Fishers Insist: No to New Loans, ADB Must Pay

(Manila, Philippines, 16 June 2009) – On Tuesday, hundreds of small fishers flocked in front of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Headquarters to demand payment for the environmental problems that ADB projects wrought to coastal communities.The demand was made during the opening of the High Level Dialogue on Climate Change in Asia and the Pacific which is being organized by the ADB. In a statement issued by the Southeast Asia Fish for Justice Network, SEAFish puts the blame on ADB for the massive mangrove deforestation in Southeast Asia for its role in promoting and financing aquaculture and coastal conversion projects in the region.At present, an estimated 2 million hectares of mangroves has been cleared to give way to large scale aquaculture and other projects.Only 30 percent of the original mangrove forest cover was left.“In Indonesia and Philippines alone, mangrove deforestation for the past 20 years has reached an estimated area of 700,000 and 380,000 hectares respectively” said Pepe Tanchuling, SEAFish Coordinator. Denuded mangrove forests contributed to the deterioration of coastal resources and marine ecosystem that are essential in protecting fishing communities from the impacts of climate change. Climate change results in extreme weather conditions and bring natural disasters of magnitude far greater than hundred years ago.“The reason why there were thousands of fishers died in Aceh, Indonesia was that no mangroves that could buffer the onslaught of the tsunami in were already cut” claimed Riza Damanik of KIARA, a fisheries justice coalition in Indonesia. Mangrove lost also intensified the social problems of coastal poor.According to Costanza et al (1997), the value of deliverable goods and services from mangroves is estimated at US$ 10,000 per hectare annually. With this valuation, Southeast Asian coastal communities has already deprived of around $20 billion worth of social goods due to mangrove deforestation, a reality that makes coastal communities still, the poorest among the poor and the most vulnerable sector to climate change impacts. Aside from being storm buffers, mangroves play an important role in carbon sequestration.Now that mangroves are gone, the hazards and risks of coastal communities to climate change impacts increased by three folds. Since ADB was part of this problem, all the more that we don’t need new loans, instead they should pay for the damages to our environment. In this High Level Dialogue, top government officials from Asia and the Pacific along with big corporations who own and sell technologies necessary to mitigate climate change and experts will discuss clean development mechanisms and clean energy technology to reach a consensus and put forward modalities for the Conference of Parties on Climate Change in Copenhagen this December 2009. “All they are after in this gathering is to sell their ideas and technologies for their own gain and not to help the poor and most vulnerable sectors like us” said Pablo Rosales of Kilusang Mangingisda, a member of SEAFish.“Forcing us to obtain loans to purchase clean-energy technologies is not the solution.Those who pollute and exploit the environment should bear the costs, not us.”He continued. <Contact Person: SEAFish Coordinator - Arsenio “Pepe” Tanchuling (63)9209244302>