us. Interesting what Ethel said.
Again, thank you for inviting me. I'm very happy
to have met some of you, people I sit with
and so on. I didn't know she worked for Perry Aliño. I was Perry Aliño's very first research
assistant. Wow. And Perry Aliño, Academician Aliño, when I started working for him, my
first assignment was to read a book. And the title of the book is Words of the Lagoon.
And it was written by a marine biologist who, after he got his PhD, lived in a fishing village
in Palau and documented all the things that they were doing, all their practices, all
their beliefs.
After he had a scientific basis, we were talking about this over lunch.
And essentially the message by him making me read that book is to remind me that people
in fishing communities no more than I did about this so so it's kind of full
circle that now I'm doing citizen science which in my mind initially was
empowering them but the reality was it was going both ways I was learning from
them and maybe I was learning more from them than them from me.
And again, this is hard and I'm very nervous about this part of the program and I forgot I have to do this.
And now I have to be coming after these guys and the pressure is even on.
A few years ago, I was interviewed for an article about Philippine Reefs in the National Geographic magazine.
I think it was June 2022 issue.
And when the article came out, I was surprised.
It was a quote from me that ended that article.
And basically, the writer was asking, is there a reason for hope?
In effect, similar questions that you were asking earlier, why are you doing this, is there a reason for hope, and things like that.
And similar to what Ethel said, I said something like, I have to be able to look at my students in the eye and say, I tried.
I am a pessimist. If I fail, I try again. That's basically what I said.
My mentors have been very influential. My mentors in marine science have been very influential in my training.
and one of them I mentioned national scientist Edgardo Gomez. Edgardo Gomez told me
sometime in the mid 80s on our way to EDSA he told me the best thing you can
do for this country is to be the best in what you do so we have our own roles to
play we have to spend some time finding our place in the world and when you find
it you'll be the best that is so we all have a role in this try to show you or
explain further everything is much more connected to everything else especially
Especially in the sea, because you're dealing with a medium that's 830 times denser than air.
It's 60 times harder to make it flow.
Hello scientist!
If you think about
how many organisms,
very much unlike land, when they reproduce, they just throw their eggs and sperm in the water. And that
There's no living species on land that does that and expect not to go extinct.
It's very different out there.
We have to take care of it, but taking care of it means you have to understand it better.
because in in the in my decades of this line of work I have all seen so many
well-intentioned people doing things for the sea doing things from the reef not
realizing that they're actually causing more so one of the terms I cringe when I
here is the people all call restoration
well call restoration is for
fortune done more damage good because
it still means that the it's not ready
for all the technology must be studied
must be you do it but don't follow the site
the city because this the he's I'll
I told you earlier, we have around 600 species. How many can we propagate? Five?
So what happens to the 595 others?
That's really the most pessimistic, optimistic hope message that I got in the last couple of years.
So, well, you see why this is very hard for me.
but we have to keep trying
because like I said
I can't be much of a mentor
if I cannot tell my students
that well I'm on my way to retirement
but if I'm able to slow things down
until some better solution comes up
actually something I said in that article
then I would have done
the best thing I could do for them
to do the best thing you can do
Maraming maraming salamatMany many thanks
usually I don't
comment but I have to comment in this time
thank you for being so honest with us
maraming salamat, thank youThank you.
thank you
last but not least
so I will
end with an anecdote
so this was in 2019
there was a
national marine summit
and this was a working lunch
and the topic that was being
discussed was on microplastics so it was it well the report back then was very
very great because not only did the PowerPoint presentation alluded to the
to how extensive microplastic was but I looked down on my plate and saw that I
was eating fish that could possibly have microplastics in it so I wanted to end
with that because in terms of challenges and perhaps not to build on what
professor the the pessimism there I will instead encourage everyone that we still
have a role to play I agree that we have to do everything we can at least for me
I think we can expand the idea of by any end to our international partners I
I have to mention that our colleagues from Australia,
our colleagues from Japan, our colleagues from the US,
they're very interested in supporting
these kinds of conservation projects.
So I think we have to do a government-led
Bayanihan approach.
We have to expand it now.
It's not just amongst ourselves.
We're now going to have to talk to our neighbors
wars. Because of, I think, what Nick already mentioned with the slides earlier, our seas
are interconnected. And to be frank with you, we can't do it alone.
That's true. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I mentioned at the beginning the
United Nations Ocean Decade, and of course, we have a web address for you if you ever
would feel that you would want to look into more information. I think after this, you
just want to go home so I love what you were doing so let's forget about all of
this literacy portal let's forget about it let's forget two stories very quick
number one who played clash of clans who is remembering clash of clans anyone
shy very shy thank you Paul when I came to the Philippines I started to work
with kids I started to work with kids about plastic pollution and I started to
play clash of clans I'm not a gamer I really was not good okay village going
on and I never bought anything okay I fought always hard good fighter so
clash of clans what does it have to do with literacy and that's the point
nothing clash of clans is not taught in schools there is no curriculum there are
are no exams and there is no teacher making you cool it about and yet these
13 year old boys they would smash me my god and it's a complicated game you have
to have so many different characters you have strengths and weaknesses and you
need to know what is your defense system my god good game for military oh really
complicated game, but no literacy, nothing. That made me thinking. Are you aware of
the PISA studies? Has anyone heard PISA? Not American, not European.
