Greening Practices through Social Mobilization

In 2005 in the town of Maitum, Elizabeth R. Palma-Gil, municipal information officer of the province of Sarangani, south of Mindanao, told the story of a fisherman about to butcher a juvenile Hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricate), but was stopped by his wife from doing so. The wife, Palma-Gil was quoted as saying by Sun Star (sunstar.com.ph), correctly “told the husband that killing the turtle is punishable by law.”
Palma-Gil credited Sarangani’s local government unit’s (LGU) effective implementation of Presidential Proclamation 756, issued by former President Fidel V. Ramos on March 5, 1996, declaring the 345-square kilometer Sarangani Bay as a protected seascape; a move upheld by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in 2005. With the DENR-XII, fora have been regularly held to consult with, and win the support of the various stakeholders of Sarangani Bay – some of them including the dissemination of information on the protection, thus conservation, of the place’s marine lives.
“(The awareness) was a result of her attendance to our awareness campaign," Palma-Gil said, adding that this proved that the LGU’s “conservation awareness campaign has worked in some ways.”
Palma-Gil’s statement rings true, of course. There was a time when the Sarangans (locals of Sarangani), many of them fisherfolk, only considered the bay as a bottomless source of their livelihood, without consideration for existing laws protecting it, including caring for the Hawksbill turtles, among others. But due to the conservation efforts, in 2005 alone, over 3,000 turtle hatchlings and 100 mature turtles were released back to the ocean.
For Noel A. Cariño, officer in charge of Sarangani’s Provinincial Environment and Natural Resources, as pinpointed by Republic Act 7160, “it is the responsibility of the LGUs to manage their own resources; thus, the LGUs should invest in the development, protection, and conservation (re-greening) of their respective areas through a public-private partnership. The government cannot do alone the works. It needs partners (in) the private sector,” he says to Enterprise Magazine.
Thus, as Palma-Gil urged Sarangans to, among others, “take more part in the protection of the sea turtles to help the local government in preserving the creatures,” she, nonetheless, highlighted how the province of Sarangani is showing environmentalism in action. And on this, the province of Sarangani is showing how social mobilization can effectively push for sustainable environmentalism.

UNIFIED EFFORT
The Department of Energy (DOE, doe.gov.ph) defines social mobilization as “a collective engagement that involves planned actions and processes to reach, influence, and involve all relevant stakeholders — from the national to the community level — in order to create an enabling environment, and to effect positive behavior and social change that would support the country’s agenda for achieving energy security and creating solutions that protect the environment in the context of climate change issues and realities.”
In a more lyrical definition, Odette B. Alcantara, convenor of Mother Earth Philippines, describes social mobilization as a “moving spirit,” done at the “heart of society’s four major segments: economic, which is led by business; political, under the auspices of the government; social, led by civil society; and spiritual, under the church’s leadership.”
The emphasis on the existence of the various segments is important.
In Scaling Up Best Energy Practices through Social Mobilization (doe.gov.ph/e 20summit/Presentation.htm), a paper presented by the DOE after the 2008 Energy Summit, the government agency states that, in the case of the energy sector, for example, while it may have “prodigious technical and capital requirements, but ultimately it can only be sustained by a broad network of stakeholders working to achieve common ends. It cannot move forward purely on the strength of a conducive policy and legislative environment, accessible financial and technology resources, and well-crafted programs. Since developments in energy impact on all other sectors, and vice-versa, it is vital to harness the cooperation of all key stakeholders in carrying out programs aimed at energy efficiency, security, and the like.”
The DOE notes that “time and again, after a promising start, even heavily funded information-education-communication (IEC) campaigns fall short of yielding the desired change in energy-related behavior on a sustained basis. The conventional explanation is that Filipinos are prone to ningas-cogon, or an initial passion that is too quickly extinguished. But the phenomenon could well be due to a program’s failure to properly define an issue in the context of specific stakeholders. But if given the right motivation along with concrete and relevant courses of action, stakeholders could act on their own volition in support of the program — while serving their own self-interest. When this happens, a critical mass of stakeholders would begin to think and act in a manner that would make a palpable impact toward the achievement of energy goals.”
Alcantara adds: “The process of social mobilization begins by obtaining the public’s attention, leading them to take interest on the issue at hand that then evolves into a desire to do something about the issue. Spurred by this desire, stakeholders are then driven to take action as the final piece of the social mobilization process.”

