Samar Island Biodiversity Project: Conservation and Sustainable Use of the Biodiversity of a Forested Protected Area

Samar island - the third largest island in the Philippine archipelago—contains some of the Philippines’ largest extant, unfragmented tracts of lowland rainforest. Although these forests are widely recognized to be an important repository of biodiversity, civil disorder problems in Samar have, until recently, hampered conservation management. Civil order has now been restored, providing a historic window of opportunity to expand the conservation estate. The Project would establish the Samar Island Natural Park (SINP), a new protected area zoned for multiple uses centering on protection, but providing for sustainable harvests of non-timber forest products, and institute a comprehensive range of ancillary conservation measures to insulate the Park from human pressures. Park management would be operationalized in partnership with forest-edge communities with the aim of establishing a ‘social fence’ against threats. Interventions will strengthen participatory planning, process-response monitoring, surveillance and enforcement functions, enhance the conservation management capacities of communities, impart conservation values to wider Samareño society, backstop advocacy operations, and abet development of conservation-compatible village livelihoods. Implementation will be phased to nurture nascent conservation processes through to maturity. The GEF will share the cost of these interventions with other financiers.