The Protected Landscape Approach - Centre for Mediterranean ...

The Protected Landscape Approach: Linking Nature, Culture and Community
such as typhoon-resistant architecture and hedgerows planted around farm plots to protect
crops from wind damage. It is a landscape that continues bearing witness to a vanished culture
whose response to its harsh environment has influenced the population’s present existence, a
phenomenon that has evolved to the existing lifestyle that links past with present.
The natural and cultural manifestations of the property demonstrate how living organisms
and humans can prevail over what seem to be insurmountable environmental challenges and
succeed in colonizing the most isolated areas of our planet. In Batanes that fragile but constant
interaction between nature and humankind continues up to this day. Today’s Ivatan culture is
the outcome of human response to severe environmental demands, which developed a
landscape and culture distinctly showing the long and continuing interaction between nature
and man.
The Batanes landscape amazes. The rolling landscape is an emerald-green patchwork of
hedgerows, a network of reeds planted in rows to form living fences that mark farm boundaries,
prevent erosion, and shield root crops from windburn. It is a volcanic landscape with high cliffs
that dramatically drop into the sea. Shores are covered with round rocks dating back possibly
thousands of years when they were once thrown into the sea by early volcanic eruptions.
The National Museum has undertaken extensive studies on the flora of Batanes and has
found that numerous indigenous species are shared with the Babuyanes Islands (south of
Batanes), Lan Yu and Lu Tao Islands of southern Taiwan and the Riyuku Islands of south -
western Japan (Madulid and Agoo, 2001). The Batanes Archipelago, being at the geographic
centre of these islands, represents either the northern limit of the Malesian flora or the southern
limit of East Asian flora, thus forming a distinct phytogeographic area.
The small islands of Batanes are a fragile habitat to numerous endemic plant species. Most of
these species arrived in the islands earlier than human inhabitants and have evolved inde -
pendently of human activities. The unique flora of Batanes are vulnerable to extinction because
of their small population, restricted genetic diversity, narrow ranges prior to human coloni -
zation, lack of adaptability to change, or because of human disturbance such as deforestation
and fire, introduction of grazing animals, cultivation, and introduction of weedy plants.
The Batanes landscape is unique, totally unlike any other in tropical Philippines, or in the
rest of Asia. The Pacific Ocean and China Sea surround the islands, creating powerful and
treacherous underwater currents. The surrounding water bodies, the distance from the main -
land, the strong winds that blow throughout most of the year and frequent typhoons have kept
the islands in isolation. Its average temperature is lower than that of the rest of the Philippines.
The Batanes landscape still retains most of its original and authentic natural and cultural
character.
Archaeological discoveries in Batanes have been stunning. There were ruins of pre-Spanish
colonial citadels (ijang) on many Batanes mountaintops overlooking the sea where pottery,
human and animal bones, and other artifacts were discovered. Basalt posts that once held down
pre-Hispanic thatch dwellings against the strong wind that constantly battered ijang slopes
were found. Boat-shaped stone markers in the shape of the tatayá, the traditional wooden boat
still used today, were discovered. These marked the graves of the early Ivatan (traditional
residents of Batanes). The burial grounds, always facing the sea on slopes adjacent to an ijang,
were testimony to the seafaring culture that believed the journey to the afterlife took place in a
boat. The only other place where similar grave markers are found is in Scandinavia.
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