The Society for the Conservation of Philippine Wetlands, Inc. (SCPW) was invited by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) under its Conflict Sensitive Resource and Asset Management (COSERAM) Program to be a partner in the crafting of the AMWS CEPA (Communication, Capacity Building, Education, Participation and Awareness) Action Plan. A workshop was held on 15-16 August 2017 at the RCBI Microhotel in San Francisco, Agusan del Sur participated by various stakeholders from DENR Offices, people’s organization (PO), Indigenous People (IP) group, non-government organizations (NGOs) and the academe. Mr. Ferit Temur of COSERAM-GIZ welcomed the participants and emphasized the importance of CEPA in the overall management of AMWS. Ms. Amy M. Lecciones, SCPW Vice-President and Executive Director, and the Ramsar NGO Focal Point for CEPA in the Philippines presented the Ramsar CEPA Guidelines, the CEPA activities of SCPW as well as facilitated the 2-day workshop.
The workshop was able to come up with the elements that will constitute the CEPA Action Plan, a mechanism to constitute a CEPA Development Team, and priority CEPA activities that can be already included in the Work Plan of the various partners that were present. The workshop agreed that as a next step, the output of the workshop will be integrated with the output of the Communication Planning workshop held earlier by the DENR-PENRO, highlighting aspects related to the Indigenous People’s in the area. The document will then undergo processing and validation before it is finalized, hopefully with the CEPA Development Team already in place. The workshop was formally closed by Ms. Emmilie Ebonia, Protected Area Superintendent (PASu) of the AMWS.
– Reported by Darry Shel Estorba
