Visayan Sea Squadron Begins Patrols in Philippines
A team of volunteers known as the Visayan Sea Squadron began a continuous tour in January 2004 of this threatened, ecologically-rich body of water in the Philippines to watch for violations of environmental laws and conduct a broad-based information campaign to help protect the region.

The Visayan Sea is a relatively shallow body of water at the heart of the Sulu Sulawesi Marine Triangle and contains some of the richest biodiversity in the world. Running from the Philippine Islands down to Borneo, Malaysia, and across Indonesia, the triangle is so rich in fish and coral life that one square kilometer of its coral reef contains more species of coral than all the coral of the Caribbean Sea. Its marine populations include more than 12,000 species of fish - an abundance that once seemed so limitless it was referred to as the "Alaska of the Philippines" only 40 years ago.

But harmful, unsustainable human practices now threaten the area's biodiversity, bringing it to the verge of near total collapse. Blast and cyanide fishing methods and general overfishing have depleted the Visayan Sea by as much as 95 percent of its marine life and 99 percent of its coral.

The Visayan Sea Squadron's mission is to conserve, protect, and restore the Visayan Sea. Teams of volunteers will assess the level of compliance and enforcement of environmental laws within the country as well as try to gauge existing facilities and identify opportunities for intervention.

They will also provide information and education campaigns to the region's youth with audio visual presentations, create marine sanctuaries, conduct an underwater survey of the coral, fish, and other marine life, and run a series of hand-on legal empowerment workshops to local law enforcement personnel, barangay (village) officials, youth leaders and concerned citizens. One of their goals is to organize a local enforcement network that can be hooked up to regional, national and even international networks.

The Visayan Sea Squadron is a joint project of the Law of Nature Foundation and the Sail and Dive Expedition Group. It was organized by INECE EPC Member Antonio Oposa, Jr., a Philippine lawyer and the chairperson of the National Environmental Action Plan of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines.

The project will run for three years, from 1 January 2004 to 31 December 2007, and use the Bantayan Island Marine Sanctuary as its headquarters and base camp.

The volunteers comprising the Visayan Sea Squadron represent an assortment of specialists and experts nearly as diverse as the Visayan Sea itself. Divers, marine enforcement personnel, legal experts, teachers, architects, doctors, and others will continuously tour and monitor the Visayan Sea, covering a total area of about one million hectares.

The core group of volunteers includes: Capt. Rodolfo Estampador, Commodore Gaudencio Pena, teachers Erlinda Giducos and Winifredo Gulane, architects Ramon Tinga and Joy M. Onozawa, doctors Alfonso Amores and Kristin Trenas, and Messrs. Jessie and Jesan Batiancila, community organizer Caesar Morandarte, police officers Robert Pernito and Ruben Sano, Congressman Alfredo Maranon, and Oposa.

As part of their marine life census, teams will prepare a Field Monitoring Report that they will submit to local and national authorities and publish on the internet. In addition, the team will offer free technical assistance to help establish marine sanctuaries, fish refuges and breeding areas.

The monitoring project is designed to compliment the Philippine legal system. With environmental and natural resources law violations - seemingly victimless crimes - there has been far too much neglect. Because no human being is directly aggrieved, there is a lack of follow up and significant cases are too often dismissed or unfavorably settled.

The concept of a national monitoring team was devised to remedy this situation and to make the legal process more transparent. The monitoring team was created by an official agreement, entered into on 8 October 2003, between the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the Philippine Supreme Court and the Department of Justice. Oposa was appointed as special counsel to the parties.

For more information, contact Antonio Oposa at oposa@axti.com.

Changing the Face of Enforcement in the Philippines
Two recent environmental enforcement news stories: "Dynamite Fisher Ordered To Serve As Fish Warden" and "Makers of Blasting Caps Given 3-Month Reprieve From Arrest," demonstrate how the innovative efforts of Antonio Oposa, Jr., an environmental lawyer and INECE EPC member, are changing the way environmental laws are enforced in the Philippines.

Both stories report on environmental crimes committed in the Visayan Sea, a relatively shallow body of water in the Philippines that is one of the most ecologically diverse - and threatened - areas in the world. Blast fishing, cyanide fishing, and general overfishing have severely depleted the area's fisheries and coral.

