The livelihood of the natural resource dependent families (NRDFs) directly depends on the availability, abundance and direct access to our natural resources. Protecting and conserving our natural resources simply means protecting the lives of the local people.

The essence of organizing the local community as a Site Support Group in Mount Diwata Range Important Biodiversity Area (IBA) for natural resource protection and conservation aims to improve the living condition of the forest-dependent families in the IBA by engaging themselves into forest-friendly livelihoods through linkage and networking building that brings to the realm of equal opportunities both for men and women to access natural resources for biodiversity conservation and development

Cagwait is one of the member municipalities in the province of Surigao del Sur, which has the jurisdiction over the remaining tropical rainforests of the Mount Diwata Range IBAs, one of the 117 Key IBAs in the Philippines, and one of the remaining habitats of the Philippines’ majestic and greatest flier, the Philippine Eagle (Haring Ibon).

The livelihoods of the forest-edge communities depend primarily on the various ecological service provided by this IBA; from potable water to irrigation, medicines, livelihood, cool air, and home to the indigenous peoples (IPs) belonging to the Mamanwa and Manobo tribes. This mountain range directly supports critical watersheds being shared by several towns occupying along its slopes, and its tributaries feed to the nearest coastal ecosystem, the Lianga Bay. The Lianga Bay is considered as one of the richest fishing grounds in the Philippines. The inter-connectedness of these ecosystems, from forest down to the coastal ecosystem, provide sustainable livelihoods for the local communities, particularly to the livelihoods of the vulnerable groups such as, the IPs, women, youth and the NRDFs.

Same condition with other IBAs in the Philippines, the Mount Diwata Range cannot be spared from unsustainable forest management practices undertaken both by the IPs and non-IPs. It is threatened by timber poaching, collection and gathering of non-timber forest products (NTFPs), kaingin and land conversion. With these realities on the ground, Haribon Foundation, the Birdlife partner in the Philippines decided to forge a partnership in collaboration with the La Purisima Agroforestry Farmers Association (LAFFA) in La Purisima, Cagwait, Surigao del Sur to implement sustainable livelihood options (Agro-forestry based livelihood) that will help bring back and improve the biodiversity in the IBA.

The purpose of LAFFA as a Site Support Group (SSG) is to improve the living condition of its members through the implementation of agro-forestry projects that are forest-friendly and non-destructive to the whole environment. They also intensify forest protection activities to regulate and minimize incidence of slash and burn kaingin among the members of the organization.

The forest-friendly livelihood undertaken by the SSG paved the way to somehow change their perception and behavior on “dole out” mentality. Previous government projects created this social mentality as early as the 1970s. Thus, Haribon’s project titled Governance and Local Development of Endangered (Golden) Project funded by the European Union (EU) focused its sustainable livelihood intervention to affected FDFs, which need to be diversified at the site, and to bring back the values of self-reliance and strong community commitment to bring back biodiversity and improve livelihood.

The type of the livelihoods (e.g. agro-forestry, bio-intensive gardening, organic soap making) that they have identified and implemented followed a rigorous participatory process before it was realized. Defining what sustainable livelihood is together with the participating FDFs was agreed first between Haribon and the SSGs to clearly define its objectives and expected outcomes, evolving on the concepts of integration between conservation and development.

Parallel to the implementation of their livelihood projects, a series of capacity building, awareness raising, networking and linkage building were conducted by Haribon to bring in together the members of the SSG into the paradigm of conservation and development. This has led the partner SSGs to craft their own local conservation plan to support the local government of Cagwait implement site conservation activities in the IBA.

The agro-forestry farming (a combination of indigenous forest-trees species, abaca/manila hemp and bio-intensive gardening/BIG) chosen by the partner SSG as one of the livelihood approaches to help arrest the issue on poverty reduction was primarily considered by the partner FDFs based on the interest and needs of its members.

The BIGs, which was established in their backyard and farm really help augment their basic need (food=vegetable) and find it a saving generation because they will no longer buy vegetables at the market. Addressing the basic need (food), answers the definition of sustainable livelihood as this is one of the reasons why they engage into forest destruction (timber poaching), selling timber/wood flitches to have food for their family especially during lean months.

This conservation approach in the IBA helped ensured that biodiversity is conserved and the local livelihood help provide the basic needs of the affected FDFs. Reducing the rate of forest degradation due to kaingin is one of the reasons why the SSG decided and selected this type of livelihood because the existing vegetation, usually indigenous forest trees thriving in their farm are protected.

The abaca thrives well shaded with trees. Both the fruit-bearing trees and abaca were planted in their existing farms, but not given for free. The SSG was able to plant around 4680 forest-trees seedlings in five hectares of forestlands within the IBA. For each fruit tree and abaca suckers they got from the project, they planted three native forest-trees seedlings in the restoration site identified by the local community and the local government of Cagwait. Livelihood conservation agreement was forged between the project and the FDFs, PO and local government to sustain the effort in protecting the remaining forest of Mount Diwata. Thus, this experience in La Purisima, Cagwait on livelihood cum biodiversity conservation is worth duplicating for.

This project was supported by EU, AECID and Birdlife International.