Building a Resilient Region

Collaborative Governance in Cities and

Communities of the Western Visayas

Stories from 15 Years of Philippines-Canada Cooperation

Contributors Supporting Organizations
Evan Anthony Arias Metro Iloilo-Guimaras Economic Development Council:
Alma Belejerdo City of Iloilo
Lisa Cavicchia Province of Guimaras
Andrew Farncombe Municipality of Leganes
Angeles Gabinete Municipality of Oton
Jahazel Gelito Municipality of Pavia
Francis Gentoral Municipality of San Miguel
Baltazar Gumana Municipality of Santa Barbara
Benito Jimena
Nereo Lujan Department of the Interior and Local Government - Region 6
Cristina Octavio
Jose Roni Peñalosa
Jay Presaldo Department of Tourism - Region 6
Andrea Roberts
Dr. Adrian Salaver
Dr. Joyous Jan Santos Municipality of Malay, Aklan Province
Dr. Sally Ticao

Editing, Layout & Design Publisher

Nereo Lujan
Ian Malczewski Canadian Urban Institute
555 Richmond St. West, Suite 402
PO Box 612, Toronto, Ontario
M5V 3B1 Canada
Photography
Tel: 416-365-0816
CUI
Fax: 416-365-0650
MIGEDC
cui@canurb.com
DILG
www.canurb.com
DOT
Municipality of Malay

Published with the financial support of the Government of Canada provided through the Canadian International
Development Agency (CIDA)
Canadian International Agence canadienne de
Development Agency développement international © 2009 Canadian Urban Institute
Preface:
Learning to Think and Act like a Region: A
Philippine Metropolis Comes of Age 2

Iloilo City:
Conserving a City’s Legacy for the Next
Generation 9

Guimaras:
The Role of Local Governments in
Economic Development 13

Guimaras:
Public-private Partnerships and
Community-based Tourism 17

Iloilo City:
Securing the City Through
Community-based Policing
 22
Metro Iloilo:
A Metropolitan Alliance to Improve
Urban Health Services 25

Metro Iloilo:
Managing Rapid Urban Growth through
Integrated Land Use Planning 29

Metro Iloilo Guimaras:

Metro-wide Investment Promotion 32

Guimaras:
A Community Comes Together to Fight
Poverty 35

Malay:
Boracay’s War on Waste 42

Malay:
Strengthening the Municipal Role in
Health and Sanitation 50
About This Casebook
Urban centres in the Asia-Pacific region are rapidly
growing. While it took London 130 years to grow
from a population of 1 million to 8 million, Bangkok
took only 45 years, Dhaka 37 years and Seoul only
25 years. According to the UN Habitat, by 2020,
two-thirds of the urban population in Southeast
Asia will live in only five mega urban regions, with
Manila tying with Bangkok in the second slot of
having the largest population by that time.
But it is in fact smaller cities that are home to
half of the urban world. According to the United
Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), these smaller
urban centres are expected to account for about
half of urban population growth over the next
decade. Although not as often in the news, it is
these smaller urban centres – with fewer human,
technical and financial resources and limited
governance capacity to manage growth – that will need the
attention of policy makers in the foreseeable future.
Managing rapidly growing urban centers is a big challenge
to local governments in the Philippines, on whose
shoulders rest the power and responsibility of addressing
concerns on poverty, informal settlements, housing, jobs,
water and sanitation, environment, crime and public safety,
to name a few.
In 1991, the Philippine government passed Republic Act
7610 otherwise known as the Local Government Code
(LGC). It transferred to local government units the power
and responsibility to provide a range of basic services
previously performed by the central government. This trend
toward government decentralization and empowerment
of local communities in local affairs deepened the roots of
democracy in the Philippines.
However, local government units (LGUs) found themselves
in limbo with the new law because they were unprepared
for decentralization. They lacked the basic capacity,
technical know-how and resources (financial, technical and
human) to plan, implement, monitor and evaluate activities
in an effective, autonomous and fully accountable manner.
Realizing the challenges ahead for the Philippines in
making decentralization work, the Canadian Urban Institute
(CUI) launched in 1994 an innovative partnership program
to help local authorities take on their new responsibilities
and to advance the empowerment of communities in local
decision-making. The Canadian International Development
Agency (CIDA), through its Canadian Partnership Branch,
has provided a generous financial contribution to the
project, as part of the Agency’s wider efforts to build
democratic governance in the country.
The geographic focus of the project is the Western Visayas
Region, one of the priority areas for intervention under
CIDA’s Country Development Framework. CUI works
with several local and regional government units in the
region, as well as with national level agencies with a local
development mandate. The project has been anchored
by the Department of the Interior and Local Government,
through its Region VI office. The CUI has helped its
partners in the region to imagine a sustainable future and
then work towards it.
This casebook shares the experiences and lessons learned
over fifteen years of CUI’s engagement with its partners in
the Western Visayas. It will take readers through ten cases
that demonstrate how the region recognized a problem or
challenge it faced, brought stakeholders together through
a process of civic engagement to determine a solution,
establish inter-LGU alliances, and then harnessed the
capacity of community members and the private sector to
realize the region’s goals. Knowledge transfer from Canada
and around the world – whether through experts, good
practice sharing or professional exchange – drove the
project’s innovations.
These cases serve as a model for how technical
assistance, international expertise and local knowledge
and resources can come together to make significant
improvements to the lives of citizens in a developing world
context. The projects presented here all have received
significant support over the years from CUI. A special word
of thanks goes to DILG and CIDA for having the vision to
support this Philippines-Canada collaboration over many
years and for the guidance in making it flourish.
Want More Information?
For more information about CUI, please visit www.canurb.
com or www.philippines.canurb.com. For more information
about MIGEDC, please visit www.migedc.org.ph. For more
information about DILG, please visit www.dilg.gov.ph. For
more information about DOT, please visit www.tourism.gov.
ph. For more information about the Municipality of Malay,
please visit http://www.malaylgu.com/ or http://www.malay-
aklan.gov.ph.
Preface
Learning to Think and Act like a Region: A Philippine
Metropolis Comes of Age
Standing amidst the stream of rural-
urban commuters on Ortiz Pier, one can
get a near perfect panorama of Iloilo
city and its region. Look closely and you
might even catch a glimpse into the past
or perhaps a few hints about what the
future holds for this rapidly growing city.
This is the Philippines’ fifth largest urban
region by population, and the second
oldest settlement in the country. It is the
undisputed commercial capital of the
Western Visayas group of islands and
centre of culture for the Ilonggo people.
It is also home to one of Canadian Urban
Institute’s longest running international
partnership programs.

The City and its Countryside

Iloilo’s port bustles with activity.
Foreign-registered cargo ships mix with
passenger ferries plying the Manila-
Mindanao route. A harbour perfectly
sheltered from open seas by the
adjacent island of Guimaras, it is easy
to understand why the Spanish conquistadores chose this
place in 1855 as a hub of maritime trade. Immediately
to the north, the city’s dense commercial centre crowds
a narrow peninsula jutting out into the sea. Its heritage
commercial buildings are monuments to the former
mercantile era and the wealth that came with the once-
flourishing sugar industry.
Poking above the skyline, the spires of churches, some
built as early as the 1700s, are lingering proof of the
country’s 400 years of Spanish rule. Nearby, grand
mansions and old houses from another time display their
unique blend of Asian and Hispanic architecture. They offer
a stark contrast to the squatter settlements perched above
the water’s edge along the harbour, a reminder that Iloilo,
like so many other cities in Southeast Asia, continues to
struggle with poverty.
Looking farther afield toward the horizon, one can see the
outer reaches of the region. To the west, the dormitory
municipality of Oton gives way to terraced rice fields,
farming villages, and the majestic mountains of Antique. To
the east and south across the narrow strait, rural Guimaras
island rises green out of the sea, the pattern of its famous
mango plantations visible on the hillsides.
Building the Regional City
Building the regional city is the theme of CUI’s program in
the Philippines. Running uninterrupted since 1994, it is a
unique partnership with 11 local government units (LGUs)
and their communities, both urban and rural, across the
greater Iloilo-Guimaras region.
“We have all been learning to think and act like a region,”
explains Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas as he speaks of
the collaboration with the Canadians. “A decade ago,
this region came to a collective realization that it was in
trouble. We were in a constant state of crisis management.
The issues we faced spilled from one local jurisdiction
to the next – mounting traffic congestion, worsening air
quality, inadequate potable water supply, deficiencies in
solid waste management, environmental degradation and
flooding, growing poverty and inequality. To move forward
we knew we needed to come together.”
And come together is exactly what has happened. In
February 2001, the core municipality of Iloilo City together
with the four adjacent suburban and rural municipalities
of Leganes, Oton, Pavia, and San Miguel established the
Metropolitan Iloilo Development Council (MIDC). Following
extensive consultation with regional stakeholders, visits by
Canadian regional governance experts, and CUI-organized
study tours to learn how metropolitan governance works in
other places, the member councils opted for a voluntary,
consensus-based arrangement that draws on some of
the best features of Metro Naga (metro.naga.gov.ph)
and Metro Vancouver (www.gvrd.bc.ca). The Philippines’
newest metropolitan arrangement was born.

2 Building a Resilient Region

Learning to Think and Act Like a Region: A Philippines Metropolis Comes of Age
But building the regional city did not stop with the
formation of MIDC. More recently, steps were taken to
bring neighbouring Guimaras Province and its five rural
municipalities into the regional family. Initiated in 2005, the
Guimaras-Iloilo City Alliance (GICA) established a formal
mechanism for urban-rural cooperation and linkages.
Cemented through a memorandum of understanding,
it was an impressive collaborative framework for the
marketing of tourism, the region’s most promising
economic opportunity, and for infrastructure development
such as ports and roads that helped move goods in the
important agro-industrial sector.
Metropolitan Governance Arrives
The most recent step along the path to improved regional
governance was the creation of the Metro Iloilo-Guimaras
Economic Development Council (MIGEDC) in August
2006. As successor to MIDC and GICA, MIGEDC is an
enlarged metropolitan body that brings into the regional
family the Province of Guimaras as well as the Municipality
of Santa Barbara, site of the new Iloilo International Airport
that opened
to commercial
traffic in June
2007. Created
through
Executive Order
No. 559 by
President Gloria
Macapagal-
Arroyo, MIGEDC
is seen as a
contribution
towards
implementing the
nation’s regional
development
strategy
and shaping
the ‘Central
Philippines
Mega-Region’ as
the nation’s tourist hub.
The MIGEDC Roadmap 2010 is the new strategic plan
for the region. It sets the region’s compass toward
a sustainable future, emphasizing economic growth
that benefits all citizens, environmental stewardship,
development of community assets, equitable access to
government services and a strong commitment to civic
engagement and public-private-community partnerships.
Some of the priority tasks identified by MIGEDC for the
next couple of years include preparing a regional growth
management plan, creating a strategy for integrated
regional infrastructure development, enhancing local
economic development, improving LGU fiscal affairs and
policy development functions, and generally responding
to the national government’s 10-point agenda and mega-
region economic development strategy.
Building a Resilient Region
Leadership for a Region
Leadership was what pulled Iloilo out from yesterday’s
state of crisis management towards today’s optimism
and collaborative action. As the long-time mayor of the
region’s central city, Treñas has been the leading advocate
of the urban-region-building process in Iloilo. But he has
not been alone in his mission. He was joined early on by
a legion of new-generation mayors and a governor from
rural reaches of the region. What they have in common is a
determination to do things differently and to leave this city
region a better place for future generations. Many of these
leaders have been irrevocably changed by their exposure
to lessons from other places, having viewed first hand the
experiences of Canada, Singapore, Australia and Malaysia
through their involvement in the CUI program.
“It has been nothing less than a paradigm shift for us all,”
notes Oton’s former mayor, Carina Flores. “Frankly it is
liberating. Thinking in the context of ‘urban’ and ‘regional’,
and no longer just ‘municipal’, has allowed all jurisdictions
to trade in municipal decision-making freedoms for the
collective decision-
making of MIGEDC
when it comes to the
big issues.”
Guimaras
Congressman and past
Provincial Governor
Dr. Rahman Nava
explains it a different
way. “The boat holds
strong symbolism of
community in Filipino
culture,” he says,
reminding us of how
the barangay, the
modern-day village
and neighbourhood
unit, has its roots in
the ancient nomadic
boat communities that
sailed the archipelago. “Filipinos are very good at working
collectively within our local communities, less so at a more
macro scale. What we are doing here is drawing on one
of our strongest legacies as a society, but this time we are
building a community of a different sort -- an urban and
regional community.”
Jumpstarting the Economy
Building a shared identity for the regional community has
indeed been one of the major challenges faced by greater
Iloilo. Focusing on defining the region’s comparative
advantage, the region has just completed a new economic
development strategy and a regional tourism action plan
that benefited from civic engagement at many levels.
“During our many learning tours overseas with CUI, what
we grew to understand was that to succeed we need to
compete in a globalized world,” notes Edwin Trompeta, the
Department of Tourism’s director for the Western Visayas
3
 Learning to Think and Act Like a Region: A Philippine Metropolis Comes of Age
Region. “So we opted for a culture-driven regeneration
strategy. An ‘attitude’ was what we needed, and branding
our city and our region was the first logical step towards
this.”
Under the banner “Festival Capital of the Philippines”, the
Iloilo region chose to jumpstart the local economy through
its Dinagyang Festival. Literally meaning ‘to make merry,’
Dinagyang is a two-day, city-wide party started in 1968 that
explodes onto the streets every January. It blends religious
and pagan traditions, celebrating both the feast of Santo
Nino and the pre-colonial tradition of the ati warrior through
costume and dance. The success of this new approach
has gone beyond expectations. Through a government-
private sector partnership arrangement that saw the
festival’s organization turned over to the Iloilo Dinagyang
Foundation, tourism arrivals have seen substantial jumps
over the past five years.
With the festival as its main tourism product, the city region
has gone on to construct a cohesive heritage tourism
portfolio to draw visitors to a range of Ilonggo culture
and local places. Promoting both urban and countryside
experiences, the product invites visitors to experience on
one day the richness of the central city’s energetic urbanity,
heritage buildings and sites, while on the next to take in
the pristine nature, serenity of farm and village life, and
white sand beaches of Guimaras. The “Experience Iloilo
Guimaras” marketing program, which is run out of the Iloilo
City Convention Bureau, is a new cooperative arrangement
of the national, provincial and local governments.
Rural Strategies for the City Region
“Tackling poverty is one of our main goals,” stresses Angie
Gabinete, Guimaras’ provincial tourism officer. “In an effort
to ensure the new tourism benefits our poorest residents,
we are really proud to have invested seed funds in several
important pilot initiatives.” Centred on a coastal hamlet in
4 Building a Resilient Region
southern Guimaras, the
Guisi heritage tourism
project is an impressive
community-run venture.
Heritage and ecology
are its themes. Staying
overnight in a traditional
cottage, tourists are
offered a package that
invites them to learn
traditional methods of
fishing and agriculture,
understand marine
resource protection,
observe the restoration of
the community’s colonial-
era lighthouse, hike to
the local cave, waterfall,
mountain and white-
sand beaches, and in
the evening experience
local barangay life, food
and culture alongside local residents. The Panindahan sa
Manggahan is a farm market festival that is turning the
island’s main public market, Alibhon in Jordan town, into a
tourist attraction and a celebration of eating locally grown
food. “Local farmers, fisherfolk, craftspeople and artists
need to capitalize on our increasing tourism, and this
allows them to showcase and sell their products,” Gabinete
notes. And a tour guide program, coordinated through the
recently established tourism information centre, is providing
new livelihood opportunities for the island’s young people.
“Our tourism program is part of a much larger, quite
sophisticated local economic development machinery on
Guimaras. It’s something you won’t find in too many other
rural areas of the country,” explains the Province’s senior
planner Evan Arias with evident pride of accomplishment.
Created in 2004, the Provincial Economic Development
Office (PEDO) is a new super agency on the island
that is working to strengthen the local economy, foster
a supportive investment climate and fight poverty by
creating livelihood opportunities. PEDO’s front office is
the Guimaras Trade and Information Centre (GTIC). It
serves as a one-stop shop for investors wanting to set up
business in the island, a showroom of local products and
services, and an incubator for small- and medium- sized
enterprises complete with training facilities. A testament
to the Province’s success, an initiative is now afoot within
MIGEDC to create economic development offices (EDOs)
in each of the member Local Government Units (LGUs),
modeled on the Guimaras experience of stewarding
community-based economic development.
Agriculture and fisheries are the other priority sectors for
Guimaras. Thanks to a state-of-the-art research station
and U.S. Department of Agriculture certification, the
island is now exporting mangos -- its signature crop -- to
North America and key markets in the Asia-Pacific region.
Rice, coconut, cashew, kalamansi (limes) and copra
Learning to Think and Act Like a Region: A Philippines Metropolis Comes of Age
are other important crops. Surrounded by rich fishing
grounds, the sea and its catch sustains life in 54 coastal
barangays. “PEDO is doing a lot to support growth in these
sectors,” continues Arias. “Our Agri-Fishery Development
Program pays special attention to our marginal and small
producers.” Today the program is working to strengthen
agricultural cooperatives, develop new processing facilities,
provide a common marketing system through GTIC and
improve farm-to-market infrastructure such as roads, public
markets and wharfs.
A Growth Management Framework
To achieve the city region’s economic renaissance,
local leaders understand well that it cannot be realized
without creating a liveable urban region. “If we are to
have a sustainable city, we need good governance and
coordinated, long-horizon planning and management
across the whole region,” notes MIGEDC’s Executive
Director José Roni Peñalosa. And this is what MIGEDC,
and before it MIDC, have been pursuing, and with vigour.
One of the first acts of the new metro arrangement was
to harmonize the land use plans of its five member
municipalities. Formulated through a major participatory
exercise, the Metro Iloilo Land Use Framework (MILUF)
Plan is a regional growth management framework. It
establishes six guiding principles: 1) complete communities
with a full range of housing, employment and services,
2) compact development in the central city and around
satellite towns, to combat sprawl and create a more
sustainable, poly-centric urban structure, 3) green (forest,
agricultural) and blue (coastal, estuary) zone protection,
4) transportation choices, such as mass transit, biking
and walking, to minimize traffic congestion, 5) economic
diversity, to promote investment and create jobs, and 6)
social equity to put a priority on access to housing and
basic services by the region’s poorest residents.
A similar process of plan harmonization took place in
Guimaras during the mid to late 1990s. Following an
island-wide participatory planning exercise that involved
the province, five municipalities and 96 barangay
Building a Resilient Region
councils, Guimaras produced an integrated strategic
plan. It is supported by a new land use plan, an economic
development agenda and a state-of-the-art geographic
information system.
A Devolution Revolution
CUI’s programming in the Philippines over the past 15
years has been undertaken with the financial support of the
Government of Canada through the Canadian Partnership
Branch (CPB) of the Canadian International Development
Agency (CIDA). With a focus on the Western Visayas,
CUI has been supporting the country’s continued thrust
towards decentralization of power to local governments
and empowerment of local communities in decision-
making. The tradition of strong central government power
and control in the Philippines, which dates back to the
beginning of the Spanish conquest, made an important
reversal in 1986 with the advent of the People’s Power
Revolution. This so-called bloodless revolution brought
the country into its current era of democratic development.
By 1991, a new Local Government Code (LGC) had been
“The region’s pursuit of good governance
is paying dividends.”
passed, beginning the process of devolution of power to
the local level and deepening the roots of democracy.
“What is happening in the greater Iloilo region is nothing
short of a devolution revolution,” says Evelyn Trompeta,
Western Visayas’ regional director for the Department
of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), the
national ministry responsible for overseeing the LGC’s
implementation. Because the Metro Iloilo-Guimaras
arrangement was a purely local initiative realized through
strong local leadership, she explains, there is local pride
and ownership in the alliance providing momentum and
cohesion across political lines into the future. It is indeed
testament to the power of the Local Government Code.
“The region’s pursuit of good governance is paying
dividends,” Trompeta adds. “MIGEDC is now a
preferred platform for implementation of national-level
urban region projects. It has also attracted investment
from a range of international development agencies.”
Indeed, the metropolitan alliance has working
international partnerships not just with Canada, but also
with the Asian Development Bank, Australia (AusAID),
Cities Alliance, Germany (GTZ), Japan (JICA) and UN-
HABITAT.
A Collaboration with Australia
In 2006, CUI embarked on a new local governance
project in the Philippines through a unique Australia-
Canada collaboration that is on the leading edge of
new approaches to harmonization and coordination
5
 Learning to Think and Act Like a Region: A Philippine Metropolis Comes of Age

of official development
assistance.

The Philippines-Australia
Local Governance
Development Program
(LGPD) worked to
enhance local economic
development in the country.
The program focused on
helping local governments
within a shared region
work together. By
promoting inter-municipal
collaboration and resource
sharing, LGPD aimed to
address critical constraints
to growing the economy,
while taking steps to
reduce poverty and achieve
sustainable development.

