BoholAnalysis

Sunday morning at the Tagbilaran airport, and flight was delayed.   I had the chance to talk to a student of mine who works in the airport for years now.   He brought my attention to this counter near the exit door of the check-in area   that has a wide sign bannering RA 8550 and a collection of pictures of seashells. RA 8550 is no stranger to me. My sister who is a marine biologist and foreshore management specialist is one of its staunchest advocates that even my mother would take extra care in buying fish as these may still be too young to be caught or are spawning or are taken from the sea by fishermen using fine mesh nets. The law provides, among other things, the reconstitution of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, the specification of allowable fishing in municipal waters, the power of the state to prescribe non-fishing seasons, and the participation of communities in monitoring of fishery laws. What the wide banner and the counter represents, is the effort o

I thought then that to be proactive was always desirable. Bringing an umbrella in London even without a “rain forecast” is always a good thing, because even the weather bureau at BBC fails to predict weather conditions a number of times. But it is another story when you wear winter clothes in Bohol because you anticipate that the snow would come any time of the day. Call that insane proactivity, if you like. But it is how government is run sometimes in this part of the archipelago. You build a dam and then wait for the water level to rise (reminds me of that bridge that never gets finished because it would destroy an-age old church). This October, President Macapagal Arroyo once again visited her favoured Bohol to officially inaugurate the Bayongan Dam , completed in controversy as it exceeded its 2.3 billion project cost by 52% (Bohol Chronicle, 14 October 2007). Despite opposition from farmer’s groups because of the project’s effects on the environment and its uselessness to address