FOR SURE, it has simply become hard to complain here. On my first visit to St. Paul’s park in the summer of 1989, there was only a single shack on the beach in Sabang that served as a village hall. The entire expanse of white sand beach was empty. We traveled to the park on rough roads that took three hours on a rickety jeepney and another three hours on rough seas aboard an outrigger boat from the coastal settlement of Bahile. We had to hike for another four hours before reaching our destination, the Central Park Station, close to midnight.

	The white sand beach in Sabang cove is the main take-off point to the underground river.

These days, going to the park is a breeze. Visitors can hire vans from the city proper and reach Sabang in two hours. From there, it’s a 20-minute boat ride to the mouth of the underground river, where guides in bancas take visitors inside the cave for a 30-minute tour. Those who are adventurous, physically fit, and with more time on their hands can also test their endurance on the Monkey Trail, a scenic path through the jungle for close-up views of the karst limestone formations and towering hardwoods.

The spectacular rock formations of the underground river and imposing St. Paul’s mountain have so captivated visitors that tourism revenues in entrance fees alone are helping to pay the salaries of the park’s 40 staff. Last year, says Mendoza, the park earned P2.2 million from visitors’ fees, about one-third of the 2000 level just before tourism dropped after the Dos Palmas kidnapping incident. The city government provided an additional P3.3 million this year to maintain park operations.

The park’s growing popularity has spurred the growth of Sabang, which has undergone a dramatic transformation in recent years. Some do say the changes have been for the worse. From a lonely expanse, the beach is slowly filling up with tourist cottages and souvenir shops. The sprawl has reached the rocky shore to the left of the pier facing the sea, raising alarm bells on possible pollution from the largely unregulated construction boom.

Yet, the project does give residents a chance to earn a decent living while helping protect the park and educate visitors about the environment at the same time.

Aside from the park’s primeval beauty, which is almost akin to stepping into the set of “Lord of the Rings,” visitors can also view old-growth mangrove forests on the border of the core zone through the services of a new community-based tourism initiative. Conservation International has assisted the Mangrove Paddle Boat Tour Association in providing a new experience for urbanites, some of whom, having never seen mangroves before, have been overheard wondering how trees can grow so well in water.

DESPITE their meager resources, St. Paul’s Park and another World Heritage Site in Palawan, the Tubbataha Reefs National Marine Park, appear to be doing better than other protected areas in the Philippines that received large amounts of foreign aid.

	Remnants of beach forest in Sabang — St. Paul's National Park harbors some of the last remaining samples of this ecosystem in the country.

Through the Conservation of Priority Protected Areas Project or CPPAP, the World Bank provided some $20 million to 10 pilot sites nationwide from 1995 to 2002. More than $17 million was coursed through a new consortium called NGOs for Protected Areas Inc. or NIPA, which figured in a controversy with World Bank last year over charges of corruption and mismanagement. The DENR received less than $1 million and had to provide $2-million counterpart funding in the form of staff salaries and equipment for the project, according to evaluation reports.

The DENR had better luck with the National Integrated Protected Areas Programme or NIPAP. The European Union poured 11 million euros for an additional eight sites through the DENR from 1995 to 2000.

Both projects were meant to pilot test the implementation of the new law passed in 1992 mandating the establishment of a National Integrated Protected Areas System (NIPAS) in the country. If all the money had been given to the parks, each site would have received an average of P15 million per year that could have gone to substantive conservation efforts. But documented accounts from various protected sites covered by these programs show that the big-ticket projects spawned mostly complaints about squandered funds that went to bloated salaries of project personnel, leaving communities disgruntled.

As envisioned, CPPAP would have given local communities and NGOs a greater role in what has traditionally been government’s. Yet even if the success rate has been mixed, donor agencies seem eager to pursue the participatory approach, as seen in the COMPACT project in Sabang.

One of the problems that NGOs had with World Bank regarding livelihood projects, which received nearly half of the funds, had to do with the question of whether it was meant as a poverty reduction measure or a strategy for biodiversity conservation. CPPAP evaluation reports showed that NIPA resented the indicators that World Bank used to measure project success, such that implementation was rated “unsatisfactory” due to low levels of fund use.

The experience of communities such as Sabang would show that in the long term, livelihood projects could lead both to higher income for residents and greater park protection. It seems reasonable to conclude that there is less pressure on natural resources, meaning people would not cut trees or harvest rattan illegally, if they can earn from other sources.

Apo Reef in Occidental Mindoro shows another model that balances park protection with income generation. Unlike the Tubbataha Reefs, which is a strictly no-fishing zone, local fishers in the town of Sablayan have organized themselves into the Bantay Apo brigade. In exchange for fishing permits, members of Bantay Apo take turns guarding the park against blast fishing and other destructive practices.

In the Tubbataha Reefs, park manager Angelique Songco says the people of Cagayancillo, where the park is located, agreed to focus on seaweed farming and food processing so that they do not have to venture to the park for fishing expeditions. They receive funds from a conservation group and a portion of the proceeds from entrance fees to Tubbataha.

In Puerto Princesa, Mendoza’s only complaint about COMPACT is that the long-delayed project did not involve the local government. He says local management is much better. Still, he concedes that politics can get in the way, noting that the appointment of park staff could become subject to the whims of whoever is the local chief executive.

The institution of the Protected Area Management Board, with members from various groups that have a stake in protecting a park, is the best defense against one interest group railroading the process. So far, most field accounts show that success can be earned when the local government and the DENR work well with NGOs and communities in park management.