The project was funded by

AusAID, which manages
Australia’s official overseas
aid program. In April
2006, the Government of
Australia lifted restrictions
on foreign participation
regional offices of DILG is a major advance in setting up
in tendering, opening the door for CUI to join forces with
such institutional support infrastructure.
Adelaide-based Coffey International Development Pty Ltd.
to submit the winning bid.
Through its CIDA-funded program, CUI provides support
to LGRC Region VI (Western Visayas) as it carves out
Running from October 2006 to January 2008, LGDP
its important new role in supporting decentralization.
worked closely with local area development partnerships
The Center is active in promoting a culture of learning
(LADPs) in two pilot regions: the Metro Iloilo-Guimaras
as it becomes a purveyor of ideas, a disseminator
Economic Development Council (MIGEDC) and the
of information, and an advocate of multi-stakeholder
Provincial Government of Bohol.
approaches. Connecting and convening stakeholders
to advance integrated thinking on local challenges has
The Australian program was designed to build on the
become its important new role.
results flowing from many years of both Australian and
Canadian development cooperation in the local governance
To help the LGRC in Western Visayas to bridge the digital
sector. In addition to its work with the two LADPs, the
divide, a website was launched (http://www.lgrc6.org.ph/)
AusAID program supported policy reform to help bring
with support of CUI and other local civil society partners
about improved regional cooperation in other parts of the
including Iloilo Code NGOs, Process Foundation and
country. It also facilitates donor coordination at the local
the region’s three main academic institutions, Central
level.
Philippines University, University of San Agustin and the
University of the Philippines in the Visayas. The website is
With Coffey International Development as the managing
part of a program to pilot seven LGRCs across the country,
contractor of the program, CUI played the role of
spearheaded by DILG’s Local Government Academy
partnership advisor in the Metro-Iloilo Guimaras pilot
(DILG-LGA).
region.

LGRC as Knowledge Hub in Region VI Learning and Sharing Across Region VI

Working in conjunction with DILG and the Department
For devolution to work in a country as regionally
of Tourism (DOT), CUI has been active in spreading its
disparate as the Philippines, deconcentrated LGU
experiences and knowledge to other parts of the Western
support mechanisms are gaining in their importance for
Visayas. One of the Institute’s most active partnerships has
the promotion of good local governance and sustainable
been with the Municipality of Malay. Mass tourism and rapid
economic growth. The recent establishment of Regional
development on Boracay Island has created significant
Local Governance Resource Centers (LGRCs) within the

6 Building a Resilient Region

Learning to Think and Act Like a Region: A Philippines Metropolis Comes of Age
challenges for land management and
environmental protection and put strains
on the island community’s health care
system. To protect environmental health
and livelihood of local residents while
continuing to attract tourists to the ‘crown
jewel’ of the Philippines tourism industry,
Boracay’s leaders launched a number of
programs to strengthen its environmental
safeguards and improve its service
delivery systems.
CUI has lent its support to these initiatives
over the past decade. A first step was
to lead Boracay stakeholders through
a participatory process to prepare a The Plaza Libertad is one of Iloilo’s most cherished public spaces
sustainable development strategy for
the island. This was supported by a carrying capacity
analysis that drew attention to the early warning signs of
an impending ecological crisis on the island and rallied
decision-makers and the community around the need for
managing change in a unique tourism destination.
This participatory planning activity, which took place in the
late 1990s, led to a series of initiatives related to health
and solid waste management. Through LGU capacity
building, the Boracay Island Sustainable Health Services
Delivery Project has helped improve the health and
sanitation status on the island. It has helped improve solid
waste management, strengthen public health services to
residents, contract workers and tourists and raise the level
of awareness of people through information and education
campaigns. Steps were also taken to strengthen municipal
ordinances and development control guidelines in an effort
to improve the quality of the built environment and protect
ecologically sensitive zones.
The experiences and lessons learned in Malay are now
informing ongoing work related to sustainable tourism
development in the MIG region.
Reawakening the Filipino Tradition of
‘Bayanihan’
The most remarkable thing about MIGEDC is that it has
provided a framework for turning good ideas into action.
And partnership is at the heart of the development efforts in
Metro Iloilo-Guimaras.
“We gleaned a lot from our studies in Canada,” says
Cristina Octavio, MIGEDC’s Assistant Executive Director.
“The strong Canadian commitment to collective action and
building a healthy public realm in your cities has rubbed off
on us. As you can see from what is under way here, Iloilo
is really getting back on track to improve our public spaces,
places and community and social infrastructure.”
Renewing the public realm is a defining theme of the
Canadian Urban Institute’s work both in Canada and
around the world. “The quality of urban life has been rooted
Building a Resilient Region
deeply in the quality and strength of its public realm,”
observes CUI’s immediate past President David Crombie.
“Education, healthcare, social services, public transit, arts
and culture, energy resources, public safety and security,
justice, libraries, environmental stewardship, roads, streets
and public places have been the connecting tissues linking
our individual private worlds and fusing one generation to
another.”
Reawakening the Filipino tradition of bayanihan has
been an overarching theme of MIGEDC. The term comes
from the Tagalog words bayan (community) and anihan
(harvest) and has its origins in the tradition of a community
coming together for harvest and sharing in the fruits of
their efforts. Today the term refers to communal effort in
which shared challenges are overcome through community
unity, cooperation and partnership. Putting it another way,
David Crombie, CUI’s former President and CEO and
former Mayor of the City of Toronto, says “we are imagining
an urban future that challenges many of the conventions
of 20th century industrial practice and yet recalls some
forgotten wisdom.
Renewing the Public Realm
It is in the spirit of bayanihan that improvements to the
public realm of the MIG region are being pursued. Over
the past several years, MIGEDC and before it MIDC put in
motion a series of impressive city-building initiatives. Some
of the most important of these, which are explored in detail
in this casebook, are the following:
•  Metro Iloilo Health Alliance (MIHA) is the Philippines’
first inter-local health zone in a metropolitan setting. It
was established to provide more equitable access to
health services across the urban and rural municipalities
of the MIDC area. The Alliance was in response to a
critical shortage of health care resources and an uneven
quality of health infrastructure, services, and expertise
across municipal jurisdictions. In addition to providing a
new framework for integrated health planning, MIHA’s
main feature is a two-way referral system. This system
allows patients to move seamlessly from community-
level public health facilities (barangay health stations)
7
 Learning to Think and Act Like a Region: A Philippine Metropolis Comes of Age

to the highest level of specialized institutional care
and back, depending on patient need. Working with
PhilHealth, the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation,
the Alliance has paid special attention to establishing a
financing scheme to guarantee access to those unable
to pay.
•  Iloilo Investment Promotion Centre. To ensure that
Iloilo and the surrounding municipalities remain a
preferred destination for investors, the region established
the Iloilo Investment Promotion Center (IIPC) to promote
Iloilo City and the province as an investment destination,
to serve as a repository of information and services that
caters to the needs of prospective investors, and to link
government agencies at the national and local levels,
the private sector, and existing and potential investors.
In partnership with the Iloilo Business Club and industry
associations, the IIPC has worked to streamline the
investment process and to provide essential services to
prospective and ongoing investors.
•  Central business district revitalization. This important
initiative is restoring the historic city centre, known as
Calle Real, through improvements to the public realm
and actions to bring back vibrancy to businesses in
the area. It is designed to counter the area’s decline
following the construction of new malls in outlying parts
of the city. The goal is to one day make the old city a
centrepiece of the local tourism industry. The restoration
of the area’s impressive stock of heritage buildings is the
starting point. In April 2000, the local government created
the Iloilo City Cultural Heritage Conservation Council,
which has completed an inventory of heritage structures
and prepared new preservation policies and zoning.
A package of tax incentives is driving private sector
involvement in the restoration efforts. Other strategies
being pursued are the gradual phasing-
out of billboards, stricter enforcement of
signs, consolidation of utility poles and
lines, enhanced urban design guidelines,
traffic re-routing and the introduction of
pedestrian amenities.
facilities, providing training, and organizing study tours to
inspire improvements. A new annual award recognizes
outstanding community policing initiatives, approaches
and leadership across the urban region.
•  Improvements to key regional infrastructure. MIDC
has put in motion a series of projects to improve
several community assets of importance to the region.
To address mounting garbage disposal problems and
ward off imminent environmental and health problems,
efforts are afoot to convert the Calajunan dumpsite to
a sanitary landfill. Enhancements to the region’s public
markets, both in the central and outlying town centres,
will enhance food security, afford more opportunities
for farmers from the rural reaches of the city region to
sell their goods, and improve waste management and
recycling. MIDC has also worked closely with national-
level authorities during the planning and construction of
Iloilo’s new international standard airport in nearby Santa
Barbara, with an emphasis on ensuring the region’s
network of arterial roads provides adequate access to
the new facility.
A Regional Community, a Sustainable Urban
Future
Back at Ortiz Pier, yet another pumpboat fills with maritime
commuters on their way to Guimaras. In this nation of
islands, this has been a part of daily life for centuries. As
Governor Nava reminds us, these boats provide strong
symbolism of the regional community building that is
underway in Iloilo and Guimaras. This is a region in motion,
a city in change. Looking toward the horizon, one can see
a sustainable urban future in the making.

•  Metro Iloilo Safer Communities Project

has placed a priority on bolstering the
city’s long-established Community
Oriented Policing System (COPS).
Throughout the country, maintenance of
local peace and order and the promotion
of public safety at the neighbourhood
and village levels rest with barangay
tanods. Somewhat similar to the
neighbourhood block watches of North
America, these are groups of four to six
civilian volunteers that patrol the streets,
primarily at night, armed only with night
sticks and direct communication links
to police. The project is working with
tanods on several fronts. It is helping
to modernize their equipment and

8 Building a Resilient Region

Iloilo City
Conserving a City’s Legacy for the Next Generation
Walking through the streets of Iloilo City, one
could be forgiven for thinking he or she had been
whisked away in a time machine. While looming
malls have risen in several corners of the city, they
cannot overshadow the splendour of the colonial
buildings that adorn the city’s commercial centre
and its adjoining districts. These buildings are not
only testimonies to the city’s rich cultural heritage,
but are also tourism assets worthy of promotion.

However, these mute witnesses to the rise

and fall of the Queen City of the South are of
little interest to those who must struggle daily
to put food on their tables and clothes on their
backs. Jeepney drivers pay no attention to their
elegance. Sidewalk vendors shut their eyes to
their grandeur. Bargain hunters take no notice of
their value.

To most residents, these buildings serve as mere

backdrops for the clatter of traffic, the sweat
of commerce, and the dust of shopping. Their
splendour hidden behind cavalcades of billboards
and signage, many of these buildings might
understandably appear inconsequential to the
average Ilonggo.

Upon closer look, however, Iloilo City’s heritage

houses and buildings are treasures worth keeping,
not only because of their cultural value, but
because of their economic potential, too. The
Iloilo City government, recognizing this potential,
has embarked on a laudable program aimed at
conserving the city’s heritage while simultaneously
boosting economic development. By reviving
business activities along the city’s central
business district and preserving these historic structures,
this program aims to increase economic activity by inviting
tourists to explore the city’s colonial past.
But the program is not just about culture, tourism, and
economic development. It is also about public-private
partnerships, about a multi-stakeholder approach to
planning, and about the use of innovative approaches to
addressing complex and interweaving issues.
The Colonial Past
Built during the sugar boom and located predominantly in
the city’s Central Business District, these structures are not
just symbols of opulence and luxury, but are also proof of
Iloilo City’s economic, industrial, educational and cultural
dominance during the mid-19th and early 20th centuries.
In 1855, when Iloilo City’s port was opened to world trade,
the Queen City of the South was born. Serving as hub
for support services to the flourishing sugar industry in
nearby Negros Island, Iloilo City became host to banks,
social clubs, warehouses, machine shops, printing presses,
retail shops, commercial firms, educational institutions and
medical services.
Iloilo City’s population then was already sizable, notes
historian Alfred McCoy in his book “Philippine Social
History.” During the 1850s, it already had a population
of 71,600, making it a city of the same size as Sydney
(54,000 in 1851), Chicago (84,000 in 1856) or Buenos
Aires (91,000 in 1855)1.
Before the turn of the twentieth century, Iloilo City already
boasted electricity, telephones, telegraphs, railways, ice
plants, automobiles, theatres, paved roads, and other
1
Alfred W. McCoy, Ed. C.DeJesus, Philippine social history: global trade
and local transformations (Manila: Asian Studies Association of Australia,
Ateneo de Manila University Press,1982)

Building a Resilient Region 9


modern conveniences. It was also the home to the
country’s first department store, first car assembly plant,
first commercial airline, and first luxury liner. Proof of its
early global dealings rested in the presence of foreign
business houses and the consular offices of Spain, Great
Britain, China, Japan, Netherlands and Norway.2
Even outside of the commercial district, Iloilo City’s
distinguished history can be found. The famed cathedral of
Jaro and its belfry across the street as well as the church
of Molo symbolize the engineering genius of the Spanish
friars. The academic legacies of the Ilonggos started with
the tutelage of the Augustinians and other religious orders
that opened a number of schools that still engage young
minds today. Iloilo City’s mansions and historic houses
stand with majesty as they display a unique mix of Asian
and Hispanic architecture.
The decline of the sugar industry and the subsequent
Japanese invasion not only doomed the city’s economy, but
also left some of these structures in ruins. While nothing
can be done to rebuild or restore those that were ravaged
by neglect and bombs, those that remain can still be saved.
Conservation efforts are a must not only to promote Iloilo
City’s cultural heritage, but also to protect these heritage
structures from destruction as they face pressures from
new development.
Restoring Pride
These structures can be a source of pride for every
Ilonggo, standing as reminders that their city was once
an important economic anchor for the Philippines during
both the Spanish colonial period and the American
commonwealth era. As such, they can encourage everyone
to strive for greatness.
Restoring the splendour of these structures, especially
those found in the Central Business District, can also
provide the local government with much-needed income
from tourism. Iloilo City’s distinctive landscape, the unique
architecture of its heritage structures, and its historical
wealth can give tourists a very fulfilling visit. In countries
like Malaysia and Thailand, cultural and heritage sites are a
major attraction for their respective tourism industries.
Recognizing this, the Department of Tourism (DOT) and
the Canadian Urban Institute (CUI) sponsored in October
1998 a cultural heritage tourism workshop. CUI’s work was
undertaken with the financial support of the Government
of Canada provided through the Canadian International
Development Agency (CIDA). This workshop was attended
by individuals from local and national governments, cultural
institutions, universities, tourism-related businesses,
and concerned citizens. The intent of the workshop was
to introduce the audience to the concept of cultural and
heritage tourism, to identify local cultural and historical
resources, and to determine how they could be best
marketed locally, nationally, and internationally.
2
Regalado, Felix B; Franco, Quintin B. (1973), Griño, Eliza B., ed., History
of Panay, Central Philippine University
10
Iloilo City: Conserving a City’s Legacy for the Next Generation
After a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and
threats) analysis for heritage tourism development in Iloilo
City, the following recommendations were made:
•  Have heritage and cultural tourism as the major thrust
of local tourism planning;
•  Encourage an Iloilo heritage and cultural tourism
focus within national tourism planning;
•  Create local capacities to develop and promote
cultural and heritage tourism opportunities; and
•  Use the Internet as a more effective promotional tool.
Responding to the call for cultural and heritage tourism,
in April 2000 the Iloilo City government created the Iloilo
City Cultural Heritage Conservation Council (ICCHCC)
by enacting the Local Cultural Heritage Conservation
Ordinance. The council, composed of individuals from
the arts and culture community, was envisioned to be
a government body responsible for advancing cultural
heritage conservation and promotion. It also addressed
the call of the Tourism Sector Plan and the Environmental
Management Sector Plan of the 1998-2010 Iloilo City
Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP) for a program on
heritage conservation.
Preserving Heritage
The council was tasked to conduct an inventory of cultural
heritage and legacy buildings and to develop and make
known rules and regulations for their preservation. Through
these strategies, the council aimed to address the need
to preserve the city’s remaining heritage structures and
to enhance the city’s tourism potential. Tourism is a
potentially major economic driver for Iloilo City, generating
investments and local government revenues as well as
jobs for its people.
The main target of this conservation effort is the Central
Business District, which consists of the streets of J. M.
Basa, Aldeguer, Mapa, Guanco and Iznart. Declared as
the Iloilo City Heritage Zone, the area is home to Art Deco-
styled commercial buildings built between the 1920s and
the 1950s. A catalogue of these buildings has already been
prepared as an initial step in conservation planning.
The ordinance, which underwent some amendments in
April 2001, states that all buildings in Iloilo City that are 50
years old or more are to be considered heritage or legacy
buildings. Likewise, Plaza Libertad and the district plazas of
Molo, Arevalo, Mandurriao, La Paz and Jaro were declared
historical and cultural landmarks and could only be used for
historical, cultural and fiesta celebrations. The ordinance
mandates that the use, upkeep and preservation of these
structures and landmarks as far as practicable shall always
be the concern of the Iloilo City government.
Owners, administrators, lessees or any other people in
charge of heritage or legacy structures are prohibited from
undertaking any repair, rehabilitation or construction of any
kind unless there is a favourable recommendation from
Building a Resilient Region
Iloilo City: Conserving a City’s Legacy for the Next Generation

spur more investments and

create more jobs.

the ICCHCC. In the event that the repair or rehabilitation
is urgent, building owners, administrators or lessees are
mandated to make sure that the façade showing the
architectural design of the buildings is retained, restored
and preserved.
All businesses within the heritage zone are given
incentives. These include exemption from payment of
business taxes and building fees. Old investors as well
as new ones can avail themselves of these incentives as
long as they are in the heritage zone. These include the
following:
•  For every ten years of existence in the area, one year
of exemption from business taxes but not exceeding
three years.
•  For those putting up new businesses with a
capitalization of at least P1 million pesos, 25 percent of
exemption on business taxes for every P1 million for one
year.
•  In case of preservation, reconstruction and restoration
of legacy or heritage buildings, the owner is exempted
from paying building fees while lessors are not required
to pay business taxes for two years.
These incentives aim to revive business activities within the
heritage zone which, prior to the onset of shopping malls,
was the busiest area in Iloilo City. With challenges like
shrinking business profitability, deteriorating commercial
area and poor environment, it is feared that the Central
Business District will have an untimely demise if nothing
is done to rescue it. The revival of the area is expected to
Conservation
Framework
To achieve the goals
of the cultural heritage
conservation program,
the council, with the
assistance of CUI,
prepared in 2001 the Iloilo
City Cultural Heritage
Conservation Framework.
The document, completed
following a multi-
stakeholder strategic
planning workshop,
outlines the issues, goals
and strategic actions for
preserving and promoting
Iloilo City’s cultural heritage
in general, and the Central
Business District in
particular.
Guided by the vision
statement “Iloilo City: The
Heart of Visayan Heritage,”
the framework sought to
transform Iloilo City into a “culturally-vibrant community
working for the preservation, development and promotion
of its heritage.” Its goals and objectives are:
•  To increase awareness and generate political support
for cultural heritage conservation;
•  To enhance community awareness and public
education of the value of cultural heritage;
•  To establish a sustainable organizational structure
to coordinate the government and private sectors’
involvement in cultural heritage initiatives;
•  To strive for professional standards of coordination
and cooperation among key stakeholders involved in
cultural heritage conservation and promotion;
•  To formulate legislation and policies that promote
heritage conservation (i.e., policies, zoning, urban
design, etc.);
•  To provide incentives to property owners for
revitalizing their heritage buildings;
•  To establish funding for conservation technologies.
It also gives particular focus to the Central Business
District (CBD), which used to be an area rich in cultural,
social, commercial and political development. With the
establishments of new malls in the city, however, the
CBD has faced many challenges, including shrinking
business profitability, deteriorating commercial area, and
poor environment. This reflects the city’s economic health,
local quality of life and community heritage of trade and
commerce. The framework thus sought to:

Building a Resilient Region 11


•  Improve urban design and planning for the CBD;
•  Increase business activities by improving downtown
products and services;
•  Attract investments for the CBD; and
•  Ensure effective management of the CBD’s
preservation efforts.
The CBD Preservation Framework aims to strengthen the
downtown area’s position as a special heritage zone for
socio-economic and cultural development. Its strategies
include the preparation of ordinances that will call for the
gradual phase-out of big billboards and the regulation of
signage, the enforcement of environmental standards to
enhance urban design and structures, traffic re-routing, and
the introduction of pedestrian amenities.
To invigorate the business vibrancy of the CBD, the
framework exposes key stakeholders to best practices
in CBD revitalization and implementing business
improvement practices. It also intends to organize a
“heritage watch” to monitor compliance of the CLUP and of
the city’s zoning ordinance. Demonstration and partnership
projects are also sought to encourage participation in
cultural heritage conservation and promotion.
Taking Action
With financial assistance from the Ford Motor Company
Conservation and Environmental Grants, the ICCHCC
completed the first phase of the Iloilo City Downtown
CBD Heritage Buildings Catalogue Project, producing a
progress report in September 2002. Considered an initial
step in conservation planning for the city’s oldest business
centre, it aimed to generate baseline information on the
city’s heritage buildings in the downtown CBD, which could
then be applied to the planned heritage conservation and
12
Iloilo City: Conserving a City’s Legacy for the Next Generation
economic revitalization activities for the
area.
The Catalogue Project also promoted
public awareness and participation in
the protection and preservation of the
city’s heritage buildings and sites, and
encouraged public-private partnerships
in community development through the
project’s multi-stakeholder approach in
project planning and implementation.
The catalogue project was undertaken
by the council in cooperation with the
Arki Club of the University of San
Agustin, Department of Architecture,
and the Business Research Class of
the University of the Philippines in the
Visayas College of Management. The
City Environment and Natural Resources
Office and the City Tourism Office
provided logistical support.
The project resulted in the profiling
of buildings, which include the
measurement of nine lots and 16
building areas. A total of 31 sketches of building elevations
and ornamentations were also made. It also yielded
six architectural drafts of buildings’ perspectives, front
elevation drawings of 20 buildings, and spot details
showing ornamentations from 22 buildings. Photo-
documentations were also undertaken of facades and
building ornamentations.
Among the buildings surveyed include the 1922 S.
Javellana Building on the corner of J.M. Basa and Guanco
streets; the 1925 S. Villanueva Building on the corner of
Aldeguer and J.M. Basa Streets that used to house the
International Hotel, the first hotel in Iloilo City; another S.
Villanueva Building on J.M. Basa Street built in 1927; the
1927 Cine Palace, now the Regent Theater Building also
on J.M. Basa Street; and the Elizalde-Ynchausti Building
built in the 1930s also on J.M. Basa Street.
The ICCHCC, in partnership with ABS-CBN Television
Network, has also produced a 10-minute video on cultural
heritage conservation in Iloilo City to promote awareness
and generate public support for preservation efforts. The
video is shown occasionally on local cable TV programs.
It has also become a promotional tool for cultural heritage
tourism in Iloilo City.
ICCHCC has also been working closely with the National
Commission for Culture and the Arts and the Filipino
Heritage Festival Inc. for the annual hosting of the National
Heritage Month, held every May following a proclamation
by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The celebration is
held to raise the consciousness of Filipinos with respect to
their patrimonial heritage and the need to preserve it.
By the end of January 2009, the ICCHCC was completing
Building a Resilient Region
Iloilo City: Conserving a City’s Legacy for the Next Generation

the final draft of the Implementing Rules and Regulations
for Local Cultural Heritage Conservation Ordinance for
adoption of the Iloilo City council.
A related activity is the “Pretty Plaza, Banwa Gwapa”
contest, the annual search for the most beautiful plaza
within the various local governments of the Metro Iloilo-
Guimaras Economic Development Council (MIGEDC).
Banwa is Hiligaynon (the language in Metro Iloilo-
Guimaras) for “town” and gwapa is “beautiful.”
The contest aims to encourage local governments to
invest in the public realm and at the same time preserve
the cultural significance of plazas to communities. When
Spanish colonizers came to the Philippines, they enacted
a policy known as reduccion, in which they mandated that
towns be built around a central plaza. The plaza’s central
purpose was interaction, providing a paseo (promenading
area) during the day and an adelance (night market) at
night.
projecting itself as a cultural tourism destination and
by providing more economic prospects for its people in
the form of employment and livelihood opportunities. Of
late, at least five new hotels opened in the city, bringing
the total number of hotels with first class, standard, and
economy accommodations to 17. Complementing these
hotels are accredited tourist inns, pension houses, resorts,
restaurants, shopping centres, handicraft stores, and
antique dealers all over the metropolis. In 2004, Iloilo
City visitors reached 292,924 domestic tourists, 28,730
Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) and 15,176 foreign
tourists.

