New beginning

In this increasingly uncertain world, the lunar year of the Fire Rooster promises new beginnings—light after a dark night, resolution after confusion, plenty after despondency and need. (One feels free to interpret the inevitable sense of hope that springs at each new year, when one wipes the slate clean and starts afresh.)

And an exciting new beginning is occur-ring at Laguna de Bay where, it is reported, fish pens and cages that have lorded it over the vast (90,000 hectares) body of water for decades are being demolished to allow the small folk to return to their traditional fishing grounds.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources issued in December a demolition warning on all fish pens and cages in the country’s largest lake. Last week, clearing teams from the DENR, Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA), National Bureau of Investigation, and the Coast Guard, Army and Navy swung into action. Their orders come from the top: President Duterte himself, who, in his first State of the Nation Address, announced that “the poor fishermen will have priority” in Laguna de Bay. (According to the Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas or Pamalakaya, an estimated 10.9 million impoverished fishermen rely solely on the lake for their living.)

READ: Gov’t starts dismantling fish pens in Laguna de Bay 

Small fishers had long been getting the short end of the stick in the lake—no match for the big fish, so to speak, in the form of commercial operators of fish pens and cages. The Association of Laguna Lake Fish Producers, for example, “has more than a hundred members, most of them wealthy investors or corporations,” as noted by Inquirer reporter Maricar Cinco in a recent special report. Then there is the threat posed by illegal fishers and dummy corporations. The old fish pen owners informally sold their “rights” to the larger entities without the knowledge or approval of the LLDA, which is tasked to manage the lake. The battle for fishing rights had in fact turned ugly at certain points: A fisherman from Cardona, Rizal, reported that armed goons in the employ of the big operators would fire at him and his fellows or ram their boats whenever they came close to the fish pens.

In a statement, the DENR said the clearing teams were to “zero in on large, illegal fish operators that have benefited and profited from the lake region since the 1970s.” It said that the fish pen operators had been given “enough time to dismantle their own pens last year,” and that as of this month “all permits to operate have been cancelled.”

The size of the clearing operation (150 Coast Guard vessels and 18 other boats), the breadth of it (conducted simultaneously on the Binangonan, Muntinlupa, Parañaque and Taguig sides of the lake), and the decisiveness of the action seem to indicate strong political will in setting things right. “You can already see the small fishermen going back to the lake to fish, just like in the old days,” Environment Undersecretary Arturo Valdez has been quoted as saying. He added that this was “how [the lake] should be—for the people, and not for big corporations who don’t even give back to the people.”

READ: Operators: ‘Zero-pen’ policy endangers food security 

Yet it has to be made clear: This is just a new beginning—the start of the recovery of Laguna de Bay from a choked and dying basin to the vibrant body of water it once was. This is but one step in its revival, as correctly pointed out by Pamalakaya chair Fernando Hicap. In a letter to the editor, Hicap cites the industries and factories that have been dumping industrial and chemical wastes into the lake for decades. “The dumping should stop,” he declares. Indeed.

He also cites the Napindan Hydraulic Control System that serves to prevent the entry of saltwater from Manila Bay into the lake. Saltwater being “essential to maintaining the ecological balance that a brackish lake needs to provide nutrients for fish and other marine life,” he says, its absence is “detrimental to fish production and … to the livelihood of small fishers.”

If the new beginning involving Laguna de Bay is taken to its logical conclusion for everyone’s equal benefit, this Rooster Year vaunted for efficiency, hard work, and consequent prosperity will indeed be something to crow about. And from the toxins and silt may yet emerge the jewel immortalized in local lore.