BIODIVERSITY conservation need not be an uphill climb all the time. It can be fun and enjoyable, using a new strategy that the municipal government intends to implement shortly to conserve its marine protected areas: a Rare Pride program. Rare Pride campaigns focus on building support for conservation at the local level. Some of the world's most important sites for biological diversity are threatened by a lack of awareness and local community support. Targeted awareness-raising initiatives can dramatically build momentum for conservation by creating the constituencies necessary for initiating policy changes, legislative reform, and new protected areas; by catalyzing in-country private and public sector funding; by shifting public behavior toward more sustainable practices; and by focusing public attention on critically threatened ecosystems and species. After Inabanga applied for the program some months back, Rare Pride sent Chief Operating Officer Dale Galvin, Director of its English Program Steve Watkins and Stuart Green to explore the possibility of working with the local government as a partner. They discussed with Mayor Jose Jono Jumamoy and community organizer Renante Cempron the possible areas for partnership.

Rare is a U.S.-based conservation organization and leader in social marketing for biodiversity conservation. It has developed a method for changing attitudes and behaviors called a Social Marketing in the Pride campaign. The campaigns focus on building support for conservation at the local level for lack of awareness and local community support threaten the natural surroundings. Campaign manager for the Pride program in the municipality will undergo training in the use of social marketing tactics to build awareness, influence attitudes, and enable meaningful change conducted by Rare at few Universities here and abroad. The organization has been looking for nine prospective partners for the Pride Program for Sustainable Fishing in the Philippines and hopes to launch it in 2010. The campaign will last two years and will use social marketing and conservation strategies. To note, Inabanga became a pilot site of the Community-Based Resource Management Project in 1997. Since then, partnership with the coastal communities and the local police as well as the enlistment of fishers and barangay tanods to constitute the Inabanga fish warden association have been strengthened. As a result of the full implementation of the coastal resource management (CRM) project, Inabanga was able to establish 28.35 hectares of marine sanctuaries in the two island barangays of Cuaming and Hambungan, 43 hectares of sea grass sanctuaries in six coastal barangays and 303 hectares of mangrove reforestation. Inabanga also earned the distinction of being the first in the Philippines to be awarded as a Level I benchmark of performance in CRM.