It is in these plazas where the Filipino tradition of

pakikipagkapwa, a holistic interaction with others,
was nurtured, resulting in the laudable practices of
pagtutulungan (mutual self-help) and kawanggawa
(charity).

“Pretty Plaza, Banwa Gwapa” is not just a competition

but also a venue to learn lessons and improve the
management of public spaces.

Boosting the Economy

Reviving the Central Business District (CBD) to encourage
investments in the area can provide a boost to the city’s
economy, but this is just one factor that may spur growth
and development. By and large, it is the city’s positioning
as a cultural destination that will eventually serve as an
impetus of economic advancement as far as tourism is
concerned. Heritage buildings, old houses and churches,
historical spots, festivals and food, all of which can be
found in Iloilo City, provide a perfect cultural experience for
tourists.

The experience of Vigan City in Ilocos Sur province

provides a clear picture of what Iloilo City can hope to
achieve once it develops its cultural tourism potential.
Considered the best-preserved example of a planned
Spanish colonial city in Asia, it implemented the Vigan
Heritage Conservation Program in 1995 when it was still
a second class municipality with a budget of P24 million
(US$500,000). In 1997, it became a first class municipality
with a budget of P54 million (US$1.1 million). In 1999,
when it became a UNESCO world heritage site, it had a
budget of P63 million (US$1.34 million). In 2001, after it
became a city, it had a budget of P134 million (US$2.84
million). In 2002, its budget as a heritage city was P141
million (US$3 million).
With structures and policies already in place, thus ensuring
the program’s sustainability beyond changes in political
leadership, Iloilo City’s cultural heritage conservation
efforts will surely bear fruit for a proud people. By the time
the economic benefits have trickled down to the everyday
citizens, all pedestrians, both local and visiting, will value
both the economic and cultural contributions of Iloilo City’s
unique heritage.

Iloilo City can very well increase its revenue base, by

Building a Resilient Region 13

Guimaras
The Role of Local Governments in Economic Development
Guimaras may have been caught flatfooted when an oil
spill devastated its shores in August 2006, but it was quick
to find its way out of the crisis. The environmental disaster
wrought havoc on the island-province’s tourism and fishing
industries, heavily affecting the towns of Nueva Valencia,
Sibunag and San Lorenzo. The two other towns – Jordan
and Buenavista – were less affected, but likewise felt
the impact of the declining market confidence in fishery
products caught in Guimaras waters.
However, the oil spill’s impact on the island’s economic
drivers was cushioned by the maximization of fund
assistance from the various agencies that poured into
Guimaras in the wake of the disaster and through the
coordination of all economic development efforts in the
province. These tasks fell on the shoulders of the Provincial
Economic Development Office (PEDO), the department
responsible for harmonizing all economic activities and for
providing technical and administrative support to municipal
governments in the area of trade and investment, tourism,
enterprise development and cooperative development.
PEDO’s vision is “to make Guimaras the preferred tourism
and investment destination for agriculture, fishery and
tourism in the country.” PEDO’s mission, on the other
hand, is “to provide strategic direction, leadership and
action to strengthen the Guimaras economy to support the
province’s poverty reduction goals.”
PEDO was created in 2003 when the provincial
government under then Gov. Felipe Rahman Nava
reorganized the entire provincial administrative structures
through Resolution No. 042, or the “Proposed New Plantilla
Positions Structure of the Provincial Government of the
Province of Guimaras.”
Poor but Rich
When Guimaras became a full-fledged province in 1992,
it was likened to the proverbial “poor man sitting on a
mountain of gold.” Among the major problems that local
government officials faced then were poverty, the lack of
employment opportunities for its people and the absence
of investments to bring much-need revenues for local
governments.
At that time, the island’s poverty incidence based on the
food threshold was 75 percent, meaning that 75 percent of
its people could not afford the minimum food requirement
to sustain their well-being. Most of the island’s labour force
was employed in nearby Iloilo City, a highly urbanized
city 15 minutes away by boat. In 1990, Guimaras had an
unemployment rate of 15.4 percent, much higher than the
regional (Western Visayas) and the national rates of 11.7
and 8.5 percent, respectively.
Moreover, investments were limited to small-scale
14
ventures, which were not enough to create jobs for the
unemployed. There were no funds available for basic
services to address the needs of the poor. It was not
surprising to find Guimaras in the so-called “Club 20,” that
infamous list of the 20 poorest provinces in the Philippines
as identified under the Social Reform Agenda of then
President Fidel Ramos.
Despite this grim picture, there was a lot of optimism for
Guimaras, given its great potential. The 60,457-hectare
island has a rich fishing ground that sustains its 96 coastal
and inland villages (barangays). It is endowed with a
variety of tourist spots and other attractions like cultural
festivals and landmarks. It is also considered the mango
capital of the Philippines, producing big, sweet mangoes
that travel as far as the United States. And development
planners proclaim it as the island to watch in light of plans
to put up free-trade zones and industrial-tourism estates in
Guimaras.
The Realization
Turning the optimism for Guimaras into reality has been a
great challenge for local governments. Development and
capacity-building assistance started to pour in. In 1994, the
provincial government, with the assistance of the Canadian
Urban Institute (CUI), embarked on a strategic planning
and implementation process to respond to the needs of
the new province. CUI’s work in Guimaras was undertaken
with the financial support of the Government of Canada
provided through the Canadian International Development
Agency (CIDA).
“When Guimaras became a full-fledged
province, it was likened to the proverbial ‘poor
man sitting on a mountain of gold’.”
The program, which involved all three levels of local
governments, non-governmental organizations and
civil society, aimed to develop the capacities of local
governments to promote sustainable development
practices and community involvement in local decision-
making.
Through community-based planning using a grassroots,
gender-oriented bottom-up approach that involved
communities and stakeholders from across Guimaras, a
number of realizations were made. Stakeholders found
that there was a lack of proper coordination of provincial
resources for the delivery of tourism, trade and investment
promotion and employment on the island. Economic
development efforts of the national government agencies
and the provincial and municipal governments were
Building a Resilient Region
Guimaras: The Role of Local Governments in Economic Development

uncoordinated, resulting in duplication

in the content of some programs
and services, little impact on poverty
reduction, and slow growth in
investment.

The Proposal
Thus, the Guimaras Economic
Development Strategy – one of
the major outputs of the CUI’s
program – proposed the creation
of an office to coordinate economic
development efforts to maximize
human and financial resources to
effectively achieve economic goals
and targets. This was also stressed in
the Guimaras Medium Term Provincial
Development Plan (MTPDP) of 1998-
2004, which identified inadequate
access to resources, basic services
and economic opportunities among
the major problems besetting the
people in Guimaras, particularly
so-called poverty groups such as
farmers, fisherfolk, urban poor, cultural minorities and
other marginalized groups like children, women, persons
with disabilities and the elderly. Such inadequacy was due
to the low level of new investment in agriculture, industry
and services, a condition that contributed to poverty in the
province.
The creation of this office sought to address the following:
•  Uncoordinated economic development efforts of
different local and national agencies
Concerns were raised regarding the uncoordinated
organizational arrangements for economic development
efforts. Several national and provincial government
departments, agencies and municipal governments were
involved in facets of an economic development program,
but there was little or no coordination of these efforts.
As a matter of fact, economic development in the
Province of Guimaras had advanced mainly due to
a variety of economic development programs and
projects implemented by government, non-governmental
organizations and business groups. Approximately a
third of the annual total internal resources allotment was
being allocated for various economic projects, aside
from the grants provided by the national government and
international agencies.
Numerous cooperatives and people’s economic
development organizations had emerged over the years,
providing increased economic assistance to citizens. Some
of these programs have similar objectives and strategies
and employ similar structures and mechanisms with some
duplication in the content of programs and services. This
was attributed to the absence of an efficient coordinating
body at the provincial government level that determined
modes of complementation and coordination.
•  Absence of an Investment Promotion Unit at
the provincial level to take charge of investment
promotion initiatives for the province
The absence of an office that was primarily mandated
to implement economic initiatives to maximize the
resources and potential of Guimaras had been limiting
the development of the economic sector. Considering the
need to effectively coordinate all initiatives particularly
on local economic development, the concept of creating
a department under the provincial government was
proposed. Such a unit was envisioned to function as the
primary office mandated to coordinate and implement all
local economic development activities focusing on tourism
development, cooperative development, investment
promotion, and business and enterprise development.
It was mandated to implement economic initiatives to
maximize the resources and potential of Guimaras, thereby
boosting the development of the economic sector.
Legal Basis
With this common idea of creating an office for local
economic development, the next question for Guimaras
was: Does it have the power and resources to create such
an office? Republic Act No. 7160 - otherwise known as
the Local Government Code of 1991 - allows every local
government unit in the Philippines to design and implement
its own organizational structure and staffing pattern based
on its priority needs and service requirements. It likewise
illustrates local economic development as an important
local government function and pushes for a system
of sound local governance based on the principles of
openness, accountability, efficiency and equity.

Building a Resilient Region 15

 Guimaras: The Role of Local Governments in Economic Development
A number of legal provisions in the code were vital to
Guimaras’ ability to create PEDO. The code allowed
Local Government Units to enter into joint ventures and
other cooperative arrangements with non-governmental
organizations; to design and implement their own
organizational structure and staffing patters; to formulate
long-term, medium-tem and annual socio-economic
development plans and policies; and to formulate local
investment incentives to promote the inflow and direction of
private investment capital.
The Answer
CUI then assisted Guimaras in completing a proposal for
the creation of the Provincial Economic Development Office
(PEDO). In 2003, the provincial government of Guimaras
reorganized its structures and this offered an opportunity
for the creation of PEDO for the purpose of fostering
a supportive and competitive investment climate in
Guimaras. Proposed positions and structures were
created and the new set-up was approved, taking effect
in January 2004. Specifically, PEDO has the following
mandate:
•  Retain and expand existing business in agriculture,
fishery and tourism;
•  Attract new investments in priority sectors of agri-
tourism, agriculture and fisheries;
•  Manage provincial government enterprises and
ensure effective business support policies and
services;
•  Benchmark progress in Guimaras and best
practices nationwide; and
•  Strengthen the entrepreneurial capacity of
cooperatives, associations and groups.
The Structure
PEDO is headed by a Department Head who reports
directly to the governor. Key staff members are in charge
of the various sections of tourism promotion, investment
promotion, employment and enterprise management. The
office is tasked to build partnerships and linkages with
other provincial departments, municipal governments,
national government agencies and the business sector to
implement various economic projects and programs. The
partnerships are governed by Memoranda of Agreement
(MOA) and managed by PEDO.
With 11 employees, PEDO has three divisions: Tourism
Development, which is in charge of tourism planning and
implementation, monitoring, evaluation and promotion
and marketing; Cooperative Development, which takes
care of cooperative, farmer and fishermen organization
development and training, linkage building and networking
and technical assistance to cooperative management; and
Trade, Investment and Employment Promotion, which is in
16
charge of investment promotion, trade and development,
networking and marketing employment assistance,
enterprise planning and business development, support
services development and management, as well as
resource mobilization.
Working in partnership with the business sector and
provincial and national government stakeholders involved
in economic development, PEDO is likewise mandated to
promote economic development for Guimaras, serve as
link between the provincial government, the municipalities,
national government agencies, and the private sector
in economic development, and provide leadership and
strategic direction in the realization of Guimaras’ economic
development potential. Its role is to serve as enterprise
manager of provincial enterprises and as facilitator, planner
and monitor of local economic projects and activities.
PEDO’s mandate is also to manage and operate the
Guimaras Trade and Information Center (GTIC), a
showroom of all Guimaras products and services that
also serves as a one-stop information centre for tourists,
investors, existing businesses, and business associations
responding to investment inquiries with data and advices.
It also works with site selectors to promote new investment
in Guimaras, conducts training sessions, and provides
business development services. GTIC supports small
entrepreneurs in trade and investment promotion, provides
business and economic information, promotes Guimaras
tourism and expedites investment generation for the island.
The Innovation
The Provincial Economic Development Office is not
among the departments officially listed in the Local
Government Code of 1991, but considering that the law
allows every local government unit in the Philippines to
design and implement its own organizational structure and
staffing patterns based on its priority needs and service
requirements, the province of Guimaras opted for the
Building a Resilient Region
Guimaras: The Role of Local Governments in Economic Development
creation of PEDO after thoroughly assessing its conditions.
Transferability and Sustainability
The creation of PEDO was embodied in Resolution No.
042, series of 2003, by the Sangguniang Panlalawigan
(or Provincial legislature) of Guimaras which approved
the “Proposed New Plantilla Positions Structure of the
Provincial Government of the Province of Guimaras.”
The same was subsequently approved by the provincial
governor and took effect on January 2004. Its creation
worked within the framework of the Local Government
Code of 1991 and, as such, can be replicated by any other
local government unit in the Philippines.
A 2007 study by the International Labour Organization
noted: “... Guimaras also referred to the (Local Government
Code) to convert the island into a province, investing in
an intensive and extensive consultation process with key
officials and technical and support staff from the provincial,
municipal and barangay levels. It mobilized relevant line
Building a Resilient Region
government agencies operating in the province and various
private sector stakeholders, reorganized the Provincial
Local Government Unit (PLGU ) towards service efficiency,
established a Provincial Economic Development Office
(PEDO) to coordinate all the economic concerns of the
province, and instituted employment-oriented functional
units (under the PEDO).”
Thus, the creation of PEDO illustrates that local economic
development is an important local government function
and that a system of a sound local governance based
on the principles of openness, accountability, efficiency
and equity should be pushed. With a staffing pattern and
corresponding budget allocated year after year, PEDO is
here to stay in Guimaras, having already become part of
the provincial structure.
With PEDO around, the economic future of Guimaras
is being charted along the right path, helping surmount
challenges like the oil spill of August 2006.
17
Guimaras
Public-private Partnerships and Community-based Tourism
Columnist-architect Augusto Villalon said that one of
his most prized memories from his visit to Guimaras was
his time spent with a driver named Cristobal Gonzaga, a
resident of San Miguel village in Jordan Town. Cristobal not
only drove Villalon, one of the Philippines’ foremost cultural
writers, around the island-province, but he also told stories
about the places he took him.
Villalon, who writes a column in the Philippine Daily
Inquirer, later learned that Cristobal was among those
trained as a guide through an award-winning public-private
partnership program for tourism development. The program
was piloted in Guimaras, an island in the heart of the
Philippines around the size of Singapore, after it became a
full-fledged province in 1992.
“My great surprise in Guimaras was discovering people
like Cristobal, who give community tourism the respect it
deserves. They take visitors to see their home province
with pride and dignity, leaving guests with an enjoyable
experience and great memories of the place,” Villalon wrote
in his piece, “A day in Guimaras.”
Villalon is not the only visitor who has noticed how
tourism, particularly community-based tourism, has
become everybody’s business in Guimaras. Over the
years, thousands of tourists have visited Guimaras and
left with memories of its natural beauty and its people’s
unique culture, thanks to a close collaboration between the
government and the private sector.
Villalon’s article appeared in his newspaper’s May 5, 2007
issue. Amazingly, ten months before, Guimaras made the
18
same newspaper’s headlines as the victim of the worst
environmental disaster in the country’s history: an oil tanker
spill off the eastern coast of Guimaras on August 11, 2006,
which dumped about two million litres of bunker fuel into
the sea.
The tragedy wreaked havoc not only on the island’s marine
reserves and the livelihood of its coastal residents, but also
on the tourism industry that had anchored its growth on
the island-province’s pristine beaches and unspoiled diving
spots.
The Promise of Tourism
Prior to that tragic day, Guimaras was known foremost
for its sweet mangoes and its vast mango orchards, its
numerous resorts, its religious sites and its local festivals.
It was not a surprise, then, that when Guimaras became
a full-fledged Philippine province 14 years before the oil
spill, tourism was seen as a major industry that could bring
development to the province.
In fact, the province’s Medium-Term Provincial
Development Plan (1999-2004) identified tourism as the
cornerstone of its economic development. The rationale
for this choice was obvious: the 60,457-hectare island is
teeming with tourism potential – from pristine beaches and
scenic landscapes to colourful festivals and rich cultural
traditions. In short, tourism promises a lot for Guimaras.
The oil spill could have dampened every hope Guimaras
had for tourism, what with its beaches stained with slick.
But the despair was only short-lived. As soon as clean-up
operations ended, the island’s tourism industry began to
bounce back.
A Strong Foundation
Indeed, the tourism industry in Guimaras
was built on a strong foundation – the
foundation of public-private partnerships,
or P3s. Simply put, the government,
the private sector and communities in
Guimaras came together to collaborate
in planning, developing, marketing and
implementing the province’s tourism
initiatives.
The P3 concept came to the forefront of the
tourism agenda after the 5 municipalities
and 96 barangays of Guimaras created
their respective strategic plans for
economic development. Through these
plans agriculture, fisheries and tourism
were identified as the economic drivers for
the province. But then there were great
challenges. The tourism industry was in
Building a Resilient Region
Guimaras: Public-Private Partnerships and Community-Based Tourism
disarray when Guimaras province was born; there was
uncoordinated development, low community awareness,
low capital investments and tourism products were
generally of poor quality.
To address these issues, industry players employed
four approaches -- participatory planning, marketing
and promotion, community-based initiatives and tourism
support services. And in all these strategies, close
collaboration between the provincial government and
national government agencies, and non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) and communities was witnessed.
Through participatory planning, stakeholders came
together to draw up a tourism master plan, develop new
programs and install monitoring and evaluation systems for
the tourism industry. Helping Guimaras with these tourism
development efforts was the Canadian Urban Institute,
with funding from the Canadian International Development
Agency. To market and promote Guimaras as a destination
and as a tourism investment hub, new festivals and events
were organized, promotional materials were developed,
and there was full participation in trade fairs and exhibits.
The island of Guimaras offers visitors picturesque beaches and idyllic island escapes.
In community-based initiatives, community-tourism
awareness campaigns were launched to educate the
people about the impacts of tourism as well as the benefits
they could derive from tourism programs. This resulted in
full community participation in festivals at various levels
and programs. A public market day festival was introduced
in Jordan town while in Nueva Valencia a community-based
heritage tourism project has been gaining ground. These
new events and destinations were complemented by home-
stay projects.
To support the tourism industry, the provincial government
helped set up guest assistance centres and turned
these over to the municipalities for management. The
Guimaras Trade and Information Center (GTIC) was
opened to provide members of the Guimaras Producers
and Processors Association with a venue to showcase
their products. Organizations like the Guimaras Resorts
Association and the Tour Guides Guild of Guimaras were
strengthened and now provide training assistance and
capacity-building support.
Repeating the Process
Fast forward to the height of the oil spill – industry
players simply repeated the process to survive the crisis,
Building a Resilient Region
particularly for tourism.
A multi-stakeholder participatory planning process was
conducted to develop a framework for rehabilitation, which
called, among other things, for the restoration of the natural
assets of Guimaras. Promotion and marketing activities
were conducted, which included tourism exhibits and
assemblies as well as international tourism forums.
Community-based initiatives included introduction of new
programs geared towards rehabilitation like the Salvacion
Tourism Promotion and Development Support Project and
the Guisi Community-based Tourism Rehabilitation Support
Project that gave birth to the Guisi Discovery Quest and the
Sibiran Festival.
To support the industry, the provincial government
launched the Guimaras Responsive and Efficient
Approaches for Tourism Enhancement and Development
(GREATED) Initiatives which trained tourism front-liners
and service providers through various applied seminars
that improved their capabilities in providing efficient and
quality services to their clients.
By making it easy to achieve the ends of all these
undertakings, public-private partnership made everyone
in Guimaras co-owners of these initiatives, turning them
into proud inhabitants of an island-province teeming with
tourism potential.
It is no wonder, therefore, that visitors like Augusto Villalon
can meet a Cristobal Gonzaga or any similar community
leader as soon as they arrive at Guimaras.
Results and Gains
The oil spill of August 2006 interrupted the tourism
momentum in Guimaras, but it did not stop the province
from furthering its tourism drive. In fact, the oil spill brought
out the best in Guimaras with respect to public-private
partnerships for tourism development.
Indeed, figures indicate a steady increase in foreign and
local tourism arrivals from 2001 to 2005. For example,
the total arrivals in 2001 were recorded at 78,777. This
increased by 38.91 percent the next year to 109,429, and
the following year it again jumped by 13.31 percent to
123,998. By 2004, the increase was registered at 10.19
percent with 136,632 arrivals and went up further to
181,915 in 2005, an increase of 33.14 percent.
19
 Guimaras: Public-Private Partnerships and Community-Based Tourism
With increasing tourism arrivals come increasing tourism
receipt figures. But what was noticeable was the continued
increase in tourism receipts in 2004 (24.03 percent) and
2005 (28.38 percent), even after the provincial government
of Guimaras trimmed down its budget allocation for tourism
by 1.50 percent and 12.98 percent, respectively. In 2003 for
example, the provincial government allocated a budget of
P2,337,000 (US$50,000) for tourism, an increase of 10.03
percent from the previous year’s allocation of P2,124,000
(US$45,000). Over this period, tourism receipts increased
by 21 percent from (US$2.25 million) to P128,320,500
(US$2.72 million).
By 2004, the budget allocation for tourism was trimmed
down to P2,302,000 (US$48,800) but despite that, tourism
receipts went up to P159,150,000 (US$3.38 million) or by
24.03 percent. The following year, the budget allocation
was further trimmed down by 12.98 percent to P2,003,250
(US$42,000) but tourism receipts still went up by P28.38
percent to P204,312,500 (US$4.34 million).
After the infamous oil spill in the third quarter of 2006,
tourism arrivals went down by 4.91 percent to 172,985.
Guimaras tourism suffered more in 2007 when arrival
figures went down further to 156,423, a 9.57 percent
decline. Rehabilitation interventions gained in 2008,
with the tourism industry starting to recover with a slight
increase in tourism arrivals of 1.29 percent, or to 158,441
from the previous year.
The provincial government of Guimaras increased its
budget allocation for tourism in 2007 by 58.46 percent, or
P3,040,000 (US$64,500), from the previous year’s budget
in response to the oil spill. While tourism arrivals registered
an increase from 2008, tourism receipts were still low, a
6.46 percent decrease from the previous year.
20
Empowering Effects
As numbers reflect results, tourism development in
Guimaras can also be seen via its empowering effects.
Communities in Guimaras have learned to plan and
manage their own tourism projects and activities.
Municipalities and barangays have also developed their
own cultural, historical and environmental festivals. Even
market vendors succeeded in launching their own activity
with the Panindahan sa Manggahan (Market Fair Day)
in a bid to highlight the terminal market as a tourism
destination.
Home-stay programs in Guimaras have been providing
cultural opportunities for tourists to learn about the culture
and rich heritage of the island. Farmers’ and fishers’ groups
have been formed not only for agriculture and aquaculture
productivity but also to support tourism-related activities.
Industry groups have been organized, among them tour
guides, drivers, pumpboat operators, resort owners and
producers and fishermen. All of these have
meant more capable tourism front-liners.
The experience of the Guisi Community-based
Heritage Tourism Project in Nueva Valencia
showcases how communities can effectively
and efficiently manage a tourism project once
their capacity to do so has been developed.
Thanks to modest financial assistance from
the provincial government, many lessons on
inn-keeping, organization, tourism and events
management, guest assistance and handling,
and marketing from eco seminars, workshops
and study tours, the people in the coastal
hamlet of Guisi successfully operate a tourism
venture that generates income both for the
province and for themselves.
After Guimaras was hit by the oil spill,
the Guisi community partnered with the
Department of Tourism (DOT) and the United
Nations Development Fund in launching the
eco-tourism tour package dubbed the Guisi
Discovery Quest, thus enhancing the tourism
experience in the community that made Guisi
a buzz-word among excursionists and eco-
tourists. Guisi boasts a white-sand beach and a Spanish-
era lighthouse.
DOT provided facilities for rappelling and snorkelling so
these services could be made available to guests. Select
community members were trained to serve as instructors.
Mountain bikes were also provided and a team from
the community was taught how to fix them in case of
breakdown, while another team was taught proper rowing
techniques. In partnership with the Technical Education
and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), another select
team was trained on food preparation and food handling.
Of late, community members organized the Sibiran Festival
as a vehicle to revive the traditional way of fishing with the
use of fish-friendly fishing gear to ensure and maintain the
ecological balance of the area.
Building a Resilient Region
Guimaras: Public-Private Partnerships and Community-Based Tourism