American, tell me you heard about the PISA studies. I know several PISA
studies though, you have to be specific. PISA is an international student
assessment, right? Sorry, I was thinking of the city in Italy. With the
with the tower, which is falling over, nah,
PISA is the International Student Assessment,
which is done every two or four years, I forgot,
where they really look at 200 countries or so,
and they look into the students,
how are the students doing in very simple things,
reading, writing, physics, basic assessment, okay?
And I didn't bring you the slides and everything,
you just have to trust me here, I'm not lying to you.
so the numbers all over the world are going down and that in spite of the fact
that governments all around the world are investing more and more and more
more money into education so that was kind of making me thinking what's going
on here and don't even start to look about the Philippines and the PISA study
because we are at the very rock bottom we are sixth worst fourth worst and
there is a new study now which is called what is the new one creative thinking
creative thinking and again we are like second worst in the world or so but when
I look at the kids I say this guy plays clash of clans who is the who is the
world champion in mobile legends so there is something wrong here right
there is this huge amount of knowledge of academic and on the other hand there
there is this decline, but then there is really smart people.
What is going on, I thought to myself.
And then I looked at the dance stuff, right?
We have like dances, so I sit with the dance teachers.
In a long pole, where's my Jerry go?
A long pole, time squared, right?
So I talk to the teacher and I tell him,
so in one of those performances, how many movements are there?
How many movements are there?
huh 60 to 80 to 120 movements and you have to memorize them all in the right
order but when you ask the kid about English vocabulary he says nosebleed
what is going on and I came to a conclusion and the conclusion is very
simple if you love something if you truly really love this song and this
dance and this game you're gonna learn it I can teach you a hundred thousand I
I can bring the best scientists of the Philippines to you.
It will go in here, and it will go out there,
and you will carry home nothing.
But if you start to love,
and this is why songs are so great,
because our emotions are coming out,
if we start to love something with all of our heart,
then suddenly we want to learn it.
Second story.
Imagine this.
There is a Lola.
Lola is super Masungit, huh?
Super Masungit.
I knock off, really ugly, ugly.
And then there's this little blonde girl.
She has to be blonde, sorry.
And there she comes.
And she finds out that Lola actually has a thorn in her flesh.
And that little girl is so like, eh.
She just goes there and pulls the thorn out.
And it turns out Lola is in fact a super sweet, nice lady.
She starts to make cookies.
And they're cuddling all day long.
If that story would happen in your village, that would be believable, right?
But this story happened not in your village.
This story happens deep in the ocean.
It happens on the other side of the planet, in the Bahamas,
where there's this little blonde girl, she's not so young anymore,
and she realized one day when she was diving down there
that the shark had a hook in his flesh.
and without thinking she pulled the hook out and you know what happened and here
it starts we have to understand that the way we see the world it's not always
right this is why I love your pessimism why I love your being a scientist down
to the bones I know that I don't know we think sharks are killer machines they
are cold-blooded they have no feelings they kill everything which comes around
them and they are not having any brain or heart. Turns out sharks spoke to other
sharks and said hey guy this lady actually helps you and something
happened which is so important and I think that's the magic of the bike
scouts. People start to trust each other. There is suddenly trust and the next
shark comes and she pulls the next hook out. In the last 20 years,
Cristina Zenato, I have to cry, I'm sorry, has pulled out over 300 fisher hooks
from sharks and at a certain time, normally I play the whole video so
you can see it, but we don't have good internet here, so at one time she
realized that this shark has the hook in the mouth and without thinking again, just
with trust. She reaches in the mouth of that shark and she takes it. That is
trust and love. And I don't have the videos here, you have to look her up, but
I swear to God to you that you can watch her having sharks lying in her lap and
she's petting them. Because sharks have been, correct me, 450 million years on the
the planet? How long are humans here? Maybe 30,000, 40,000? 450 million years they are
here already. They have feelings. So to cut their fins off and to just throw them dead
in the water is just painful and definitely not what was meant in the Bible when we said
the oceans should team with life. It's trust and it's love which will get us somewhere.
and this is why at a certain point I stopped teaching all this ocean
literacy stuff and instead I said I'm going to try to instill empathy in you I
want you to feel empathic for those things I want you to feel empathic for
the ocean because I think that's the one thing which will make you learn more
then if professor L will start to count all the 600 corals down now that will
not work so my pledge my challenge to you and I don't have it's written up
here but I show you my challenge to you is about MANA Mo because MANA Mo is
maritime and archipelagic nation awareness month which I have fought for
the first day since I was out now I want to change that I'm challenging to change
change manamo from a month, something which happens once in a year, to a moment.
I want you to have a mana moment every day.
