“We can’t immediately trace the increase in prices,” said Ely Buitizon, WWF’s data enumerator, referring to the vibrant but vulnerable live fish trade in Palawan. “But what’s evident is that the fishermen do the hardest work, have the highest economic needs, invests the most time in the trade, yet receive the least profit.”
This is a phenomenon that occurs throughout the country with farmers and fishermen at the lower end of the tier (worker-local trader-distributor) receiving a measly share of the economic pie. The article, “Fishing for Survival: How a Global Market Is Shaping One Island Community”, tackles this inequity plus the growing challenge of resource depletion.
Coleen Jose, a grantee from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and the Dean Rusk International Studies Program at Davidson College, uncovers the bustling Live Reef Fish for Food Trade (LRFFT) program in Taytay, Palawan and the dangers faced by local communities from dwindling aquatic resources. The upside of the article is the viable resource management program being executed in the province that poses as a model for the rest of the country and its neighbors.
Read more of the article on Huffington Post.
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