Galing Pook seeks to recognize and replicate outstanding

Proceeds and Profits
From these community initiatives, members derive extra
income. Under the Guisi Discovery Quest for example,
a one-day tour for a minimum of five people costs P999
(US$21) each and includes use of mountain bikes, snorkels
and other snorkelling gears, use of boats, an environmental
fee for the cave, services of guides, and snacks and lunch.
Visitors can also add P120 (US$2.50) each if they want to
experience rappelling or P50 (US$1) each if they want to
visit the mangrove area.
Since the Guisi community-based heritage tourism
program was launched, it has already accommodated
3,148 guests, deriving an income of P313,448 (US$6,700).
In 2004, it earned P35,060 (US$745) from 211 guests,
from which the Barangay Dolores Tourism Council (BDTC)
that manages the project received only P765 (US$16),
with the rest going to community members. In 2005, the
project generated P51,827 (US$1,100) from 248 guests,
with the BDTC retaining only P895 (US$20). By 2007, its
income remarkably increased by 308 percent from the
previous year. The project earned an impressive P95,965
(US$2,037) with the BDTC getting a share of P4,145
(US$88). From January to July in 2008, the project had
already earned P107,014 (US$2,270).
Philippine best practices in governance that have
effectively addressed pressing problems in their respective
communities with innovative solutions.
Lessons Learned
The award was not surprising considering the valuable
lessons the project can share. For one, it is evident from
the Guimaras experience that, for partnership to effectively
work, local governments need to play a lead role and must
have a clear framework, strategy and action plan. In other
words, they must plan their work and work their plan.
But for this plan to succeed, communities and private
sector collaboration must be maximized. Partnerships are
most effective when economic, environmental, social and
cultural issues and solutions are interwoven.
“Public-private partnership made everyone
in Guimaras co-owners of these initiatives,
turning them into proud inhabitants of
an island-province teeming with tourism
potential.”

Structures for Sustainability

Even before the oil spill struck Guimaras, organizations
were already established to sustain the gains of the Public-
Private Partnerships in Tourism Development in Guimaras.
These include the creation of the Provincial Economic
Development Office (PEDO) whose mandate is to support
the promotion and marketing of the provincial tourism
program. PEDO also spearheaded rehabilitation initiatives
for tourism, creating opportunities for resorts to promote
and market their destinations and assisting communities to
develop local festivals and events.
Municipal Tourism Offices - which regulate tourism
activities at the municipal level - and Barangay Tourism
Councils - which help implement community-based projects
- were strengthened and made fully functional. Tourism
legislation was enacted to provide support mechanisms for
programs and projects.
Lastly, it is clear that education and training are a must to
turn stakeholders into partners for development. Capacity-
building and tourism awareness programs have borne fruits
in Guimaras through community members like Cristobal
Gonzaga, a driver who represents what the island’s tourism
experience can truly offer.
Summing up his brief visit in Guimaras with good words
about Cristobal, columnist Augusto Villalon wrote,
“Because of people like him, I plan to go back to Guimaras
to see everything I did not experience in the one day that I
spent there.”

PEDO and the local tourism councils have been effective

in cushioning the adverse impact of the oil spill among
communities, and have even quickly responded to the
disaster by mobilizing coastal residents in clean-up drives
and in planning and implementing rehabilitation programs
for tourism ventures in affected villages.

Galing Pook Award

Because of its outstanding accomplishments, this initiative,
packaged and named Public-Private Partnerships in
Tourism Development in Guimaras, was awarded a
Galing Pook Award in 2004 as one of 20 models of
excellence in good governance in the Philippines. The

Building a Resilient Region 21

Iloilo City
Securing the City Through Community-based Policing
In the Philippines, the maintenance of local peace and
order and the promotion of public safety rest primarily
not with the local police, but rather with members of each
community who monitor each and every village, particularly
at night. Armed not with guns but with nightsticks and
flashlights, they protect their villages either on foot or on
pedicabs, or if the village is affluent enough, in their own
patrol car. They know almost everyone in the community,
and they are on-call 24 hours a day.
These individuals belong to a volunteer group called
Barangay Tanod (community police officers), a concept
that evolved from the ronda system instituted during the
Spanish colonial regime where able men in the community
were tapped to patrol the village during the night as a
means of deterring assemblies by dissenters and criminals.
Each evening, they took turns in making their ronda
(Spanish for rounds) of the village in pairs until daybreak,
starting and ending in full circles at the garrita – a small hut
serving as their gathering and resting place. Initially, the
ronda system was instituted by the authoritarian Spanish
regime during the colonial period, implemented not just
as a deterrent to crimes but also to prevent Filipinos from
talking to each other.
In 1977, President Ferdinand Marcos institutionalized the
22
ronda system under Presidential Decree No. 1232, which
instructs every barangay to organize Barangay Security
and Development Officers, or more popularly known as the
Barangay Tanod, whose main tasks include intelligence
information gathering, neighbourhood watch and medical
and traffic assistance, among others.
The Local Government Code of 1991, boosted the
barangay tanod, recognizing it as an indispensable
instrument in barangay government,
particularly in its role in the maintenance
and protection of peace and security and
in the promotion of public safety, and
mandated that they be granted honoraria
and state insurance benefits.
Sadly, most barangay tanods are poorly
equipped and untrained to respond to
the call of duty, defeating their purpose
of being at the forefront of the peace and
order campaign. In most cases, they must
settle for passive tasks like being traffic
aides and parking attendants during the
day, and vigil guards during the night,
an open admission that they cannot do
what is expected of them because they
lack equipment and training. Further,
community support is wanting.
Only barangay tanods in posh villages
are lucky enough to make their rounds
in patrol cars, and arm themselves with
pepper spray, zapsticks, walkie-talkies
and electric lanterns. Also fortunate are
those whose barangay captains gain the
favour of the mayor or the congressman,
earning for the community police, patrol
cars, uniforms that banner the names of
politicians and other equipment.
Recognizing Resourcefulness
The sad fate of most barangay tanods is also felt in Metro
Iloilo, where there are 277 units representing its villages,
most of them operating on the meagre support of the
barangay and sometimes relying on donations from the
private sector and minimal assistance from the municipal
or city governments. Interestingly, some of them rendered
impressive service even with a measly budget, employing
resourcefulness and building community rapport to make
their units effective and efficient.
Highlighting the innovation and efficacy of these units is
not only a way of honouring the proficient ones but also
of inspiring and encouraging others to reach for such
competence. It is also a means of earning barangay
council and community support for the tanod, increasing
Building a Resilient Region
Iloilo City: Securing the City with Community-based Policing

appreciation of their role in the

peace and order campaign
and establishing a network of
information essential to public
safety.

To improve the services of

the barangay tanod through
capacity building and
improvement of facilities,
equipment and systems, the
then Metro Iloilo Development
Council (MIDC) launched the
Search for Model Barangay
Tanod, a project that ran from
2003 to 2007. The last two
years of the program were
under the Metro Iloilo-Guimaras
Economic Development Council
(MIGEDC) which replaced
the MIDC after the latter was
expanded to include Guimaras
and the town of Santa Barbara
in Iloilo.

The project aimed to recognize

the role of barangay tanods in
deterring crime and terrorist
activities and in maintaining
peace and order through the
It is a relatively peaceful community but Barangay
visibility of uniformed men and women in the community.
Captain (village chief) Perla Guinea admits that there
Managed by the Public Safety and Security Committee
are a few cases of domestic squabbles, petty crimes and
(PSSC), its components included basic and advanced
disturbances, especially from rowdy teenagers who engage
training, study tours, improvement of facilities, equipment
in occasional brawls. On a few occasions some students
and systems, promotion of partnership with other
have been involved in theft and robbery.
government agencies, business and non-governmental
organizations and soliciting added barangay council
But by and large, the peace and order situation in
support for their respective barangay tanod.
Barangay M. V. Hechanova remains at a desirable level.
“Our tanods have been very diligent and efficient in their
Because of its outstanding features, the program was
guard duties because they know that the barangay council
adopted by CUI’s long standing partner, the Department
has been very supportive of them,” Guinea beams.
of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) into a
national search for the outstanding barangay tanod. To
The barangay’s yearly appropriation ordinance affirms
avoid duplication, the MIGEDC Public Safety and Security
Guinea’s statement. In 2003, the barangay council of M. V.
Committee transformed its program into the annual search
Hechanova allocated P123,000 (US$2,600) for the monthly
for the Model Public Safety and Security Offices and
allowances of its 18 tanods, and P16,000 (US$330) for
Officers, which now include categories for the police, fire
their uniforms, supplies and other operating expenses.
bureau, jail officers and rescue volunteers, among others.
By 2005, the monthly allowance allocation increased to
P143,400 (US$3,000) while uniform and other expenses
Consistent Winners rose to P25,867 (US$540).
Back to the outstanding tanod contest however, a
consistent winner was the tanod unit of Barangay M. V. The monthly allowances for the tanod commander also
Hechanova in the district of Jaro in Iloilo City, which plays rose and on top of these increases, they were also given
host to three subdivisions and at least 4,026 villagers from health insurance benefits.
varied social strata. It has rich subdivision dwellers, middle-
class families and poor squatters. With an area of about Equipment was also provided to them including a patrol
80 hectares, the number of commercial establishments car, motorcycles, radio transceivers, nightsticks, handcuffs,
has mushroomed in the barangay (village) to address pepper spray, flashlights and first-aid kits. The tanod
consumer needs. outpost in the area has a detention centre where they can

Building a Resilient Region 23

 Iloilo City: Securing the City with Community-based Policing

temporarily detain transgressors before they are turned
over to the police. They recorded a number of crime
fighting accomplishments and assisted the police in various
drug-bust operations.
Proactive Response
In Barangay Aganan in Pavia town in Metro Iloilo, the
barangay tanod unit is noted for its proactive response to
the peace and order campaign. Being resourceful, they
used heavy-duty beam lights that can reach across spans
of rice fields during pursuit and patrol operations. Because
Pavia is a major
exit point from
Iloilo City, the
tanod outpost is
equipped with
an AM radio
for monitoring
of reports
on criminal
activities. When
a suspect
escapes the
city either
through the
northwestern
(Jaro district)
or southern
(Mandurriao
district) exits,
tanod members
can easily set
up a blockade
to make an arrest.
The unit has four bicycles and seven pedicabs serving as
patrol vehicles. Tanod members also have rubber boots
that enable them to patrol watered rice fields. They have
raincoats to protect them from rain and standby sandbags
in the event that the Aganan River, which separates
the flood-prone village from the town proper, overflows
during heavy rains in the mountains. First aid and
disaster preparedness were among the various capacity
development trainings that they have attended.
Because of the hard work and competence of the tanods
of Barangay M. V. Hechanova, the relatively well-off
homeowners at Gran Plains Subdivision stopped hiring the
services of private security agencies in 2000 to secure the
area. It is now the tanods that have been posted to guard
the gates of the subdivision.
Because of an attentive scheduling program, the Tanod
Outpost in the subdivision is well-staffed, at times with as
many as six tanods. “The visibility of the tanods in the area
made our barangay relatively peaceful.”
Community Involvement
Aside from conducting nightly patrol, the tanods are
also involved in the barangay’s cleanliness and tree-
planting programs and in providing safety assistance to
pedestrians and security services during community events
like parochial fiesta and school activities. The village’s
Parish Pastoral Council and the Gran Plains Subdivision
Homeowners Association, Inc. commended them for their
efficiency.
Aside from Gran Plains Subdivision, Barangay M.
V. Hechanova also hosts the San Isidro Village, the
Jalbuena Subdivision and a portion of the Phase 3 area
of Alta Tierra Village.
The tanods, mostly in
their 50s, also patrol
these areas regularly,
especially during the
evening. Individually,
the tanods in Barangay
M. V. Hechanova have
received a number
of citations and
recognitions, some of
them given as early as
1994.
To further empower the
tanods, they have been
sent to attend seminars
and workshops on
various topics, among
them training sessions on
basic security measures
for barangay tanods,
on search and rescue
operations, on illegal drugs, and on bomb and explosives
safety. These seminars are given by the Philippine National
Police (PNP), the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency
(PDEA), and the barangay council.
The diligence and efficiency of the barangay tanods of
Aganan and M. V. Hechanova can be attributed to the
support provided by their respective barangay councils,
and to their personal development as a result of their
attendance in trainings, seminars, and lectures on various
social issues.
While a lack of finances continues to be a problem, this
does not deter the barangay tanods from performing
well. Aside from making maximum use of their budget,
resourcefulness, and capabilities, these tanods have the
encouraging support of their partners in local governments,
national government agencies and the private sector.
Notably, both tanod units of Aganan and M. V. Hechanova
have also been consistent winners in the DILG’s annual
search for outstanding barangay tanods, proof of the
consistency of their exemplary performance brought about
by strong local partnerships for the promotion of public
safety and security.

24 Building a Resilient Region

Metro Iloilo
A Metropolitan Alliance to Improve Urban Health Services
The enactment of Republic Act 7160,
also known as the Local Government
Code of 1991, saw the devolution of
health services from the national to local
governments. Initially, this was viewed
as a welcome development as it had
the potential to give local governments
a direct hand in addressing their
citizens’ health concerns. Health issues
differ from one municipality to another,
and it was hoped that relegating
health services management to local
governments would improve responses
to diseases and other health-related
matters with targeted programs.

Further, procurement of medicines

became localized, meaning that
municipalities were able to acquire only
those medicines that were most needed
by their population. This was not always
the case; a popular story still circulates
about how the Department of Health
(DOH) once sent boxes of anti-malaria
drugs to a town where there had never
been any history of the disease!
But devolution only transferred the responsibility for health
to local governments, not any corresponding funding.
Unprepared local governments had to pay for the salaries
and benefits of about 70,000 health workers and finance
the health centres and hospitals under their jurisdiction.
Unsurprisingly, the quality of health services declined. The
upgrading of health facilities and infrastructure had to be
set aside and local governments had to suspend much-
needed training sessions for health personnel.
Without a sufficient budget for health services, local
governments found themselves in a quandary as to
how to effectively respond to the health needs of their
constituents. Fortunately, the Local Government Code of
1991 also allowed local governments to pool resources
and collaborate together to address common problems,
including health. This was strengthened further when,
in 1998, a concept for an inter-local government health
system based on Inter Local Health Zones (ILHZ) was
proposed as a mechanism to foster greater collaboration
and coordination for health.
In the same year that the ILHZ concept was born, an
initiative to design an inter-local government cooperative
arrangement among Iloilo City and the adjacent
municipalities of Leganes, Oton, Pavia, and San Miguel
was launched, culminating in the signing of a memorandum
of agreement that created the Metro Iloilo Development
Council (MIDC) on February 9, 2001, (later to be expanded
into the Metro Iloilo-Guimaras Economic Development
Council (MIGEDC) to include the island-province of
Guimaras and the municipality of Santa Barbara, Iloilo).
The MIDC initially agreed to collaborate on six areas:
Economic Promotions, Infrastructure Development,
Land Use and Management, Public Safety and Security,
Environmental Management and Basic Services Delivery.
Committees were created to take charge of each area.
With MIGEDC’s establishment, two new committees
were added – tourism development and special projects
development. Under the Basic Services Delivery
Committee are sub-sectors, which include Education,
Housing, Social Welfare, Water and Sanitation and Health.
The Referral System
The decline of the quality of health services following
devolution can be attributed to various reasons, including
understaffing (despite high expenditures on personnel),
a critical lack of operating expenses, and decaying
infrastructure. One program that was introduced to address
these problems was the Health Referral System.
In its wider context, this includes referral from the
community level to the highest level of care and back (two-
way referral system). Within the health facility (hospital or
health centre), there is also an internal system among the
hospital departments or the health personnel involved. This
system involves not only direct patient care, but support
services as well, such as knowing where to get transport
services to move a patient from one facility to the other.