MAKING STAKEHOLDERS
The DOE stresses how the “2008 Energy Summit itself is an illustration of the social mobilization process at work: it is the first of a series of actions taken by the government toward generating a concrete understanding of the stakeholders’ situations and influences amid pressing issues affecting the energy sector. It plants the seed upon which genuine partnership and collaboration can evolve among the different stakeholder groups.”
With this, therefore, “the first step toward social mobilization involves developing a shared understanding of the issues that affect key stakeholders. This entails an understanding of the context of the stakeholders’ unique situations and involving them in the process of finding solutions to the issues that affect them.”
For Jasper E. Inventor, Climate and Energy Campaigner of Greenpeace Southeast Asia, speaking during the summit, Greenpeace finds success in its various advocacies exactly because it is able to mobilize the community. This is best exemplified by projects that manage to get private sector-public sector support, including the Simple Lang – Save the Planet awareness campaign, which aims to “encourage the general public to reduce energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions; the 100% Renewable Energy Negros, an energy revolution advocacy showcased in Negros Island with the “No to Coal, Go Renewable” slogan at the heart of the campaign; and the rolling out of the electric jeepneys (e-jeepneys) in the pilot areas of Makati, Bacolod, and Puerto Princesa, mainly to make public transport cleaner.
How Greenpeace finds success is due to the fulfilment of “imperatives” for a successful advocacy campaign, which, Inventor says, include “defining the vision; crafting of simple messages; adopting a good communication strategy; enlisting the participation of a broad range of personalities; and putting premium on substance.”
The imperatives are necessary because of “the public’s thirst for contribution; lack of centralized policy; lack of policy frameworks to support society’s clamor; and the lack of political will to ensure that best practices are replicated and scaled up.”
By transforming problems into issues, wherein stakeholders start considering them their own, and can, therefore, act upon them, social mobilization becomes effective. This may also be why corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts only work effectively when done with social mobilization.
In a move to help an impoverished barangay in Southern Tagalog, for example, restaurant chain Binalot Fiesta Foods Inc. (BFFI) developed the Dangal at Hanapbuhay Para sa Nayon (DAHON) to “provide a livelihood program to help (the banana farmers and their families) get more value from the lowly banana leaf,” says Rommel T. Juan, BFFI president to Enterprise Magazine, adding that for communities where banana is the primary source of income, the farmers are “locked in a vicious cycle of poverty – they get up early in the morning to work in the banana plantation, and go home late at night. And for a whole day’s work harvesting bananas and its leaves, they earn just enough for the basic necessities of life. DAHON (hopes to remedy this situation.”
Specifically, DAHON organized 28 families, training them to cut banana leaves according to various specifications, with BFFI serving as the ready market for the produce, since the company makes use of the leaves to package its products. With the earnings from the program, the community was able to renovate its day care center and community chapel, and, more importantly, allowed the community to diversify the use of banana, such as making flavoured banana chips, and finding a bigger market for the puso ng saging, a favourite among vegetarians.
If, before, many of the locals “felt that they were a burden to their families, this (is no longer the case). By giving them employment, the (locals felt) productive and, thus, reinvigorated,” Juan says.
BFFI’s effort, while seemingly simple, has three interrelated good effects – it benefits BFFI itself, with the steady supply of banana leaves; it helps the community, with the much-needed livelihood; and it helps the environment, too, as BFFI’s program made the locals “appreciate the value of having (good supply of bananas, usually) brought about by a well-cared environment.”
Other examples abound, including the efforts of the Department of Tourism (DOT) in advocating care for the butanding (whale shark, Rhincodon typus) in Donsol in Sorsogon, where tourism earnings helped elevate the fifth-class municipality (in 1998) into a third-class municipality, with earnings reaching P50 million per year. And then there’s the move of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF-Philippines) in the Panay Multi-Stakeholder Power Development Planning, wherein the program intends to “build the capacity of stakeholders in localized planning of energy and power development; mobilize institutions; and develop indigenous renewable energy resources,” says Rafael G. Senga, WWF-Philippines Asia-Pacific energy officer, says in DOE’s Scaling Up Best Energy Practices through Social Mobilization. Since the academe, consumer groups, church, and other non-profit organizations participated in the program’s series of capacity-building activities, “the program’s consensus-based planning process is a best industry practice, as this resulted in reduced conflict between stakeholders, as well as reduced risk for power developers.”
According to Reena Francisco, co-owner – with Pacita Juan and Jeannie Javelosa – of ECHstore Sustainable Lifestyle, “as business woman, bottom line profit has always been the gauge of how successful one is in business.” Thus, the focus is on finding “the lowest price for raw materials, reduce expenses, get the best profit margins. But in the process, we force suppliers to also do likewise, and the people in the bottom of the (supply chain) pyramid suffer the most. And so does Mother Earth.”
With ECHOstore, Francisco and her partners are, therefore, established not just a store selling environmentally friendly products – from home decors; fashion accessories; health and wellness, and body, beauty, and nutritional products; food and beverage; and more – but actually also mobilize communities by providing micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) into ecopreneurship (or ecologically aware entrepreneurship) a venue to showcase their products. This way, ECHOstore Sustainable Lifestyle “provides a venue for social mobilization (to thrive).”
“The world is changing very fast and because we want to keep pace, we become numb to everything else around us. We all need to stop and rethink (that) we are not separate from the world around us, that our actions affect things around us,” Francisco says. “We cannot do business the same way. There should be a growing consciousness about caring for our environment, our Earth. Climate change is a reality. We must wake up to the reality that if we do not change our routine and our habits, we will suffer the consequences.”

GREEN CAMPAIGN
With its growing success, ECHOstore is showing that social mobilization can be profitable.
For the DOE, social mobilization efforts “have accumulated in pockets around the country and in many parts of the world. These initiatives only need to be identified, documented, and analyzed to determine whether or not they can be replicated on a municipal/city, provincial, regional, or national scale — or on a sectoral basis. Social mobilization will be instrumental in scaling up the more viable initiatives en route to building critical mass.”
Back in the province of Sarangani, the LGU-spearheaded program continues to teach Sarangans about sustainability, with Palma-Gil stressing that pooling resources continues to make sustainability possible. Due to their efforts, the local communities have added ecotourism in their livelihood efforts, with tourism arrivals increasing by 77% from 2006 (270,000 tourists) to 2007 (350,000) alone, yet again showing that “there’s money to be earned in going green.”
As for Cariño, the “LGUs should invest more on investment promotions, (since) the government (especially LGUs) cannot provide all necessary financing to do the re-greening. Partnership with the different sectors (coming from the government or private sector) should be strengthened, as this can (work for attaining) a green environment. Invest in teaching the communities, strengthen collaboration with the different sectors while avoiding conflicts that may arise, will be a great factor for the success of this re-green efforts,” he ends.