of the Verde Island Passage, Philippines - weADAPT

chapter 2 • human well-being and climate change: results and discussion
mortality in Occidental Mindoro while it ranked fourth in
Oriental Mindoro.
demersal
13%
Batangas Province
tuna
15%
Whether because of extreme weather and high
rainfall, eight out of 10 leading causes of illnesses
are infectious. While most of these happen without
being attributed to climate change, threats to human
health and safety can demonstrate how vulnerability
assessment in climate change adaptation can and must
be pursued to avoid major epidemics.
Economic uses
A large portion of the Verde Island Passage population
is employed near Batangas, where there are eight
industrial parks including Cocochem Agro-Industrial
Park and Tabangao Special Export Processing Zone,
as well as 181 companies that are mostly situated
in Batangas City and other coastal municipalities
(Batangas PPDO 2007). Tourism also offers significant
employment opportunities for coastal communities in
resorts close to major dive sites. While commerce and
industry provide big revenues, a substantial segment of
the population depends on agriculture for sustenance.
Fisheries remain a viable income and food source for
many people who live immediately around the passage.
demersal
17%
demersal
16%
small pelagic
72%
Occidental Mindoro Province
small pelagic
65%
Oriental Mindoro Province
tuna
18%
tuna
22%
Discussion of the economic profile for the vulnerability
assessment is confined only to fisheries, tourism, and
foreshore development.
Fisheries
i. Fish production
One of the important steps in the Vulnerability
Assessment was to estimate fisheries production
attributable to the habitats of the Verde Island Passage
(VIP) (Figure 43). Two sources of data were used for
this purpose: a) Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (BAS)
data set which provides for disaggregation of fisheries
production on a provincial level, and b) LGU data which
are presented in plans or in various published and
unpublished reports. For the capture sector, all coastal
municipalities of Batangas were included, assuming
that their main fishing area is in the Verde Island
Passage.
As for aquaculture, we only considered brackish water
fishponds and seaweed production and expressly
ignored the huge volume of production from Taal
Lake. For Oriental Mindoro, we assumed all 14
coastal municipalities contribute to, and are fishing in,
Verde Island Passage. For Occidental Mindoro, we
only considered the four municipalities that include
Paluan, Abra de Ilog, Lubang, and Looc and as such,
provincial level production was divided equally by all
11 municipalities and multiplied by four in order to get
appropriate attribution for these four.
small pelagic
62%
Fig. 43. Fisheries production by major species in Verde
Island Passage.
Our estimates are shown in Tables 25-27 and indicate
that Verde Island Passage contributes somewhere
between 40-47 thousand MT per year with the province
of Batangas contributing the most. The 6,000 MT
average for Occidental Mindoro is already a weighted
figure for the four municipalities, as explained, and so
appear to be lower than BAS statistics. Another 4,000
MT was estimated to be from the aquaculture sector
(bangus, prawns, and seaweeds). As for aquarium
fishing, another activity studied, we assume that
production was not recorded at both LGU and BAS
levels.
Small pelagics are the most important species group
caught in Verde Island Passage with Batangas alone
contributing an average of 18,000 MT per year. The
Table 25. Marine fisheries production (thousand MT) from the commercial
and municipal sectors estimated for Verde Island Passage from 2005-2007.
Province 2005 2006 2007
Batangas
Occidental Mindoro
Oriental Mindoro
Total
Source: Basic data from BAS 2007.
20.10
5.93
13.30
39.33
27.80
6.29
13.20
47.29
26.40
6.76
13.90
47.06
55