Building a Resilient Region 25

 Metro Iloilo: A Metropolitan Alliance to Improve Urban Health Services
The health referral system, therefore, is a two-way
relationship that requires cooperation, coordination, and
exchange of information between the primary health
facility and the first referral hospital during the referral
and discharge of the patient from the hospital. It is also
an organizational structure for coordinating, linking, and
possibly transferring care for medical problems from a
generalist to specialist, or from a specialist to another
specialist.
However, a weak referral system wastes scarce
health resources through the duplication of services.
Inappropriate services, delayed referral, and poor referral
communications also increase the rate of ailments and
deaths. In Metro Iloilo, problems plagued the referrals of
patients from the municipal level to the tertiary hospitals.
Thus, the Basic Services Delivery Committee of the MIDC
saw the need to develop a functional two-way referral
system. The two-way referral system occurs when a patient
needs expert advice, when a patient needs a technical
examination that is not available at the health centres,
when a patient requires a technical intervention that is
beyond the capabilities of the health centre or when a
patient requires in-patient care.
The Alliance
To generate, mobilize and tap essential resources for
sustainable hospital and public health services within the
Metro Iloilo region, the Metro Iloilo Health Alliance (MIHA)
was created, with the five mayors and the chiefs of the two
referral hospitals – the Western Visayas Medical Center
(WVMC) and the West Visayas State University Medical
Center (WVSUMC) – signing a memorandum of agreement
to establish it on May 12, 2005. The Philippines’ first
metropolitan inter-local health zone, MIHA was created and
strengthened through the support of the Canadian Urban
Institute, with funding from the Canadian International
Development Agency.
In this arrangement, the WVMC and the WVSUMC serve
as the main point of referral for hospital services from the
community, private medical practitioners, the barangay
health stations (BHS), and the rural health units (RHUs).
Through these hospitals, patients can get tertiary care
such as laboratory and radiological diagnostic services,
in-patient care, and surgical services sufficient to provide
emergency care for basic life threatening conditions,
obstetrics, and trauma.
To serve as the operations manual of the MIHA, the
committee came up with an Integrated Health Plan, a
consolidation of the individual health plans of all member
local governments to ensure that the MIHA would be
responsive to the needs of the entire population. The
Integrated Health Plan entailed the adoption of a unifying
vision and mission and a situation analysis of external and
internal environmental conditions that affect the Metro Iloilo
region. It also required clear definition of the roles of each
level of service and facility, including other stakeholders,
26
through the discussion of organizational structure,
relationships, and coordination mechanisms.
The plan contains strategies to institutionalize and
strengthen the referral system. It went through several
revisions as experts and stakeholders of the MIHA were
invited to comment and give their suggestions. The
collaboration was primarily to generate co-ownership for
the plan and ultimately foster a collective commitment in
carrying out its implementation.
MIHA is being managed by the MIHA Board, which serves
as its unifying, policy and decision-making body. It is
composed of the mayors of the local governments under
the alliance, the chiefs of the two referral hospitals, the
Iloilo City health officer, health representatives of the four
municipalities, a representative of a non-governmental
organization (NGO), representatives of the city, and
municipal councils of the local governments, and two
administrative officers. MIHA’s head is the chairperson of
the Basic Services Delivery Committee, who is assisted by
the chiefs of the two hospitals and the four other mayors as
vice chairpersons.
MIHA initially operated on a budget allocated to the
committee, which was part of the P100,000 (US$2,100)
contribution of the five local government units that
composed the MIDC. They also agreed to contribute
P25,000 (US$530) each for the support of MIHA.
Subsequent contributions based on health plans and
activities will be discussed and agreed upon by the board
of directors.
But with the establishment of MIGEDC, the annual
allocation for MIHA operations was temporarily set aside
until a new board could be reconstituted. However, the
so-called “hibernation” of the MIHA board did not affect
what it had put in place, such as the referral system that
has been “sanctified by usage” by health care providers in
the region. In fact, it has become a self-sustaining system,
continuously working with or without specific budgetary
allocation.
Inter-Local Health Zone
MIHA functions similarly to the Inter-Local Health Zone
(ILHZ), a health care program initiated by the Department
of Health (DOH) in which individuals, communities, and all
other health care providers in a well-defined geographical
area participate together in providing quality, equitable,
and accessible health care with inter-local government
partnership as the basic framework. But unlike the existing
ILHZs, MIHA has two core referral hospitals instead of one.
The first inter-local health zone in the Philippines in a
metropolitan setting, MIHA members are also part of
other ILHZs established by the DOH, which thus gave
their constituents “the best of both worlds” in health care.
Patients from the municipal level can be referred to any
of the core referral hospitals, either within the DOH-
established ILHZ or MIHA.
Building a Resilient Region
Metro Iloilo: A Metropolitan Alliance to Improve Urban Health Services

Pavia is with the cluster that also consists of

the towns of Cabatuan, Maasin and Santa
Barbara with the Ramon Tabiana Memorial
District Hospital in Cabatuan as the core
referral hospital. Leganes is with the Central
Inter-Local Health Zone, which has the Iloilo
Provincial Hospital in Pototan town as the core
referral hospital. Oton is with the Southern Inter-
Local Health Zone, with the Don Pedro Trono
Memorial Hospital in Guimbal town as the core
referral hospital. San Miguel is with the Aleosan
Inter-Local Health Zone, the cluster composed
of Alimodian, Leon and San Miguel, with the
Aleosan District Hospital in Alimodian as the
core referral hospital.

Health Financing
To ensure that quality health care is not
compromised despite the inability of many
of its constituents to pay for it, MIHA has
adopted a health financing scheme through
the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation
(PhilHealth). The alliance intends to enroll its
constituents in the national health insurance program
to guarantee that their health needs are immediately
addressed. The scheme involves improving program
benefits, expanding its membership base, and then using
benefit-spending to leverage effective quality care. It also
allows for cost recovery in the hospital and RHUs through
a reimbursement scheme and capital fund, which can be
spent to further improve health services in both facilities.
Information System
MIHA seeks to establish an Integrated Alliance Health
Management and Information System to address one
weak area in the establishment of ILHZs, which is health
information and management. This is being done through
a computerized network and community-based health data
board that uses the results of the Minimum Basic Needs
(MBN) Survey and makes it responsive to local planning,
monitoring, and referral and disease surveillance. MBN
Surveys are done to find out the basic needs of a Filipino
family for survival, security and empowerment, MBN being
defined as the minimum criteria for attaining a decent
quality of life. MIHA would therefore invest in equipment
such as telephones, computers and printers, software, and
training of personnel involved in the information system,
based on the results of the MBN Surveys.
Promoting Effective and Quality Health Care
Supporting the MIHA program, in 2008 the MIGEDC’s
Basic Services Delivery Committee launched the annual
search for the model municipal health station to promote
effective and quality health care among municipalities,
which now include the five towns in the island-province
of Guimaras and the town of Santa Barbara in Iloilo, a
new addition to the Metro Iloilo circle. Dubbed “Sentro
Obligado,” the program sought the development of
efficiency among health personnel. Aside from honouring
outstanding health stations and health workers, the
program was also a vehicle for documenting best practices
in health service delivery.
Key Concerns
MIHA, as part of its management strategy, conducts regular
reviews and assessments of the following:
•  The health situation and the identified prevailing
health problems that need to be addressed as soon as
possible.
•  The management service output and extent of
coordination of all BHSs, RHUs, the City Health Office,
district health centres, and the two hospitals – WVMC
and WVSUMC.
•  The existing human resource capabilities including
Community Volunteer Health Workers (CVHWs) and the
Traditional Health Birth Attendants.
•  The facilities according to availability and functionality
in accordance with Sentrong Sigla and PhilHealth
accreditation. (Sentrong Sigla is a quality assurance
program that seeks to improve health services delivery
by providing seals of excellence to health centres that
have met the Department of Health standards.)
•  The procurement system of essential drugs, in
terms of price, quality and conformity to the National
Drug Formulary of Republic Act No. 6675 or the
Generics Drugs Law – which seeks to promote, require
and ensure the production of an adequate supply,
distribution, use and acceptance of drugs and medicines
identified by their generic names – through the MIHA
Therapeutic Committee.
MIHA implements the Sentrong Sigla standards and
“Center of Wellness” of the DOH focusing and working
toward improved quality of services. Finally, MIHA
encourages partnership and networking among local

Building a Resilient Region 27

 Metro Iloilo: A Metropolitan Alliance to Improve Urban Health Services

Linkage Building. The

key players involved
in MIHA include local
health officers as
lead persons, local
chief executives and
other government
officials to ensure the
institutionalization
of the system and
funding, community
health workers as
leaders and conduits
of communication,
community members
as partners in
development, non-
governmental
organizations as policy-
making contributors,
the private sector as
patrons and donors,
and the Department
governments, national government agencies, state of Health (DOH) for
universities and colleges, communities, and non- technical leadership on local health systems.
governmental organizations, or people’s organizations
working within the alliance. Efficiency in Health Care Services. Through the referral
system, MIHA sees that there is no duplication of health
Monitoring and Evaluation services and under-utilization of primary and secondary
To continuously improve its functions, MIHA implements government hospitals, thus making the delivery of
a regular monitoring and evaluation process to assess its services efficient. On the other hand, the availability of
work and find room for improvements. MIHA is evaluated appropriate services, on-time referral and improved referral
based on the following: communications result in increased effectiveness.

•  Services meet the needs of the population.
•  Services are efficient, fast and streamlined.
•  Services are accessible, both physically and
financially.
•  Personnel are friendly and courteous.
•  Services are equitable.
•  There is inter-local government cooperation.
Surveys, focus group discussions, formal and informal
interviews and personnel performance evaluations were
also done.
Results and Impact
Direct Benefits. Due to accessibility, convenience and
a higher level of health care, patients coming from the
municipal level are usually referred either to WVMC or the
WVSUMC instead of the core referral hospitals in their
respective DOH-established ILHZs. This proved beneficial
to the residents of Metropolitan Iloilo considering that they
immediately get much-needed quality medical attention
with expediency. The PhilHealth financing scheme that is
a major component of MIHA guarantees that low-income
residents can avail themselves of quality health care
services.
Transferability and Sustainability. MIHA showcases
how inter-local government cooperation on health can
work. Legal provisions governing inter-local government
cooperation can be applied to any cluster of local
governments, and therefore can be replicated anywhere.
The memoranda of agreement that created both the
MIDC and, later, MIGEDC and the MIHA, guarantee the
continued operation of the alliance even with changes
in leadership in national and local governments due to
elections.
In the long run, MIHA can bring about:
•  Quality hospital and RHU services
•  A functional referral system
•  Integrated health planning
•  An established health information system
•  Well-developed human resources
•  Financially viable or self-sustaining hospitals
•  Integrated public health and curative hospital care
•  Strengthened cooperation between local
governments and the health sector

28 Building a Resilient Region

Metro Iloilo
Managing Rapid Urban Growth through Integrated Land Use
Planning
The oil spill that hit Guimaras in central
Philippines in August 2006 displayed both the
fragility of the environment and the fact that
nature is not constrained by political borders.
The disaster not only affected the island-
province, but the neighbouring provinces of
Negros Occidental and Iloilo as well.

City-region building acknowledges the multiplicity

of other kinds of borders - ecological, social and
environmental - through the management of
their overlapping spaces. Thus, when the Metro
Iloilo-Guimaras Economic Development Council
(MIGEDC) was created a few weeks after
the oil spill, the Metro Iloilo region of six local
governments and the province of Guimaras were
included in its jurisdiction. MIGEDC was formally
established by President Gloria Macapagal-
Arroyo through Executive Order No. 559,
signed on August 28, 2006, and was designed
to help address the area’s emerging problems
brought about by rapid urbanization and the
spatial development challenges of tourism and
economic development.
The creation of MIGEDC was inspired by earlier initiatives,
particularly the Metro Iloilo Development Council (MIDC)
that was formed by Iloilo City and towns of Leganes, Oton,
Pavia, and San Miguel on February 9, 2001, and the
Guimaras-Iloilo City Alliance that was similarly established
on May 22, 2005. Merging these two regional alliances,
along with the urbanizing town of Santa Barbara, gave birth
to the Metro Iloilo-Guimaras region.
In 2005, MIDC already saw a need to shape the region’s
growth and development. This prompted the council to
formulate a regional growth management strategy, which
eventually led to the preparation of the Metro Iloilo Physical
Framework Plan (MIPFP), a document that served as the
overall policy framework for planning and development
decisions within and across the five local government units.
The plan became a tool with which to manage growth to
enhance the quality of life for residents across the urban
region. Due to the urgency of the problems that were being
experienced in Metro Iloilo and given the need to make
the region viable as an economic, industrial, commercial,
cultural, and political centre of the country, the preparation
of the plan was given top priority, and was eventually
completed in 2006.
A New Region Emerges
But just as the MIPFP was adopted, the oil spill struck
and MIGEDC was established. As a region, Metro Iloilo-
Guimaras felt the need for a similar growth management
plan. The resulting plan, called Metro Iloilo-Guimaras
Integrated Spatial Development Framework (MIGISDF),
was so named so as not to be confused with the nature
and purpose of other regional, provincial, city municipal
and other development plans.
Now that MIDC has become MIGEDC, the concepts and
ideas of MIDC, particularly in spatial development, have not
been totally forgotten. In fact, most spatial concepts in the
MIGISDF derive from the Metro Iloilo Physical Framework
Plan (MIPFP). During the process of preparing the spatial
plan for Metro Iloilo-Guimaras, other plans were taken into
consideration and integrated into the MIGISDF.
Some of these were the MIGEDC Road Map 2015,
Issues Paper and Metro Iloilo Strategic Plan 2006-
2010. These documents were produced out of the Local
Governance Development Program (LGDP), an initiative
that was funded by the Australian Government through
the Australian Agency for International Development
(AusAID) and was implemented by Coffey International
Development, an Australian development specialist group,
in association with the Canadian Urban Institute (CUI).
CUI, through its Canada-Philippines Partnership Program
for Good Urban Governance funded by the Canadian
International Development Agency (CIDA), had assisted
the erstwhile MIDC in preparing the MIPFP. The formulation
of the plan involved a six-step process – the review of
existing municipal and city comprehensive land use plans;

Building a Resilient Region 29

 Metro iloilo: Managing Rapid Urban Growth through Integrated Land Use Planning
information gathering, analysis and mapping; sectoral
consultations and reports; initial public consultation;
preparation of a draft metropolitan plan; and final public
consultation and approval of the plan.
Developing the Framework
In satisfying the need to come up with an ideal spatial
plan, MIGEDC must be consistent with plans individually
prepared by their member local governments and their
regional alliances. These plans include the draft of the
Sta. Barbara Comprehensive Land Use Plan, Guimaras
Physical Framework Plan, and the Comprehensive Land
Use Plan of Iloilo City. MIGEDC had also completed the
MIG Integrated Regional and Urban Infrastructure Plan
and the Tourism Strategy Action Plan, which were vital for
preparing the MIGISDF.
Furthermore, in the light of the Joint Memorandum Circular
No. 1 issued in 2007, these plans and frameworks must be
synchronized with the plans of the National Government
Agencies (NGAs) with respect to existing processes
and procedures. The circular – jointly issued by the
Department of the Interior and Local Government, the
National Economic Development Authority, the Department
of Budget and Management, and the Department of
Finance – calls for harmonized planning, investment
programming, budgeting, revenue administration, and
expenditure management. It has been hailed as a landmark
policy on local development processes.
The processes of developing the MIGISDF involved the
following:
•  Orientating stakeholders on the Planning Context
following the JMC process;
•  Reviewing various plans and framework using the
JMC process;
•  Integrating assessments and plans using the JMC
process;
•  Conducting workshops to validate and complete the
rest of the plan sections;
•  Preparing GIS based maps to highlight issues and
strategic frameworks;
•  Preparing Issues Paper to present key opportunities
and challenges;
•  Reviewing the MIGEDC Roadmap; and
•  Writing a MIGISDF draft.
The final draft of the MIGISDF will go through the same
approval process as the MIPFP. The spatial framework
shall be reviewed by the stakeholders, presented to the
MIGEDC Executive Council and the respective LGU
members will adopt the framework once it is approved.
The Need for a Framework
A survey of cities in the Philippines conducted by the
Asian Institute of Management in 2002 ranked Iloilo City
as the most competitive mid-sized city in terms of local
economy in the country. Just like any developing city,
Iloilo experiences both the positive and the negative
30
consequences of urbanization, as do the adjacent
municipalities. Urban sprawl, for instance, has left adjacent
municipalities in land use conflict, and some agricultural
lands have become threatened because of residential
expansion. Real estate development in Iloilo City and in the
four adjacent municipalities has never been so aggressive
because of the growing demands for housing.
Many residents of Leganes, Pavia, Oton, San Miguel,
Santa Barbara, and Guimaras commute to Iloilo City
for education, employment or business, among other
reasons. People from these municipalities contribute to
the observed higher daytime population density in the city
compared to its night-time population. Issues ranging from
traffic management to road quality to the availability of
public infrastructure have been noted as requirements for
supporting the needs of the population through effective
public service delivery.
The population in the region will reach more than 1.2
million in 2023, approximately twice the population in 2000.
Most of the members of the regional population are young
citizens, thus MIGEDC needs to understand the issues
affecting this age group, such as employment, education
and housing. Servicing the demands of a young population
will affect the economic, physical and social development
of MIGEDC for the next fifteen years, but concerns for the
conservation of natural resources still remain a challenge
for sustainable urban growth. In due time, the young
population will also age, thus MIGEDC must be able to
prepare its environment for the safety and convenience of
future seniors.
Rapid population growth, dramatic changes in production
and consumption patterns and massive rural to urban
migration have all contributed to environmental degradation
in the MIG region. Unless environmental degradation is
arrested, the growth rates necessary to reduce poverty will
not be sustained and the Millennium Development Goals
will not be achieved.
It has become clear that the increasing populace and
dynamism of Iloilo City call for integrated growth and
expansion management strategies with neighbouring
municipalities. A combined effort among the seven
concerned local governments to shift current policies to
encourage investment and development in designated
urban centres can help address this need.
Supporting a Vision
The MIGISDF 2008-2023 supports the metropolitan
vision to create “[a] highly liveable region of God-loving
and educated people working together for a progressive,
self reliant, and sustainable community” by improving
cooperation and partnerships between the member
LGUs in the management of social, economic and natural
environments of Metro Iloilo-Guimaras.
The MIGISDF illustrates how the residents of Metro Iloilo-
Guimaras want their community to grow and change in the
Building a Resilient Region
Metro Iloilo: Managing Rapid Urban Growth through Integrated Land Use Planning
future. It describes the community’s collective vision for the
sustainable management of the public realm and shared
community assets like air, land and water resources,
and sets goals for economic development, effective
transportation networks and community well-being. As a
developing region, Metro Iloilo-Guimaras needs strong
direction in order to avoid the potential negative impacts
of uncontrolled development on the quality of life of its
residents.
Using current data and land use policies from the seven
local governments, the MIGISDF was designed to provide
a flexible and adaptable mechanism for guiding the future
physical form of Metro Iloilo-Guimaras. It presents an
indicative spatial lay-out of the Metro Iloilo-Guimaras for the
next fifteen years. The local government members should
consider the goals and objectives of the spatial framework
in formulating or updating their respective comprehensive
land use plans and other specific development plans.
In a way, the integrated spatial development plan will
serve as a guide or link among these plans to have a
more collaborative approach in facing the challenges and
opportunities of urbanization.
Understanding land uses through quantitative data is not
the foundation of this framework, but rather identifying
the characteristics
of land uses and
providing schemes
for their locations.
The allocation
of land uses
presented in the
spatial development
framework maps
serves as a model
providing possible
solutions to issues
of land use in Metro
Iloilo-Guimaras,
and as a guide in
operationalizing
and managing the
physical growth of
the region. MIGISDF
does not conflict with
the regional plans; rather it integrates them in the entire
framework through concepts, options and strategies.
The creation of the MIGSDF involved a number of
workshops and consultations in order to come up with
community-generated solutions for developing the region.
Thus the interpretation of some metropolitan characteristics
may vary from the perception of the planners, local officials,
consultants, and other stakeholders.
Each local government has a certain rate of economic
or physical development. They have their own physical,
cultural and legislative factors to consider. Thus, the
strategies in the MIGISDF were addressed in such a way
Building a Resilient Region
the local government units could easily adopt them and
create their own specific programs and policies.
The MIGISDF presents how land – the basic economic
resource – should be used efficiently and effectively, so
as to capitalize on the various strengths of the seven
local governments, and to successfully manage potential
conflicts between adjoining land uses. Essentially, it sets a
framework to ensure that urban growth occurs in an orderly
manner, and decisions are not made on an ad-hoc basis.
The MIGISDF has been prepared with regards to the
plans and policy frameworks of the national and provincial
authorities, as well as global objectives. The plan will thus
be submitted to the relevant agencies for integration into
the wider development planning system.
Links with Regional Plans
The MIGISDF adheres to the principles in the National
Framework for Physical Planning (NFPP) as well as the
Regional Physical Framework Plan for Western Visayas
(Region VI), which state that land use and related planning
activities shall be undertaken within the context of the
principles that support the allocation and use physical
resources such as land and water with due regards to their
sustainability.
What makes MIGISDF unique is
that unlike other land use plans
associated with a formal political
jurisdiction, strategic documents
like the MIGISDF are encouraged
among local governments but
not mandated. The framework
has distinct ways of presenting
its objectives, strategies, and
preferred roles. MIGISDF has
also given a new meaning to
the word “region”. Though a
mandated regional plan covers
the whole region as its scope
(in this case, MIGEDC is within
the official region of Western
Visayas), MIGISDF uses the term
“region” to refer only to the seven
local governments of MIGEDC
(i.e. a city, a province and five municipalities). Thus, the
land use plan produced by these LGUs through their
collaborative relationship does not conform to any standard
categories of plans in the Philippines, such as a regional or
provincial plan.
Indeed, the uniqueness of the MIGISDF was also brought
about by the fact that MIGEDC is a unique alliance. It
groups together varying types of communities – a highly
urbanized city, rapidly urbanizing municipalities, and a peri-
urban island-province – into one to be developed under
one spatial framework. And the MIGISDF may just be a
small step for MIGEDC, but it is a giant leap for the Metro
Iloilo-Guimaras Region.
31
Metro Iloilo Guimaras
Metro-wide Investment Promotion
Over the past few decades, local governments in the
Philippines have been doing their best to attract investors.
The logic is simple -- investments generate much-
needed taxes for local governments and create jobs for
their residents. And a rapidly-growing urbanizing region
like Metro Iloilo needs both taxes and jobs to survive
the challenges of poverty, poor service delivery and
inadequacy of infrastructure, among others.
The partnership arrangement that led to the birth of the
Metro Iloilo region following the establishment of the
Metro Iloilo Development Council (MIDC) in 2001 has
inspired its own strategy to attract investors – one also
marked by partnership. It is this partnership that led to the
creation of the Iloilo Investment Promotion Center (IIPC),
the body tasked to promote Metro Iloilo as an investment
destination. It also serves as a repository of information
and services that caters to the needs of prospective
investors, and as a link between various government
agencies at the national and local levels, the private sector
and existing and potential investors.
The IIPC was born following the advent of information
communication technology, especially with rise of call
centres, where agents handle telephone calls on behalf
of a client. Clients include mail-order catalogue houses,
telemarketing companies, computer product help
desks, banks, financial service and insurance groups,
transportation and freight handling firms, hotels, and IT
companies.
In June 2004, investors scouted for sites in Iloilo City for
call centres, made courtesy calls with the Office of the
Mayor, and sought assistance from the Department of
Trade and Industry (DTI) on how to open a business in
32
Iloilo City. The city government found it difficult to handle
the concerns of the investors because there was no office
that could provide all the information that they needed.
This prompted Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas to call for a
meeting with DTI where a task force was created to look
into how to address the problem – the aptly named Task
Force on Economic Promotions (TFEP).
Replicating Cebu
It was the TFEP that recommended the creation of a one-
stop shop which would serve as the entry point for new
investors as well as a repository of information for those
who were already in place. It was modeled after the Cebu
Investment Promotion Center (CIPC), which has played an
invaluable role in promoting Cebu as a prime investment
hub in the country. Acknowledged as a pre-eminent
investment promotion agency in the Philippines, CIPC
has serviced over 1,000 prospective locators since 1994
and has since transformed Cebu’s economy into a thriving
mix of industries and commercial ventures. It also helped
develop a burgeoning furniture-making
industry, making Cebu the furniture capital
of the Philippines.
Learning lessons from CIPC, the TFEP
then involved not just groups from Iloilo
City like the Iloilo Business Club (IBC) and
the Iloilo Hotels, Restaurants and Resorts
Association (IHRRA), but also stakeholders
outside of the city. This move brought in the
provincial government of Iloilo and the then
Metro Iloilo Development Council (MIDC),
which was later expanded to become
the Metro Iloilo-Guimaras Economic
Development Council (MIGEDC). The
Canadian Urban Institute (CUI), which
was assisting the MIDC then, was also
asked to bring more inputs to the planning
table. CUI’s work was undertaken with the
financial support of the Government of
Canada provided through the Canadian
International Development Agency (CIDA).
The task force and representatives of the provincial
government of Iloilo, MIDC, and CUI began planning what
would be the proper mandate and organizational set up
of the IIPC. What followed was a series of workshops
and seminars to prepare stakeholders to come up with
the project’s action plan. Together, these organizations
crafted an agreement that was endorsed by the respective
legislative councils of the local governments involved.
The Iloilo City Council, for its part, had already passed
a resolution authorizing Mayor Jerry Treñas to sign the
memorandum of agreement.
Nevertheless, with the private sector already amenable
Building a Resilient Region
Metro Iloilo Guimaras: Metro-wide Investment Promotion
and highly supportive of the idea, the Iloilo Investment
Promotion Center (IIPC) was inaugurated on May 12,
2005, marking the “starting line of the race towards local
economic development,” as the IIPC slogan declares.
Kicking Off
Housed at the DTI regional office in Iloilo City and complete
with the necessary office facilities, the Center invited
the executive director of the CIPC to share the Cebu
experience, discussing the challenges Cebu faced, and
how these challenges were met. The lessons learned were
vital in launching the Center’s operation.
Likewise, the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA)
also provided input on investment incentives and explained
the process by which an area could become accredited
with PEZA. PEZA is an investment promotion agency
that grants fiscal and non-fiscal incentives to developers
of economic zones, export producers and information
technology service exporters. It was then that the task force
started to identify other institutions that could be involved in
the project.
With a total budget of P930,000 (US$20,000) provided
by the then MIDC, IIPC was launched with the following
objectives:
•  To establish a focal source of information and
services related to investment in order to have just one
common official set of data;
•  To strengthen the network between and among
government agencies both national and local, private
sector and other offices concerned with investment; and
•  To establish a reliable and user-friendly data banking
system to be readily available to existing and potential
investors.
It also has the following functions:
•  Set-up and maintain a database program
on investment;
•  Facilitate and provide investment
promotion services;
•  Formulate and undertake investment
marketing programs;
•  Provide a venue for policy intervention
in creating a more conducive business
environment; and
•  Establish linkages with appropriate
organizations and agencies.
Early Successes
IIPC’s first spin-off institution was the ePLDT
Ventus, a wholly owned subsidiary of ePLDT
Inc, which opened a 1,600-square metre, 300-
seat call centre in Molo district in December
2004. ePLDT Inc. was so impressed with
the help of the IIPC that even after the initial
Building a Resilient Region
opening of the call centre, ePLDT Ventus has continued
coordinating with IIPC on other concerns, including their
expansion program.
But while the Center was officially launched in May 2005,
IIPC’s ad hoc structure had earlier assisted companies
interested in doing business in Iloilo City. During the period
of June 2004 to June 2005, IIPC assisted at least 20
potential investors, conducted roundtable discussions with
the academe on investments, and hosted job fairs for call
centres in Iloilo City. By 2007, there were already six call
centres in Iloilo City with over 1,000 seats and employing at
least 1,500 personnel for their 24-hour operations. Various
factors had forced some to transfer to other cities, but new
ones have subsequently opened.
In 2008, IIPC assisted at least 12 companies hoping to set
up shop in Iloilo City, of which six were in the call centre
business, three in real estate, and another three in facilities
development. IIPC had also facilitated the conduct of a
focus group discussion (FGD) among students by one call
centre firm.
Competitive Advantages
Having a highly-educated labour force is one of Iloilo City’s
competitive advantages. Most individuals in the labour
force are graduates of some of the country’s leading
universities, like the University of the Philippines in the
Visayas, Central Philippine University, St. Paul University,
University of San Agustin and the West Visayas State
University. Skilled workers are products of technical and
vocational schools, and the government-run Technical
Education for Skills Development Authority (TESDA), as
well as skills upgrading programs occasionally sponsored
by private organizations. It is also home to the Western
Visayas College of Science and Technology (WVSCT), one
of the leading technical schools in the country.
33
 Metro Iloilo Guimaras: Metro-wide Investment Promotion