I want you to put it in your prayers or on your breakfast or wherever you want to sprinkle it.
But it's a moment every day to realize how important the ocean is for us.
It's everything for us.
and to think of it with empathy, with trust, and with love.
That is my MANA Mo message.
Maraming salamat. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much, Sir Nik, for that.
And of course, we will now continue with our program.
And with regards to the last message of Sir Nik, the Manamomen,
actually, we already have a presidential memorandum, Circular No. 87,
which declares the MANA Mo as a whole year-round activity.
It is signed July 11, 2025 by our President, President Bongbong Marcos,
directing all government agencies and instrumentalities
and encouraging local government units and private sector
to promote awareness of the Philippines as a maritime and archipelagic nation.
So, once again, thank you so much, Sir Nik, for this very wonderful day that we have with you and, of course, our speakers.
And to give credit and to show our, of course, thanks for every one of you who will give you thanks and mementos.
We would like to invite the Deputy Commander of the Civil Military Operations Group together with the Deputy Commander of Naval Staff for Civil Military Operations Group, Captain Tikal Ma'am, to be assisted by the Commanding Officer of Civil Affairs Unit, Lieutenant Ramos Serg, to give the certificates and mementos to our speakers.
But first let me read the citation. Certificate of appreciation is presented to, first is Mr. Deryk Baladjay from the Department of International Studies, De La Salle University, for his valuable and sincere gratitude for their generous time and effort and expertise as a guest speaker for the topic at the NAVYGATE 2025 Information and Awareness Project.
here held at Las Piñas-Paranaque Wetland Park on September 25, 2025,
thereby contributing to the success of the event and the advancement of climate awareness.
Signed, Lieutenant Mark Louwie Ramos, Philippine Navy, Commanding Officer, Civil Affairs Unit, Civil PN.
Also signed by Captain Gregory Gerald B. Pabing, Philippine Navy General Staff Corps,
Acting Commander, Civil Military Operations Group, Philippine Navy.
Sir Valangayo will also receive a book up from Simuk PN, a mug, and a NAVYGATE tote bag and t-shirt.
Also presented to Dr. Chad Briggs of Asian Institute Management.
Col. Nilo E. Hapson PN(M) GSChow this is known
General Staff Corps, the acting commander of Civil-Military Operations Group, Philippine Navy,
to be delivered by the Deputy Commander of Civil-Military Operations Group, Philippine Navy,
Colonel Nilo E. Hapson, Philippine Navy Marines, General Staff Corps.
Let's give him a round of applause.
Good afternoon.
Actually, our commander, at the same time, the deputy, I am the deputy representing our commander.
At the same time, our commander is the assistant chief of double staff in Sibin, the Philippine
Navy, is now on equally important activity.
Never the less, I read his message and I thought, what an incredible day this has been.
Allow me to take a moment to express my deepest gratitude to everyone who made this meaningful
event possible.
First, to our ever-supportive Flag Officer in Command, Philippine Navy Vice Admiral Jose Maespilita, Philippine Navy.
Of course, from the CMO, the organizer of this activity, Lieutenant Mark Louwie Ramos, the Commanding Officer of the Civil Affairs,
and of course, the rest of Team Civil-Military Operations Group, Philippine Navy.
Thank you for your unwavering commitment.
We also celebrate our partners and distinguished speakers who have generously shared their time, wisdom, and passion with us.
Professor Wilfredo Licuanan from De La Salle University.
Mr. Deryk Baladjay from Amador Research.
Of course, Mr. Nik Metaxa-Schwarten from PROUD.PH.
It's Professor Chad Briggs from the Asian Institute of Management and Mr. Myles Delfin from Bike Scouts and our very own Commander, Lady Chatterly Alvaro Sumbeling.
Also, to our very supportive units from the Philippine Navy, we have here from NCBIN, led by the Deputy NCBIN, Captain Tikau.
Now, from the Philippine Marine Corps, from 3rd Marine Battalion, we have here also from Naval Support Command and the Special Operations Command, the Naval Defense Command, the NIC, NABMITOC, also our partner stakeholders from different agencies, from the Philippine Coast Guard, the DWD, and the NAR.
Again, just giving a warm round of applause.
Platforms like NAVYGATE are more than just gatherings.
They are necessities for a maritime and archipelagic nation like ours.
Surrounded by seas, we are gifted with resources and beauty,
but we are also faced with vulnerabilities and challenges.
My hope is that today's exchange of ideas has rekindled its view,
you a renewed dedication to safeguard our motherland today we talk a little
together although we come from different sectors our roles are interconnected
our missions united to protect our people our shores our future against
threats including the relentless forces of climate change. As we close, let me lead you
with this challenge. Be the echoes of these conversations. Carry these insights beyond
this room. Let our waters not be a dividing line, but a living thread that binds us together
together as one Nisio.
Once again, thank you, Mabuhay.
Thank you very much.
So if you want to have some stage, you could take some pictures.
We have prepared some pika-pika, some snacks outside.
We have some plates there.
You could get some snacks.