Research and Development and Technology in the Philippines

Israel (1999) has pointed out that the weak performance of the fisheries sector has been the result of several interrelated problems which include the top three important ones: (i) resource depletion in coastal waters due to over fishing and destructive fishing, as manifested by the deterioration of important fish stocks and species and the degradation ecosystems; (ii) large-scale environmental damage, as evidenced by the destruction of coral reefs and mangroves in marine areas and pollution of major river lakes; and (iii) proliferation of industrial, agricultural, commercial and domestic activities which discharge pollutants into marine waters, contributing to the deterioration of ecosystems and rendering marine food potentially harmful for consumption.

R&D is important to the development of the fisheries sector, particularly to its longterm survival. Primarily, R&D is crucial to generating new information and technologies that can increase output above the current low and dwindling levels.

The responsibility of managing and coordinating fisheries R&D in the Philippines has been the task of the Philippine Council for Aquatic and Marine Research and Development (PCAMRD). The Council, which is under the DOST, is tasked to plan, monitor, as well evaluate fisheries R&D. The paper of Israel (1999) discusses the R&D structure of the fisheries sector.

Furthermore, PCAMRD interacts with two government agencies whose R&D scope covers the fisheries sector. These agencies are the Bureau of Agricultural Research (BAR) of the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Ecosystem Research and Development Bureau (ERDB) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). These agencies are mandated to coordinate all researches of the regional offices and line agencies within their respective departments. The BAR covers fisheries research because fisheries are administratively classified under the agricultural sector. The ERDB does so since aquatic resources form part of the natural resource base and therefore, falls under DENR. Institutional Gap and Issues. Israel (1999) found that one of the biggest gaps which results from the present institutional arrangement is the weak coordination and poor collaboration among government agencies. PCAMRD is the agency tasked to manage and coordinate overall fisheries R&D while the BAR and the ERDB coordinate fisheries research of the regional offices and line agencies of their respective departments. Because of the similarity in functions and constituency, potential overlapping existed among the three agencies. To address this problem, they delineated their functions through existing Memoranda of Agreements (MOAs). Implementation of these agreements, however, has been hampered by poor collaboration. In particular, in violation of the MOAs, the agencies do not actually jointly review all research proposals submitted for funding. Furthermore, collaboration is weak or does not exist in several activities and strong only in one aspect.

Aside from poor collaboration, another crucial institutional problem deals with a possible duplication problem between PCAMRD and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) arising from the existing Fisheries Code. The Code reconstituted the BFAR from a staff to a line bureau under the DA and assigned it the function of formulating 18