Iloilo City has available managerial

staff, vocational-technical schools
producing skilled workers, and regional
training centres. It also has available
land that is suitable for factory and
office buildings at competitive prices,
public utilities at reasonable rates,
and financial institutions, adequate
transport infrastructures, and shopping
and recreational facilities, among
others. Its local governments are
also receptive to investors. The Iloilo
Fishing Port Complex has modern cold
storage facilities.

The large number of financial

institutions in the city and province
make banking convenient for
businesses, not to mention the
presence of competent legal,
accounting and auditing professional
service firms. It also has adequate
shopping and recreational facilities,
and is proximate to the sources of
indigenous raw materials. Likewise,
the peace and order situation is ideally
resources in a One-Stop Express Business Center,
desirable.
reducing red tape, and improving effectiveness and
efficiency in government services.
Wearing Different Hats
During its initial year, a Technical Secretariat headed by The Nerbac program has three components – licensing,
the DTI provincial director who serves as its executive knowledge management and investment promotion.
director ran IIPC. It was housed at the DTI office, with two Nerbac is managed by a governing board, the composition
personnel detailed to run its daily operations. An Executive of which as far as Iloilo is concerned is almost the same
Committee was created from among the members of the as the board of trustees of ILED and the board of advisors
Board of Advisors, which was composed of representatives of IIPC. Because IIPC was already a functioning body, it
of local governments, national government agencies and was decided that it should serve as Nerbac’s investment
private sector organizations. promotion arm in Iloilo. Nerbac Iloilo’s governing board
includes the city mayor, the provincial governor, the DTI
With a functioning structure and a clearly defined mandate, provincial director, the chairpersons of ILED and the
it was easy for IIPC to wear different hats while speaking Federation of Filipino Chinese Chamber of Commerce and
the same message. This was proven following the Industry, among others.
creation of the multi-sectoral Iloilo Economic Development
Foundation (ILED), with IIPC serving as its marketing arm.
This happened because most of the people coming from Lasting Structure
The rapid change in programs and responses to economic
the public and private sectors that composed IIPC’s Board
challenges showed one thing – IIPC has become a lasting
of Advisors also became ILED’s trustees, which includes
structure for investment promotion. While it can be likened
the city mayor, the provincial governor, the provincial
to a child with various foster parents, moving from one
director of the Department of Trade and Industry, and the
home to another, it has still performed its tasks sustainably.
chairpersons of the Iloilo Business Club, the Iloilo Visitors
It has become not just a centre working for the promotion of
Convention Bureau, the Iloilo Dinagyang Foundation and
Metro Iloilo as an investment destination but also a venue
the Federation of Filipino Chinese Chamber of Commerce
where plans and programs are shared and harmonized for
and Industry, among others.
local economic development.
Late in 2008, the DTI began to implement Republic Act
A functional body with a working plan for action, a
No. 7470, the national law that mandated the creation of
budget contributed by local governments and equipment
National Economic Research and Business Assistance
provided by private organizations, IIPC has thus become a
Centers (Nerbac) in the various regions and provinces
sustainable product of partnership among stakeholders for
of the country. Nerbac is a pioneering project providing
local economic development in Iloilo.
a single entry point for investors on comprehensive and
highly integrated business support by pooling government

34 Building a Resilient Region

Guimaras
A Community Comes Together to Fight Poverty
When you arrive at the seaside village of Dolores in commercial fishing vessels and rampant illegal fishing
Nueva Valencia town in Guimaras, you quickly forget the practices. Blast fishing was also rampant, destroying coral
long and bumpy ride from the wharf in the capital town of reefs that serve as spawning grounds of fish. Traditional
Jordan. The main destination in this village is the small fishing methods simply could not compete with such
hamlet of Guisi where about 80 families reside. While modern techniques. The diminishing forests and the legal
climbing to a ridge overlooking the western coast of the restrictions imposed on cutting tress also put a stop to
island, all your distractions melt away to the sound of charcoal production.
waves crashing against the island below.
Fishing used to give a family 300 pesos a week (US$6.40)
Guisi was not spared from the oil spill that hit Guimaras while charcoal production fetched 200 pesos (US$4.25).
in August 2006, although the impact of the disaster to the Both amounts diminished, prompting residents to seek
area was minimal, thanks to a north-east blowing wind and work elsewhere or to develop other means of livelihood.
a quick and effective response from residents, who built One family, for example, opened a bakery, but the
improvised purchasing power of their poor neighbours wasn’t enough
spill to sustain the business.
booms that
prevented Compensating the poverty that grips families in Guisi is the
wayward wealth of nature found in its environs – a captivating white-
slicks from sand beach, clean and pristine waters, a scenic landscape
coming and a rich cultural and historical heritage.
ashore.
As news Guisi has been described as a perfect outdoor destination.
of the oil Its beach is ideal for swimming and canoeing; its forested
spill jolted hills invite everyone for an exciting mountain-trek; its
Guimaras, cave tempts the adventurous to explore its depths; and
the people its waterfall showers with fun. One can also experience
of Guisi the people’s indigenous culture that has remained intact,
immediately tracing back to the 1860s when the first settlers of Guisi
knew what arrived from neighbouring Iloilo.
to protect
first – the Making the place more fascinating is a Spanish lighthouse
white-sand known in naval manuals as Faro de Punta Luzaran. One
beach of the 70 lighthouses built across the Philippines from the
that is the 1860s to the 1890s as part of the colonial government’s
pride of the project to light the maritime coasts of the archipelago, it
community guides ships cruising over Panay Gulf.
and the
source of its Guisi was selected to host the lighthouse because it is
reputation. visible from the islands of Panay and Negros and from the
Without open sea on the western side of the country. The area also
delay, served as a stopover point for sugar and log-loaded ships
villagers plying the Iloilo-Caguayan route during the 18th and 19th
launched their outriggers and were on the lookout for centuries.
black stains of oil threatening to tarnish the hamlet’s
jewel, quickly removing slicks and fending off the worst The Spanish lighthouse, which is no longer functioning
environmental disaster to hit the Philippines. but is still standing, had a beam that could reach 22.5
kilometres. Its rotating prism, which reflected and beamed
Responding collectively during times of crisis is not new to the kerosene-fuelled light, was powered by gravitational
the residents of this fishing village. A few years back, they force. In the 1990s, the Philippine Coast Guard constructed
also rose as one against what they have been trying to a new lighthouse to replace the dilapidated one, this time,
individually overcome for decades – poverty. powered by solar energy. They now stand side by side like
twins separated at birth, one a guiding light to the future,
Life in Guisi was difficult then. Fishing and charcoal the other shedding light on the stories of the past.
production, the main sources of livelihood for residents,
were not particularly promising. The fishing catch had Guisi Discovery Quest
been declining due to a combination of intruding large Two years after the oil spill hit Guimaras, an innovative

Building a Resilient Region 35


project known as Guisi Discovery Quest was launched that
features affordable tour packages for visitors, including
rappelling, snorkelling and a mangrove tour, among other
activities. These activities are offered in two packages,
a half day or a whole day, and each offers a different
experience for the tourist, ranging from tranquil relaxation
to extreme adventure.
The half day tour is mainly made up of mountain biking,
boating, caving and snorkelling activities, with mangrove
tours and rappelling activities included in the full day tour.
The activities end after an hour or two of snorkelling as
visitors pedal back to the lighthouse to freshen up and rest.
From the lighthouse, visitors can also enjoy the previously
undiscovered wonders of Guisi beaches, or the lush
wilderness trails leading to the majestic Panluron Falls.
The project, designed by the Department of Tourism with
funding from the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP), is not a brand new project, but one built on the
gains of the much earlier Guisi Community-based Heritage
Tourism Program, a component of the Guimaras Heritage
Tourism Project initiated five years before the oil spill.
Deemed the people’s ticket out of poverty, the Guimaras
Heritage Tourism Project was launched in November 2001
and was designed to develop and implement a community-
based economic enterprise employing multi-stakeholder
and participatory approaches. It intended to promote
the natural, agricultural, religious, historical and cultural
heritage of the place to local and foreign tourists. Tourism
36
Guimaras: A Community Comes Together to Fight Poverty
had been identified as the cornerstone of the economic
development of Guimaras.
This project traces its inception back to 1996 when the
provincial government of Guimaras, with the assistance of
the Canadian Urban Institute (CUI), implemented a series
of activities to equip stakeholders with the capacity to
formulate economic development initiatives and implement
projects geared towards poverty reduction. An economic
development strategy for the island was prepared, which
identified three priority sectors – agriculture, fisheries and
tourism. CUI’s work in Guimaras was undertaken with the
financial support of the Government of Canada provided
through the Canadian International Development Agency
(CIDA).
To test the acquired capacity of stakeholders in
implementing projects, demonstration projects were
implemented. In the area of tourism development, the
provincial government introduced the Guimaras Heritage
Tourism Project that called for the establishment of
an environmentally sensitive and cooperative form of
community economic development endeavour. Guisi was
selected as the site for such a
pilot project.
Specifically, the Guimaras
Heritage Tourism Project aimed
to:
•  Enhance the abilities and
increase the awareness of
stakeholders in developing
and managing local economic
enterprises;
•  Develop and implement a
barangay and excursion tourism
project;
•  Promote public/community
involvement and encourage
transparency and accountability;
•  Develop/formulate and
implement tourism policies and
related legislation; and
•  Improve service delivery
and reduce poverty of local
communities.
Project Components
Public Education and
Organization. Following the
implementation of the Guimaras Heritage Tourism Project,
the provincial government conducted a series of tourism
awareness seminars to educate communities as well as
other stakeholders on the economic benefits that could
be derived from tourism in order to gain their support
for and commitment to tourism-related projects, and to
turn them into effective tourism leaders. These seminars
also provided stakeholders with a clearer picture of the
importance of the tourism industry and familiarized them
Building a Resilient Region
Guimaras: A Community Comes Together to Fight Poverty

with the island’s attractions, products, services and

activities and special events. A municipal project task force Enhancement of Support Services. A fund of P350,000
for the heritage tourism project was created in October (US$7,400) from the provincial government of Guimaras
2002 by the municipal government of Nueva Valencia to led to the construction of a one-room heritage cottage
formulate plans and programs as well as to advocate for to accommodate tourists in the area. It is equipped
the passage of tourism and related legislation. with a bathroom, a kitchen, and lighting facilities. It was
subsequently turned over to the BDTC for management.
Policy Formulation. Legislation and policies were The BDTC also raised cash and material donations from
introduced to support the operation of the heritage private organizations and individuals amounting to P32,135
tourism project. These included the creation of the (US$680) for the improvement of the cottage, which include
Barangay Dolores Tourism the construction of a mess
Council and the Barangay hall and two toilet facilities,
Ecological Solid Waste tables and the landscaping
Management Committee, a of the cottage grounds. It
ban on the gathering of corals also purchased mats, water
in the shoreline of Dolores, a containers, lamps and other
proclamation of the Dolores basic items
mangrove area as the site
of a community-based forest Generating Partners’ Support.
management project, the The development of the Guisi
strengthening of the Municipal Community-Based Heritage
Tourism Council, and the Tourism Project was a result
adoption of the Area Specific of the contributions of various
Tourism Master Plan of partners. Departments under
Guimaras, and several others. the provincial government of
Guimaras lent their expertise
Capacity Building. In November to answer the various needs
2003, a group of municipal of the project. The Provincial
and provincial government Tourism Office provided
personnel participated in a direction, framework and initial
study tour to Samal Island funding and staff to develop
in Davao del Norte where a and implement the project. The
community-based tourism Provincial Engineers Office was
program had been making responsible for the construction
several gains. This exposed of the heritage cottage and the
them to approaches on how installation of the water system.
to manage the project and The municipal government of
make it sustainable, and made Nueva Valencia and its offices
them realize the benefits that collaborated with their provincial
the community could derive counterparts. National
from a similar endeavour. government agencies like the
Their learnings from the study Department of Tourism, the
tour, which was organized Philippine National Police and
by CUI, were echoed in the the Bureau of Fisheries and
Community-Based Heritage Aquatic Resources extended
Tourism Project Management interventions on matters
Workshop conducted the related to their mandates.
following month. The workshop The Technical Education and
sought to equip villagers – the Skills Development Authority
Barangay Dolores Tourism (TESDA) gave skills training
Council (BDTC), barangay The old lighthouse at Guisi still has stories to tell. to residents in inn-keeping and
officials, students, teachers, fisherfolk and other members food handling, among others.
of the community – with basic knowledge in inn-keeping,
organization, management of tourism facilities and events, A Novel Approach
guest assistance and handling, as well as marketing. This The Guimaras Heritage Tourism Project is an innovative
enhanced their awareness of their roles, responsibilities way of attacking the problem of poverty. Here, one can find
and relationships in the implementation and management a community that developed – in a participatory manner –
of the project. The BDTC was named the project its own local economic enterprise to directly benefit from it.
management team of the community-based heritage It shaped a community that is aware of its assets, capable
tourism project. of managing them, and committed to sustaining the

Building a Resilient Region 37


initiative that provided them with livelihood opportunities
when their traditional sources of income could no longer
provide enough support.
The BDTC, which was named the project management
team, has since been registered with the Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC). It originally offered a tour
package for a group of five at a rate of P1,175 (US$25)
per person, which includes accommodation at the
heritage cottage and meals for two days, and services like
boating and carroza (carriage) rides, as well as a cultural
presentation. Guides are also available for those who want
to go mountain trekking and spelunking1.
BDTC records showed that from October 2004 to August
2005, the project generated an income of P86,887
(US$1,845) from group tours that benefited 42 families
who were tapped to supply catering and other services
to guests. School children who perform during cultural
presentations also earn small fees charged to tourists.
Fisherfolk belonging to the Katilingban sang mga
Magagmay nga Mangingisda sa Dolores (Dolores
Small Fisherfolks Association of Kamamado) augment
their income by offering boating services and hands-on
experiences for guests in traditional fishing methods using
nets as well as hook and line. Kamamado members have
also become committed protectors of the environment as
they serve as watchdogs of the coastal waters and marine
resources of Dolores, having signed an agreement with the
provincial government for such purpose. Members of the
barangay tanod (community police), for their part, serve as
guides in mountain trekking and cave exploration, and earn
extra funds from such duties.
The partnership forged among local governments, national
government agencies, non-governmental organizations and
community members brought maximum results not only
in terms of economics but also in terms of preserving the
historical and cultural heritage of the place. Settlers have
started to conduct research and compile historical accounts
from older members of the community and made an initial
1
Exploring caves.
38
Guimaras: A Community Comes Together to Fight Poverty
request to the National Commission for Culture and the
Arts (NCCA) for the restoration of the Guisi lighthouse and
the preservation of their culture.
Guisi, according to oral accounts, was peopled starting in
the 1860s when Eping Geonanga, a fisher from Guimbal
town in Iloilo province, was attracted to the richness and
unspoiled natural resources of the place. He brought his
family to the area and since then, other fishing families
from the nearby islands of Panay and Negros and from
as far as Romblon and Masbate started to settle in Guisi,
which was then called Baybay. Isolated as they were and
with little outside influence, the people have preserved
many of their culture and traditions.
To attract tourists to the area, the project is being promoted
through the media, both local and national. Pilmap, a travel
magazine, had a story on the project in its March 2004
issue. Two television programs from the giant networks
ABS-CBN (Magandang Umaga Bayan) and GMA-7 (Lovely
Day) also ran separate features on the community initiative.
CUI, the provincial government of Guimaras and the
municipal government of Nueva Valencia jointly published
a full-colour tourism brochure on Guisi to inform the public
what it is all about. An activity sponsored by the project
brought reporters and editors from national and regional
media to the area who in turn wrote stories that brought the
project to the attention of their respective audiences.
However, after the oil spill, visitor arrivals in Guisi declined
by 42.74 percent in 2006. Income generated also went
down by 54.71 percent from P51,827 (US$1,100) in
2005 to P23,475 (US$500) in 2006. But by 2007, Guisi
experienced a remarkable increase of 895.07 percent in
visitor arrivals, bringing the income generated to P95,965
(US$2,000), or an increase of 308.80 percent.
Its Value
The beauty of having a community managing its own
economic resources is that it must ensure that the shared
assets will continue to provide for the community’s needs,
creating a safeguard against the self-destructive over-
Building a Resilient Region
Guimaras: A Community Comes Together to Fight Poverty

exploitation that can plague tourist

areas. Furthermore, community
members also want to get the
most out of the investments that
they and their partners provide
for the project. Volunteerism also
shines best in such an endeavour.
Community members would also
advocate for the establishment of
structures and the formulation of
policies that encourage the project’s
economic and environmental
sustainability.