Normally, environmental enforcement stories involve fines, imprisonments, and court-ordered cleanups. But in this case, the Philippine court suspended a 5-year prison sentence for a man convicted of using blasting caps and instead ordered him to perform an extraordinary kind of community service - he must now help enforce the laws he violated. "We're not just putting people in jail," said Oposa, whose environmental enforcement patrol group caught the man in January 2003. "We're sending a message."

The man was convicted of violating the Fisheries Code of 1998 and the National Integrated Protected Areas System Act. Blast fishing is illegal under the Fisheries Code, and he was doing it in the Taflon Strait, a protected area. He is the first person to be prosecuted for blast fishing under either of these laws.

But why set him free? What kind of a message does it send when the Philippine judicial system finally convicts someone of blast fishing - a practice that has literally ruined the environment there - and then orders him to perform community service? Why not send him to jail to make an example of him?

In his book The Laws of Nature and Other Stories, Oposa describes his theory of environmental enforcement. He writes that enforcing environmental laws will eliminate negative behavior, such as blast fishing, but that means nothing if it is not replaced with something positive.

Since the man became a fish warden, there have been no reports of blasts in that area.

This same philosophy underscored a Philippine mayor's decision to grant blasting cap manufacturers a 90-day reprieve from arrest so that they can find an alternative livelihood. The manufacturers and their families were invited to city hall to hear a lecture on the illegality and ill-effects of their business and informed that they must find another job during the reprieve or they will go to jail.

Oposa helped engineer the reprieve through his position as the Chairperson of the National Environmental Action Plan of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines. But his commitment is not limited to the courts and city hall.

Oposa has also donated his family beach house to the Bantayan Island Marine Sanctuary to serve as the operational headquarters of the Marine Enforcement Center and Youth Camp he started there.

The Center conducts monthly youth camps that teach environmental responsibility, coral reef ecology, solid waste management, astronomy, and environmental ethics to individuals from the surrounding region. In its first year, the Center trained approximately 180 youth leaders, school teachers, and community organizers.

Oposa is currently overseeing the Visayan Sea Squadron, a team of volunteers who seek to conserve, protect, and restore the Visayan Sea. The squadron will operate out of the Bantayan Island Marine Enforcement Center.

For more information, please contact Antonio Oposa at oposa@axti.com.

IUCN Inaugurates Academy of Environmental Law in China with its First Colloquium on Energy Law for Sustainable Development
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) launched a new scholarly network of environmental law faculties and professors in November 2003 to strengthen independent scholarly and professional research in environmental law.

IUCN inaugurated the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China with its 1st Colloquium on Energy Law for Sustainable Development. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi A. Annan presided over the inaugural ceremony, which included more than 150 professors, representing 90 university law faculties from 41 nations.

Secretary-General Annan welcomed the establishment of a "new global network of university law departments" dedicated to environmental law, which he described as "the principles and rules that states have adopted in order to protect precious ecosystems and resources upon with all life and progress depend."

The Colloquium sought to examine the energy reforms advocated at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2002 as part of the Academy's effort to implement the recommendations made at the 1992 "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro.

Among the principal legal, environmental, economic, and policy issues explored by the Colloquium speakers were:

	the need to phase out current subsidies provided to polluting fuels; legal systems to use traditional fuels more efficiently and to expand the use of renewable fuels;
	Chinese accomplishments in integration of environmental and social concerns in tandem with its efforts to promote economic growth;
	legal measures appropriate to regulate against market abuses in privatized energy systems;
	the need for greater research and development in cleaner utilization of fossil fuels and in development of new, clean energy sources, such as hydrogen;
	the role of sustainable energy as a prerequisite in order to meet the United Nations Millennium objectives of poverty reduction, together with legal provisions to ensure public participation; and
	the opportunities for promoting energy for sustainable development through local governments.

IUCN invites interested university law faculties, individual professors of environmental law, organizations and institutions concerned with the progressive development of environmental law and legal education, and donors to participate in the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law.

The Academy's second Colloquium will be held at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, 4-8 October 2004, on the topic Environmental Law and Land Use. For more information, please see http://www.iucn.org/themes/law/cel07a.html.