To address rising sea levels, former priest starts eco-village in Zambales

According to Climate Central, an organization of leading scientists and journalists, rising sea levels could displace 300 million by 2050. Filipinos living in the lowlands and coastal areas including Zambales are included in this number.

Before this can ever happen, community leaders are taking two steps ahead to promote ways of living that can sustain life amid climate change. 

Larry Pangan, a former priest, is one of these people who express their vision by heeding to the call to create a “paradise” that “preserves heritage, alleviates poverty, and protects the environment one community at a time.”

Pangan, in 2005, went from prayer to action and started to create what is called a Climate Adaptive Resettlement Earth (CARE) – Commune in the form of an eco-village: the Mango Grove at Bangcal River, Iba, Zambales.

The eco-village features a sustainable design where it creates its own energy, food, and other resources all while maintaining a low footprint and preserving the forest it’s built on.

A safe bubble

Pangan’s eco-village also aims to uplift the lives of more than 50 families residing in the village who are survivors of the 1991 Pinatubo eruption and preserve the place they call home.

“The Aeta tribe’s loss of what they call ‘Kainomayan,’ well-being, when they resettled to the lowland in the aftermath of the Pinatubo eruption, should teach us a good lesson about resettling people,” said Pangan in his book, Pilgrimage to Paradise: A Proposal for Climate Change Adaptation. He explained that their loss, which is an expense of “development”, is also our loss.

The former priest explained that by using the wisdom of the Aeta tribes and their experience of resettling, people are able to design resettlements which will not only act as evacuation sites but a community that will adapt to climate change, perhaps even an answer to the rising sea levels that will submerge a huge part of Zambales by 2050.

Pangan said relocation or resettling is a highly considered adaptation strategy to coastal degradation and climate change all around the globe. As sea levels are projected to rise, relocating is an inevitable response for vulnerable coastal communities worldwide.

In Fiji, another country threatened to disappear by the rising sea levels, the relocation strategy already began in 2012 by moving people living near the coast to either higher areas or further inland. In the Philippines, many communities are yet to be a part of a similar movement; locals wanting to be proactive subscribe to the lifestyle promoted by Pangan.

Others wait and see how things turn out with visions of the government.

The Climate Change Division of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, for example, outlines specific programs and strategies for climate change adaptation and mitigation in its National Climate Change Action Plan for 2011-2028. It has priorities on food security, water sufficiency, ecological and environmental stability, human security, sustainable energy and knowledge and capacity development.

The plan stated the following: At the local level, implementation of the action plan will be packaged using the concept of ecologically stable and economically resilient towns or ecotowns. The impact of this on the grassroots is yet to be measured and realized.

Small impact is big impact

Even though Pangan’s village may seem small in comparison to “smart and green” cities on the rise, his actions have inspired others in Zambales, like the Manente family who lived near the coast for 27 years, to create an eco-village of their own.

“Duplicating the town, producing our own food, producing electricity, planting trees, and enabling work for the people–we are all doing this with the aim to save lives,” said Jane Manente, a businesswoman who has built a family business in the coastal area of Baloy, Zambales.

The Mango Grove eco-village is only a small step, according to Pangan’s climate change adaptation book. He believes this small effort is a vital step in people’s pilgrimage back to paradise.

This article was written by Randell Jan Palatan from Zambales as a final requirement of AYEJ.org and the US Embassy’s “Green Beat Islas: An Online Environmental Journalism Training.“

Featured photo from Tisha Timbang