From 1996 to 2005, the Guimaras

Heritage Tourism Project had an
allocated budget of P900,000
(US$19,000), the bulk of which
went to training activities and was
mostly assumed by the provincial
government, which invested 95
percent of the budget. While the
municipal government of Nueva
Valencia and the barangay council
of Dolores provided a small share
of P20,000 each, they also provided
volunteer workers, which helped a
delicacies and crafts that serve as souvenir items for
great deal in implementing the project.
tourists when they visit Guisi.
Perhaps most valuable was the way in which the project
The project also promotes gender equality and youth
surpassed expectations. During the tourism awareness
participation, having solicited the active participation of
and appreciation campaign, the project intended to reach
women and young people in environmental and cultural
only half of the population of Barangay Dolores, or 942
activities. The BDTC is chaired by a woman, who is also
people, but it turned out that it reached the entire village
the principal of the Dolores Elementary School. Likewise,
and 518 others from neighbouring villages, municipal
women are involved in project management and operation.
government personnel and people’s organizations. In terms
Partner organizations like the NVPA are mostly comprised
of community mobilization and involvement, 292 people
of women.
were involved and actively participated in environmental
management activities, even though only 250 were
targeted. The project also aimed to train 50 beneficiaries on Its Impacts
project management and operation as part of its capacity The implementation of the Guimaras Heritage Tourism
building component, but reached 78 instead. In tourism Project has not only produced results but also made an
project assessment, policy ordinance formulation, and impressive imprint on the community in a number of ways:
market planning, 418 were reached compared to an initial
target of 350. Institutional Empowerment. The Municipal Task Force
for the Implementing Heritage Tourism Programs and
The heritage cottage is fully operational and is equipped the Barangay Dolores Tourism Council were created by
with several facilities. Constructed with funds from the virtue of an executive order and resolution, respectively.
provincial government, community members volunteered The creation of both groups was necessary for the
for carpentry jobs while other residents donated cash and implementation of the Guisi Community-Based Heritage
construction materials like hollow blocks, cement, lumber, Tourism Project. The BDTC has been registered with
and sand and gravel to ensure that construction did not the Securities and Exchange Commission, enabling it
encounter delays and other problems. to legally operate as an organization, as has the Nueva
The project also encouraged transparency with its use of a Valencia Producers Association. The provincial government
multi-stakeholder approach in planning and management. of Guimaras forged an agreement with the Iloilo City
Organizational procedures and systems have been government to form the Guimaras-Iloilo City Alliance
established not only for the Barangay Dolores Tourism (GICA) to institutionalize cooperation between the two
Council as the project management team but also for local governments to promote tourism and economic
support groups like the Kamamado and the Nueva Valencia development. GICA eventually evolved into the Metro Iloilo-
Producers Association (NVPA), the group that produces Guimaras Economic Development Council (MIGEDC).

Building a Resilient Region 39


Cultural Preservation. The project helped people
appreciate their culture and history, realizing that these can
become tools for poverty reduction and thus encouraged
them to preserve their cultural traditions and historical
landmarks. Children and adults memorized cultural songs
and perfected dance steps so these could be showcased to
guests. They also documented the community history from
oral accounts and other secondary sources. Traditional
fishing methods take centre stage during experiential
activities. The quaint barrio life is being conserved as it has
formed part of Guisi’s tourism product.
Environmental Protection. The people of Guisi have also
made environmental protection their foremost concern. Its
“The implementation of the Guimaras Heritage
Tourism Project has not only produced results
but also made an impression on the community.”
pristine environment and clean coastal waters are part of
its total tourism product and the residents have been very
active in activities geared towards environmental protection
like coastal clean up, tree planting and re-greening,
beautification and solid waste management. The Barangay
Ecological Solid Waste Management Committee of Dolores
has since been strengthened to arrest any garbage
problems. Environmental policies have been introduced,
like the ban on gathering coral along the shoreline of
Dolores and the proclamation of the Dolores mangrove
area as the site of a community-based forest management
project.
Economic Empowerment. As described in earlier parts
of this chapter, the Barangay Dolores Tourism Council
(BDTC) generated an income from group tours which
benefited families who were tapped to supply catering
and other services to guests. School children who perform
earned small fees ; fishers augmented their income by
offering boating services and hands-on experiences for
guests; and members of the barangay tanod (community
police) served as guides in mountain trekking and cave
exploration, and earn extra funds from such duties.
Transferability and Sustainability
The implementation of the Guimaras Heritage Tourism
Project has been documented. Programs like the tourism
awareness campaign, study tours and management
workshops can be easily replicated in other areas with
natural, cultural and historical heritage features. Policies
enshrined in executive orders, resolutions and ordinances
can inspire similar strategies. The creation of councils and
legal documents governing cooperation and the registration
of organizations are applicable elsewhere in the Philippines
and perhaps elsewhere.
Awareness campaigns are done almost everywhere on
every issue – from combating the spread of diseases
40
Guimaras: A Community Comes Together to Fight Poverty
to launching a new government program. Raising the
awareness of people on the economic benefits of tourism
may be easy, but Guimaras fashioned its campaign by
building tourism front-liners who must always remember
the 3As – Attract, Assurance, and Account. These
mean attracting tourists by improving tourism products,
destinations and events, assuring them of safety and
security, and making everyone accountable to every visitor
by making their stay on the island a worthwhile experience.
Study tours to areas where a community-based heritage
tourism project is making waves, including Guisi, can be
easily organized. While situations can be unique from
one area to another, Guisi was inspired by Samal Island
off Davao City where a community-based eco-tourism
program had been established. The experiences of both
Guisi and Samal can provide other local governments
and communities with knowledge on how to develop and
manage a local tourism enterprise. Similar management
workshops can be organized and national government
agencies can be tapped to serve as partners in similar
undertakings.
The Local Government Code of 1991 provided local
government units with the power to legislate and create
offices, local development councils and special bodies that
can assist them in formulating policies geared towards
poverty reduction, cultural preservation and environmental
protection. Their compositions can be similarly fashioned.
The tourism program of the province of Guimaras, which
features strong public-private partnership, was established
within legal frameworks, making it replicable. Community
organizations can be set up and registered with the proper
government agencies to make them functional beyond the
domain of politics so that even though governors or mayors
come and go, these organizations will continue to operate.
Challenges and the Future
One challenge in the implementation of the Guimaras
Heritage Tourism Project is “process fatigue” felt by
some stakeholders considering the time that participatory
planning requires to produce a multi-stakeholder plan of
action. To note, the project’s conceptualization started in
1996 but was only turned over to the community in January
2004. “Process fatigue” can weaken the interests of others
and drag out the process all the more. Another is the wait-
and-see attitude of some community members that can
spread to others if their concerns are not addressed.
However, the transparency in program implementation,
the strong partnership that propelled it, and the policies
and structures that made it survive the odds bring a lot
of promise to the community, thus exacting commitment
and dedication from them to work for its success. This
commitment and dedication is the same that the people
displayed when they responded to challenge of the oil spill.
By and large, it has been a program “by the people, for the
people and of the people” of Guisi.
Building a Resilient Region
Malay
Boracay’s War on Waste
Stay beautiful! That is the obligation
of Boracay Island off the coast of the
municipality of Malay in Aklan province,
Philippines, to those who benefit from
the fortune that it brings. In the past 12
years, 4.322 million local and foreign
tourists have visited Boracay spending
P79.445 billion (US$1.67 million) on
the small island. Billed as “The Crown
Jewel of Philippine Tourism,” the
1,038-hectare island is a major income
generator not only for Aklan but also for
the country as a whole, bringing in an
average of P6.6 billion (US$126 million)
a year.

But as tourists descend on the island

by the thousand, they leave behind
mounting garbage problems that have
made Boracay’s obligation to stay
beautiful difficult to achieve. In 2001,
the island produced an average of
eight tons of garbage a day during
the peak tourist season, which runs
from December to May, and five tons a day during the off
season. By end of 2004, the figure had risen to 10 tons
and seven tons a day during these respective seasons. In
2008, the figure hit a remarkable high of 19.1 tons day.
Of the total volume of garbage generated each day in
the island, 12.1 tons comes from hotels, restaurants and
shops, 6.1 tons come from households and the rest comes
from institutions and public spaces such as the streets and
the beach. During the high season, at least 30 percent of
Boracay garbage is recyclable. The 70 percent that is not
recyclable is shipped to a dump on the mainland of Aklan,
where there is a 6.1 hectare landfill along the boundaries of
Malay and Buruanga towns.
As the volume of garbage generated each day on the
island steadily increases year after year, effective solid
waste management has also become an escalating
challenge for its stakeholders, particularly for the local
government and for business owners. And that challenge
has become more demanding because of the fact that
Boracay has become the country’s most popular tourism
destination, known in the international tourism circle for its
four-kilometre sugar white beach.
Tourists and Garbage
The problem of solid waste in Boracay began when the first
tourist came to the island, throwing away the first empty
junk food wrapper on the beach or a shampoo sachet out
a resort window. As tourists grew in numbers, the piles of
garbage rose. This prompted the Department of Tourism
(DOT), which then had supervision and control over the
island, to recommend measures to stem the worsening
garbage problem through the 1990 Boracay Island Master
Development Plan (BIMDP).
The next year, however, Republic Act 7610 or the
Local Government Code was passed, passing the
responsibility of managing tourism areas and facilities
to municipal and city governments. In Boracay’s case,
this meant the municipality of Malay, Aklan. This Act also
transferred the task of enforcing environmental laws on
cleanliness, sanitation, solid waste management and
other environmental matters to local governments. The
guidelines that the DOT completed would have to be
adopted by local ordinances to be enforceable.
Despite this Act, the DOT continued to play an active
role in Boracay, especially in ensuring that the island’s
environmental integrity was preserved. In 1996, the DOT
partnered with the Canadian Urban Institute (CUI) to
promote sustainable development practices in Boracay
through community-based initiatives that would help to
ensure the economic well-being of the people while at
the same time maintaining the island’s attractiveness.
CUI’s work in Boracay was undertaken with the financial
support of the Government of Canada provided through the
Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).
What followed was a series of initiatives intended to
implement mechanisms and structures that would carry
out sustainable plans and programs. CUI’s intervention
in Boracay followed similar steps to those of a previous
initiative in Guimaras province. These steps included the
organization of a project steering committee, assessment

Building a Resilient Region 41

 Malay: Boracay’s War on Waste

waste. It also mandated the creation of

ecological solid waste management boards in
every local government, the task of which is
to prepare, submit and implement a plan for
the safe and sanitary management of solid
waste generated in their respective areas of
geographic and political jurisdiction.

Creating Partnerships
In Boracay, solid waste management falls
on the shoulders of the Municipal Ecological
Solid Waste Management Board (MESWMB)
of Malay, Aklan, which is headed by the
Municipal Mayor. Boracay stakeholders are
active members of the board, having previous
involvement with the Boracay Solid Waste
Action Team (BSWAT), a multi-stakeholder
task force organized in November 1997 to
serve as champion in the campaign against
garbage.

BSWAT was created following an action

planning process that was called for after
reports erupted in 1998 warning that the
island’s waters were already contaminated
with coliform bacteria. BSWAT formalized
the good relationships and encouraged
cooperation among the local government,
national government agencies, non-
governmental organizations and the
community. The group acted as an advisory
body and as the implementing arm of the local
government on issues concerning solid waste.

BSWAT’s creation was one of the offshoots

of the first Boracay Stakeholders Workshop,
which produced inputs to a SWOT (strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis,
and an agreement on the need for a
consortium to manage the island and on this
and planning for solid waste management, municipal
body’s preliminary role. The workshop also resulted in the
strengthening and management improvement, organization
creation of a Project Steering Committee (PSC) composed
and strengthening of the municipal and the barangay solid
of key officials in the local government of Malay, the
waste management boards, capacity development and
Department of the Interior and Local Government and the
implementation of demonstration projects.
private sector, led by the Boracay Foundation, Inc. (BFI).
The PSC was tasked to oversee plans and programs for
In 2000, Republic Act No. 9003 or the Ecological Solid
sustainable development in Boracay, particularly on solid
Waste Management Act of 2000 was passed, providing
waste management.
a legal framework for a systematic, comprehensive and
ecological solid waste management program in the
The PSC then met to examine the issues, challenges, and
Philippines. The Act aimed to ensure the protection of
prospects for solid waste management on the island. A
public health and the environment and underscored,
Solid Waste Management Workshop was the starting point
among other things, the need to create the necessary
for full implementation of municipal ordinances on zero
institutional mechanisms and incentives to do so, and
waste management. Since then, an action plan and a zero
to impose penalties for acts in violation of any of its
waste management implementation strategy to address
provisions.
the solid waste problem using participatory and strategic
approaches have been developed.
The law required the establishment of materials recovery
facilities (MRF) in every barangay or cluster of barangays
The “Zero Waste Management Program” sought to change
to serve as temporary storage for recyclable or reusable
attitudes among waste producers and to improve solid

42 Building a Resilient Region

 Malay: Boracay’s War on Waste
waste practices on the island. It featured seminars on
solid waste management, workshops on composting, and
meetings of garbage collectors and beach cleaners to raise
awareness about garbage disposal problems.
This program was conceived after it became clear that
municipal ordinances involving solid waste were poorly
implemented. For example, most, if not all, establishments
and residents did not segregate solid waste at source.
Recycling and other solid waste management techniques
were also not strictly implemented. Further, there were no
intense information campaigns to encourage and inspire
residents and business owners to adopt systematic solid
waste management.
Creative recycling is an important component of Boracay Solid Waste Management.
From BSWAT to SWM Board
With the new national law on solid waste management,
BSWAT had to give way to the Municipal Ecological
Solid Waste Management Board (MESWMB), through
which CUI’s assistance continued, working within its
framework by organizing and strengthening it and its
barangay counterparts. A review and assessment of the
town’s solid waste system was done, eventually resulting
in the completion of a 10-year Ecological Solid Waste
Management Plan, which the municipal government started
to implement in 2002.
This also led to the revival of the selda system and to
training a team on conducting information and education
campaigns. The selda, or cell, system is a volunteer
concept where one selda leader is in charge of monitoring
waste segregation activities and solid waste disposal
Building a Resilient Region
of 20 households. Selda leaders, who received training
on solid waste management, were likewise tasked with
undertaking information and education campaigns for their
cell members. The system has encouraged village folk to
help address garbage problems.
Key officials also attended workshops on Organizational
Improvement and on Project Implementation, Monitoring
and Evaluation. Two municipal sanitary inspections were
sent to attend a Solid Waste Management Characterization
Workshop to increase their knowledge on how to conduct
solid waste characterization. Seventeen staff also attended
the Project Monitoring and Impact Evaluation Workshop,
which equipped them with knowledge and skills to conduct
impact monitoring of various local government initiatives.
Eight municipal staff attended two study
tours to Cebu City, Bohol and Mindanao
that exposed them to the experiences of
other local governments in environmental
management. Another study tour to
Singapore exposed the Municipal Planning
and Development Coordinator to its
experiences in urban planning, economic
promotion, tourism development, ports
management, transportation management
and environmental management.
Organizational improvements were also
introduced. These included regular weekly
staff meetings, which served as a venue
for progress reporting and planning for the
weekly activities of the local government
unit, and the implementation of a regular
communication campaign on municipal
government activities using a radio station in
Boracay.
Demonstration Project
To show how partnership works, the Boracay
Island Solid Waste Management Project
began its implementation in 2004 as a
demonstration project that aimed to reduce waste disposal
by 25 percent. It had three objectives:
•  The implementation of an Information and Education
Campaign (IEC) to increase the level of awareness and
participation of stakeholders in solid waste management.
•  The improvement of the local government’s collection
and disposal system performance by providing functional
facilities, training, and exposure to other areas with best
practices on solid waste management and by providing
sufficient supplies and other logistics.
•  The strengthening of solid waste management
mechanisms in collaboration with the private sector
and national government agencies by reorganizing and
strengthening the capabilities of the MESWMB and its
barangay counterparts.
The government-community collaboration that had been
43
 Malay: Boracay’s War on Waste

built over the years in Boracay was reflected in the
partnership approach to the implementation of this project,
which brought together municipal and barangay officials,
national government agencies like the departments of
health, environment, tourism and local government, and
non-government organizations like CUI, BFI, Boracay
Federated Chamber of Commerce, Boracay Land
Transport Multi-Purpose Cooperative, Kiwanis Club of
Boracay, and the Rotary Club of Boracay.
The implementation of the demonstration project received
internal and external support to ensure that it attained
its objectives. The municipal government earmarked
money to fund activities like training, orientations and
forums, publications, and monitoring. The Department of
Environment and Natural Resources and the DOT acquired
equipment while the barangays provided human
resources for the construction of materials recovery
facilities. CUI facilitated orientation programs for
members of the solid waste management boards.
the Environment Monitoring and Evaluation System
(EMES). The EMES incorporates a set of indicators
that helps stakeholders and key players anticipate and
prevent problems. The Boracay EMES works to ensure the
soundness of future decisions and activities of Boracay’s
stakeholders and end-users, based on the principle of
ecological and socio-cultural harmony.
The chair of the Municipal Special Task Force, created
in 1998 to assist in the implementation of laws and
ordinances pertaining to environmental projects and
tourism, participated in a study tour to Canada to learn
about responsible tourism development, environmental
management, local governance, and economic
development.

Building from Previous Gains

The project was also built on the gains of previous
initiatives on IEC, capacity building, and partnership
building.

During BSWAT days, one of its many mandates

was to take charge of the information and education
campaign (IEC). It teamed up with the Department
of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR)
in coming up with IEC materials on solid waste
management, which were prominently posted in
every room of resorts in Boracay. It also launched
waste segregation campaigns and co-sponsored a
radio program dubbed “Bantay Boracay (Boracay
Watch).”

On capacity building, key local government officials

benefited from various training sessions, attended
workshops, and went on study tours to build their
capacity in discharging their functions. Coaching sessions
were also beneficial to them, while case study materials
on solid waste management were compiled to infuse new
knowledge into efforts to address the garbage problem.
The private sector also received training and information
on solid waste management. These contributed to the
effective execution of programs and projects on solid waste
management.
Members of the BSWAT also went on a study tour to
Manila, Bulacan, and Olongapo in 1999 to observe various
solid waste management initiatives, which provided them
with knowledge on waste reduction, reusing, recycling and
composting. They intended to duplicate or improve upon
the efforts of other local government units in addressing
their own garbage problems.

The municipality also received funding from the Canadian
International Development Agency (CIDA) through the
Local Government Support Program (LGSP) to build the
municipality’s capacity with respect to recycling and zero
waste management. Canadian consultants facilitated
training workshops and public awareness activities on
solid waste management issues and recycling for school
children, resort owners, church leaders and workers.
A workshop was also conducted to equip stakeholders with
the necessary tools, methods and techniques to implement
Inspiring Results
Interventions on the solid waste management process in
Boracay yielded inspiring results. The greatest of these
results was the five-year unified ecological solid waste
management plan for the island which was adopted by the
three barangays (village-level of government) that comprise
it – Balabag, Manocmanoc and Yapak. Indicative of the
empowerment of the three barangays, the unified plan was
deemed an urgent measure for the island because of its
unique qualities as compared to the rest of the municipality,
namely its rapid urban growth brought about by mass

44 Building a Resilient Region

Malay: Boracay’s War on Waste

tourism.
This unified plan employs the so-called 4Es of Ecological
Waste Management strategy – Education, Engineering,
Enforcement and Entrepreneurship. Developed using
a multi-stakeholder approach, the plan incorporates
earlier initiatives on the island that were found effective
and sustainable in addressing the garbage problem and
reinforces them with further innovations.
The education component calls for a massive information
and education campaign on solid waste and building the
capacity of the barangay SWM boards and community
volunteers on how to resolve the garbage problem. In
engineering, the plan prescribes the conversion of the
island’s open dumpsite to a sanitary landfill, establishment
of materials recovery facilities, road network development
and acquisition of equipment, among others.
To enforce environmental laws and ordinances, a
compliance monitoring team was organized while a
municipal auxiliary police force was established and
deputized. Penalties and fines for violators would be strictly
imposed while those who upheld the law and those who
properly practiced ecological solid waste management
would be rewarded with citations and awards. The
schedule for regular reviews of municipal ordinances on
solid waste management was also set.
The entrepreneurship component recommends networking
with junk buyers where recyclables can be sold, upgrading
and increasing garbage fees to fund solid waste
management programs, and ensuring compliance by
households, resorts and business establishments with laws
and municipal ordinances. Livelihood
projects anchored on recycling and
composting were also encouraged.
A multi-sectoral monitoring team is
now functioning on the island and
private partners are already purchasing
recyclables to reduce the volume of
garbage that goes to the landfill.
level. Normally, only the chair of the Liga ng mga Barangay
– the municipal federation of barangay captains – sits on
the MESWMB.
Compliance with Ordinances
There is now higher compliance with solid waste
management ordinances in Boracay, particularly Ordinance
No. 185, which requires everyone to segregate their waste,
hoisting a “no segregation, no collection” policy. While
a survey showed that the island produces 19.1 tons of
garbage a day, only 28 percent of this waste is shipped
to the mainland’s landfill, while 35 percent is sold to the
10 junk buyers found in the island, who in turn bring it
to Manila, Cebu or Iloilo City. There, the junk buyers are
able to sell recyclables such as plastic bottles, plastic
containers, metal, steel, aluminium cans, bottles and
broken glass, worn out batteries and copper.
There is a prevalent practice among homes, resorts and
business establishments of recovering recyclables and
selling them to buyers of factory-returnable items like
aluminium cans, tins cans, PET bottles and glass bottles.
Likewise, 37 percent of the total garbage produced on the
island becomes compost for gardens in resorts and areas
devoted to cash crop production.
Boarding houses where many of those who sought work
on the island are staying have also been complying with
the ordinance that requires them to provide garbage
receptacles in every room, and they have been complying
religiously with garbage disposal schedules. The ordinance
penalizes erring boarding houses either with the revocation
of their license and permit to operation, or through fines,
imprisonment, or both.

Strategically, the three barangay

captains sit as members of the
Municipal Ecological Solid Waste
Management Board of Malay, which
counts among its members several
non-governmental organizations and
civic groups based on the island,
like the Boracay Foundation, BCCI,
the Kiwanis Club of Boracay, and
the Rotary Club of Boracay. The
membership of the island’s barangay
captains in the MESWMB gives them
an opportunity to articulate their
concerns on solid waste to the board
as well as to echo their respective
barangay’s discussions and decisions
that have transpired at the municipal

Building a Resilient Region 45

 Malay: Boracay’s War on Waste

Partners’ support
A strong partnership was
established with the tourism
business sector, particularly
with the Boracay Foundation
Inc. (BFI). To support the solid
waste management program,
the group unveiled its own
Environmental Management
Plan, which outlines a vision
for self-regulation and self-
monitoring, and forwards the
concept of “good housekeeping”
to its members. BFI is a non-
stock, non-profit association
composed of at least 70 resorts
and business establishments.
Organized in 1996, it works
closely with the local government
of Malay as well as with civic
groups and associations on
the island on solid waste
management.

Under the plan, each BFI

member identifies an ecological
officer from among its employees
to be trained in solid waste management. That person is
then tasked to see to it that guests, clients and employees
of the resort or business establishment practice waste
segregation, sorting and the recovery of recyclables, and
that the resort or business establishment complies with the
collection schedule set by the municipal government.
The ecological officer is also in charge of the
information and education campaign in the workplace.
Good housekeeping calls for freshwater and energy
conservation, and for hotels to monitor the practices of
their personnel and guests to assure that unsuitable or
harmful substances – like oils and fats, paints, thinners,
solvents and other poisonous chemicals that could harm
the biological process – do not go into the sewers.
Recognizing Good Work
BFI began other initiatives aimed at addressing the
solid waste problem. Of late, a notable endeavour was
the island-wide search for the Best Ecological Solid
Waste Management (ESWM) Practitioners 2005, which
it launched together with Smart Telecommunications,
Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Central
Office, DENR-Environmental Management Bureau-Region
6, the travel company 7107 Life and the local government
of Boracay.
The search aimed to strengthen the implementation of the
Ecological Solid Waste Management Law of 2000, foster
multi-sectoral and community participation in keeping
Boracay clean, sustain the efforts of the barangays in
waste management and encourage others to practice solid
waste management. It feted an outstanding barangay in
ESWM, an outstanding barangay captain, an outstanding
selda leader, and an outstanding eco-house. Cash prizes
ranging from P10,000 (US$200) to P30,000 (US$600) were
given to the winners of the contest.
The award evolved from an earlier initiative dubbed Galing
Boracay Awards on Excellent Eco-waste Project, launched
in 1997 by BFI together with the municipal government of
Malay, CUI, the Department of Tourism, DENR and the
LGSP-CIDA. Projects cited included those on composting,
recycling and effective solid waste segregation.
The local government, for its part, has its own award-
giving program known as Magaling, an acronym for Malay
Gawad Alkalde sa Linis at Ganda (Malay Mayor’s Award
for Cleanliness and Beautification), which recognizes
urban and rural barangays as well as elementary and high
school campuses in the municipality that excel in solid
waste management practices. Integrating the three major
environmental programs of the government, it aims to
provide the institutional mechanism to effectively manage
the environment by granting awards and incentives to
barangays and public schools that perform well.
The project aims to assess the performance of the
barangays in areas of cleaning and greening as well as
in forest, coastal resource, and solid waste management,
to recognize outstanding performance, and to provide
a venue to mobilize barangays and schools for solid
waste management. To ensure sustainability, a quarterly
assessment is conducted and an unannounced
assessment is done once every semester. The search was
conducted across the whole municipality, but, within the
urban barangay category, the three barangays of Boracay,

46 Building a Resilient Region

Malay: Boracay’s War on Waste

the poblacion (town proper) and the port village of

Caticlan (the jump-off point to Boracay) competed against
each other.

The establishment of the award systems in Boracay

not only encouraged others to achieve their solid waste
management goals, but it also served as a rallying point
over which the garbage issue could be discussed. It
also served as a venue for the private sector to provide
support to solid waste management programs, and at the
same time to act as a mechanism ensuring the continuity
of the program.

Other Accomplishments
To strengthen the Boracay Island Solid Waste
Management Project, the municipal government assigned
35 staff members to work on it, all of whom had received
training to increase their understanding of solid waste
management. Equipment for collection and disposal
was acquired, which included three trucks and six push
carts. To comply further with the ecological solid waste
management law, a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF)
was constructed in the island’s dumpsite area. A shredder
machine was also acquired to complement the MRF.

The project conducted orientation programs on the

Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000 for
resort owners, which increased their level of participation
in the Municipal Ecological Solid Waste Management
Program on the island. A Project Impact, Monitoring and
Evaluation Workshop was held for project implementers.
A dialogue with the DENR’s Environmental Management
Bureau (EMB) regarding ecological solid waste
management plan implementation was undertaken to
solicit support from EMB. As a result, the office assigned
an Ecological Solid Waste Management Coordinator to
management purposes. There is also no funding allocation
Boracay Island.
for selda leaders to make them more functional.

Challenges and Solutions
The solid waste management project in Boracay
encountered a number of challenges along the way;
however, these problems also served as learning
experiences for the local government unit and other
stakeholders on how to improve the delivery of services
to target beneficiaries. Learning from other experiences,
stakeholders proposed solutions to ensure that programs
were carried out effectively and efficiently. Some solutions
to challenges also revealed the strong partnership that was
established among stakeholders.
A major challenge that was identified early on in the
project was the lack of financial resources to fund solid
waste management initiatives, compounded by a relatively
minimal garbage fee that the municipal government
charges from resorts and business establishments.
The most that the town can charge, as prescribed by its
municipal revenue ordinance, was a garbage fee of P1,200
(US$25). This generated insufficient funding, resulting
in the lack of equipment and machines for solid waste
In 2004, for example, the municipal government earmarked
P2 million (US$42,000) for solid waste, but its revenues
only reached P1.5 million (US$31,000). To generate funds
to fill this budget gap, an environmental fee of P50 (US$1)
per tourist was imposed starting in January 2006. From
this, Malay was able to generate an income of P17,586,660
(US$ 366,000) in 2006, P22,776,390 (US$475,000) in
2007, and P24,883,850 (US$ 518,000) in 2008.
In the meantime, the local government established
linkages with government agencies, non-governmental
organizations, and private organizations to acquire
assistance. DENR, for example, provided a P500,000
(US$10,000) grant to the island’s solid waste management
program. A hotel and a senator donated dump trucks
for garbage collection. In 2008, the Japan International
Cooperation Agency (JICA) started reassessing the island’s
garbage problem to come up with a master plan on solid
waste management in Boracay.
Another challenge was how to make the implementation

Building a Resilient Region 47


of the garbage segregation policy, both at the source and
in the collection system, consistent. The municipality has
a “no waste segregation, no collection” policy, and some
hotels had religiously observed this. However, even if
garbage was being segregated, garbage collectors would
just dump it altogether in the collection trucks, rendering
the pre-collection segregation practice useless. Continuous
training and orientation on solid waste management was
provided to garbage collectors to help them understand the
waste segregation process.
An innovative move was the designation of ecological
officers among resorts and business establishments
who are members of the BFI. Trained in solid waste
management, the ecological officer personnel is tasked to
see to it that guests, clients and employees of the resort
or business establishment practice waste segregation,
sorting and the recovery of recyclables, and that the resort
or business establishment complies with the collection
schedule set by the municipal government.
Such cooperative endeavours show that Boracay
stakeholders have moved beyond the divisive environment
that used to reign on the island and have become a
cohesive and collaborative community. There was a time
when resorts and business establishments were in conflict
with the DOT over policies and disagreements were a
constant occurrence. But this has since been replaced
by strong partnership following a series of workshops,
dialogues and forums where differences were resolved
and compromise solutions to problems besetting the island
were reached.
Lessons
The Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000
prescribes guiding principles on solid waste management.
These include:
•  There is no single management and technological
approach to solid waste management. An integrated
48
Malay: Boracay’s War on Waste
solid waste management system will best achieve solid
waste management goals.
•  All elements of society are fundamentally responsible
for solid waste management. Those who generate waste
must bear the cost of its management and disposal
•  Solid waste management should be approached
within the context of resource conservation,
environmental protection and health, and sustainable
development.
The partnership that was built in Boracay to address solid
waste management issues fulfills these guiding principles.
By having a partnership mechanism, communities could
be active participants in addressing solid waste problems
if they were only given a venue for participation and turned
into champions of ecological solid waste management.
Partnership has also harmonized the solid waste
management activities of various groups, resulting
in the effective and efficient delivery of services to a
unique constituency like Boracay. Easy exchange of
information and the smooth flow of communication within
the partnership structure encouraged transparency and
accountability.
What now sustains solid waste management actions
in Boracay is the capacity that was built amongst its
stakeholders. It was an investment that yielded a high
return, particularly on how projects and programs have
responded smoothly to new policies and changes in
political leadership. Plans that were conceived during
earlier administrations have easily become policy
documents for subsequent structures and leaders.
It was also evident that municipal leadership sets the
tempo of activities for solid waste management. Without
the full support of the local leader, action plans could not
move forward. When, for example, it was recommended
that the municipal solid waste management board should
be reorganized, the municipal mayor responded positively.
Making a champion on solid waste management out of the
local leadership can spell the realization of project goals.
Given its limited financial and human resources, the
municipality of Malay focused on small and calculated
actions rather than on big, complex strategies. This showed
that local governments can effectively carry out plans and
programs if they work within their capacity, while constantly
strengthening it. Stretching resources beyond their limits
will do no good for local governments.
While the volume of garbage in Boracay was not drastically
reduced overnight, its experience in addressing the
problem of solid waste showed that partnership – and
the eventual building of structures and mechanisms to
institutionalize it – can work wonders for a seemingly
irreversible phenomenon, and eventually balance the
contrast between beauty and garbage.
Building a Resilient Region
Malay
Strengthening the Municipal Role in Health and Sanitation
Billed as the jewel of the Philippine
tourism industry, Boracay Island off Malay
town in the central Philippine province of
Aklan attracts hundreds of thousands of
local and foreign tourists every year to
its white sand beach. But the advent of
tourism brought more than beachcombers
to Boracay; it also brought about
overdevelopment, creating a number of
environmental and public health problems.
Poor sanitation, deteriorating water quality
and overcrowding bred parasitism, diarrhoea,
malnutrition and lung infections. Cases of
sexually transmitted diseases flourished as
well.
Profit-driven tourism promotion has continued
to be the prime concern of almost everyone
in Boracay. Despite the huge volume of tourists descending
on the island every year – and the figures are still going up
– the number and the trend were not enough to convince
resort owners that something needed to be done about
the problems associated with overdevelopment. As such,
not only the health of the island suffered, but also that
of its long-time residents who share the island and its
health services with the newcomers who now make up the
majority of the population.
Health service delivery on the island had either been poor
or inadequate for various reasons, ranging from lack of
funds and poor capacity of service providers to deliver the
expected services to lack of public participation and low
level of awareness. Consequently, there had been a high
number of cases of upper respiratory infections, pulmonary
tuberculosis, diarrhoea, bronchitis and severe anaemia
due to poor diet, unsanitary and unhealthy habits and
congestion.
To make matters worse, Boracay’s groundwater had been
contaminated by sewage coming from resorts and homes
as well as leachate from solid waste, rendering it unsafe
for households that did not have potable water connections
and collected drinking water from wells. By the end of
2003, only 53 percent of the 2,701 households were
serviced by the water system on the island. Aside from
sewage contamination, seawater intrusion was induced by
the overdrawing of water by resorts.
The need to improve and sustain the health service
delivery system in the three barangays (villages) on the
tourist island gave birth to the Boracay Island Sustainable
Health Services Delivery Project (BISHSDP) in 2002.
Specifically, it aimed to improve the health and sanitation
status on Boracay Island, provide adequate health services
to residents, contract workers and tourists, and to raise
Building a Resilient Region
the level of awareness of people through continuous
information and education campaigns.
BISHSDP was supported by the Canadian Urban Institute,
which had partnered with the Municipality of Malay (the
local government that covers the island of Boracay) to
raise its capacity to take action to improve the island’s
environmental health. CUI’s work was supported with
funding from the Canadian International Development
Agency.
Raising the Concern
The concern for the island’s health status was raised a
year before, when participants in a forum saw the need to
urgently address worsening health problems in Boracay.
Consultations were held with barangays, organizations,
and other concerned citizens to raise the awareness of
barangay officials, health service providers, volunteers and
organizations about the situation. Several forums followed,
resulting in the establishment of mechanisms for planning,
implementation and monitoring and evaluation, which
laid the foundation for the project to improve health and
sanitation on Boracay.
Kicking off the project’s implementation was an
assessment of the health service delivery mechanisms
of the municipality of Malay. This included a review of
its health programs and projects, an analysis of gender
concerns, and an assessment of its capacity to implement
programs and projects. Health indicators were identified,
the local government’s strengths and weaknesses were
categorized, and the opportunities and threats of the
project were summarized. Policy recommendations were
made in accordance with the spirit of the United Nations’
Millennium Development Goals.
To provide stakeholders with knowledge of the various
processes that could lead to the improvement of health
49
 Malay: Strengthening the Municipal Role in Health and Sanitation
service delivery, various health service delivery best
practices were introduced through case studies, study
tours and resource sharing. Capacity building activities,
which targeted local officials, medical technologists, health
workers and other sectors, included training, seminars
and workshops in the areas of planning and management,
project development and proposal writing, health care
financing and project monitoring and evaluation.
Three top local executives – Malay Mayor Ceciron
Cawaling, Municipal Planning and Development
Coordinator Alma Belejerdo and Municipal Health Officer
Dr. Adrian Salaver – were sent to the Asian Institute of
Management to learn about programs on Health Care
Strategic Management, Health Care Service Delivery
Management and Health Care Financial Management.
They became familiar with concepts and practices on
creating health strategic plans, generating policies on
customer satisfaction, and measuring and improving the
financial health and performance of health care institutions.
Program Components
To carry out the BISHSDP, four program components
were introduced – Information and Education Campaigns,
Human Resources Development, Facility and Health
Service Improvements, and Environmental Sanitation
Enhancement. All these were likewise geared towards
building a strong partnership among health stakeholders on
the island.
Information and Education Campaigns sought to increase
the level of awareness and participation of all stakeholders
in the program by encouraging them to take care of their
health through availing themselves of services and through
participating in programs and projects needing community
50
support. Ongoing activities included the production and
distribution of information and education materials such as
brochures, flyers, installation of signboards, radio plugs,
advocacy to barangay officials and organizing barangay
assemblies and dialogues.
Additional staff and volunteers were hired and trained to
augment personnel requirements. More barangay
nutrition scholars and barangay health workers
were recruited.
Facility and Health Service Improvement sought
to make the three Barangay Health Stations
conform to the standards of Sentrong Sigla
(Center of Wellness) and provide them with the
necessary equipment, instruments, medicines and
medical supplies. Sentrong Sigla is a program by
the Philippines Department of Health that seeks to
provide a seal of excellence to health facilities that
have met quality standards. The Barangay Health
Stations health service delivery processes were
also improved to make them more efficient and
effective.
Environmental Sanitation Enhancement sought
to address the problem of the lack of access to
potable water and the absence of sanitary toilets
in some low income families’ homes on the island,
including helping to improve sanitary conditions.
Toilet bowls were provided to communities while
public toilets were constructed. There is ongoing
periodic water analysis and chlorination so that
potable water is safe for the communities.
Organizational Inroads
The project made a number of organizational inroads after
it advocated for support from different sectors on the island,
including from the local governments of Aklan, Malay and
the three barangays on the island, national government
agencies like the Department of Health and the Department
of Environment and Natural Resources and civil society
organizations like the Boracay Foundation and the Boracay
Chamber of Commerce and Industry. A multi-stakeholder
Project Steering Committee was established to oversee the
project’s implementation.
The Boracay Island Health System Development Plan was
drawn up to guide local actions on health service delivery,
assigning responsibilities and setting budgets to achieve
its goals. The plan was a product of a strategic planning
workshop where participants agreed to a vision dubbed
HAPI Boracay, short for “Happy and People-Inspired
Island.” Likewise, a Health Program Implementation
Review (HPIR) is now conducted annually to monitor and
evaluate the project on top of the regular weekly meeting
between midwives and barangay health workers.
The Municipal Health Office (MHO) of Malay became
fully functional following the upgrading of facilities and
acquisition of new equipment. An MHO extension office
Building a Resilient Region
 Malay: Strengthening the Municipal Role in Health and Sanitation

health monitors to assist the

town’s three sanitary inspectors
in implementing health and
sanitation ordinances. Funds
were also allocated to the
improvement and expansion
of the MHO extension office
in Boracay, whose laboratory
was recently upgraded to a
higher standard as set by the
Department of Health.

Meanwhile, MHO nurses

A health station on Boracay Island
was opened in 2004 in Barangay Yapak, just across from
the Don Ciriaco Señeres Tirol Memorial Hospital, which
is also equipped with a dental clinic – the only municipal
health office with a dental facility. The MHO in Boracay also
has a birthing clinic.
Meanwhile, the Barangay Health Station of Yapak was
improved and funding has already been secured for the
Barangay Health Station of Balabag. A school-based
youth centre was established and the number of health
volunteers has increased.
The operating, emergency, labour and paediatrics rooms at
the Don Ciriaco Señeres Tirol Memorial Hospital in Boracay
have likewise been improved. Equipment was acquired
over the past years, which included an anaesthesia
machine, a defibrillator, a generator, an air-conditioner,
stretchers, an electrocardiograph (ECG) machine and an
ambulance.
Legislating for Sanitation
Malay has a solid waste management ordinance requiring
homes and businesses to observe waste segregation
and other sound garbage disposal practices, prescribing
penalties for violators. In 2008, the Malay municipal council
also passed an ordinance prohibiting the raising of pigs,
after the Municipal Health Board identified pig manure as
a top source of sanitation problems in Boracay. Another
ordinance was passed requiring boarding houses to
provide garbage receptacles to all their occupants.
have continuously received
training to equip them with
new knowledge and skills,
particularly in health service
areas most needed in Boracay.
Midwives were also trained in
newborn screening.
Medical technologists in the
MHO have undergone HIV/
AIDS training and an HIV/
AIDS screening and testing
laboratory was established to
respond to a disease rampant
in many mass tourism areas.
Increased Consciousness
Information and education campaigns on HIV/AIDS and on
adolescent reproductive health were also launched, among
them a regular forum on reproductive health and a radio
program dubbed kaMALAYan, coined after Malay and the
Tagalog word “kamalayan,” which means “consciousness.”
A yearly orientation on HIV/AIDS is given to businesses
every time they seek the renewal of their business permits,
with special focus on those operating spas and tattoo
parlours, where the risks are highest. Food handlers are
also required to attend sessions on food safety and food
sanitation.
With increased health consciousness, the number of
households with potable water connections rose to 97.95
percent by the end of 2005 from 53 percent in 2003. There
has also been progressive allocation of funds by the
barangay and the municipal governments for health care.
A trust fund for social hygiene concerns and adolescent
reproductive health was also established. The MHO
produced hepatitis vaccines using the Philippine Health
Insurance System (PhilHealth) Fund and sold them at cost.
The influx of tourists may have proved stressful for the
fragile Boracay Island, but through the initiatives launched
by the BISHSDP, there is hope that at least some of the
negative effects of this stress have been identified and
addressed.

The municipal government has also approved an

appropriation ordinance that allocated funds to hire six

Building a Resilient Region 51