ADB OKs P50 million funding for wetland management

MANILA, Philippines — Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a $1 million (P50.18 million) technical assistance grant to scale up wetland management in the Philippines and maintain a healthy ecosystem in the region.

Other beneficiaries of the grant include Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, China, Thailand and Vietnam.

The grant, which comes from ADB’s Regional Cooperation and Integration Fund and Technical Assistance Special Fund, aims to scale up the East Asian-Australasian Flyway (EAAF) Initiative.

Established in 2006, the EAAF partnership aims to protect migratory waterbirds, their habitats and the livelihoods of people dependent upon them.

ADB said the EAAF is the most vulnerable of the eight major migratory flyways. It covers East and Southeast Asia and Australasia, extending across 22 countries from the Arctic Circle to New Zealand.

Thousands of wetlands are present in the EAAF, which support over 50 million migratory waterbirds from more than 210 species, of which 20 percent are globally threatened.

“The wetlands that make up the EAAF provide food, medicine, fuel, income, and other benefits for nearly 200 million people in the Asia-Pacific region as well as maintaining essential ecosystem services such as flood regulation and carbon sequestration,” the bank said.

However, degradation of coastal and inland wetlands continues largely due to conversion and drainage for agriculture and climate change.

The sectors involved are in agriculture, natural resources and rural development.

ADB’s latest assistance seeks to strengthen institutional capacity, identify and create investment proposals for priority sites and develop a financing mechanism to support the EAAF in the long-term.

It will establish a framework to identify sites of highest priority within the EAAF. The TA will engage with participating developing member countries to strengthen protection and sustainable use of these sites.

It will also establish a financing mechanism to generate financial resources particularly from EAAF partnership members that are ADB donor countries, to maintain both priority sites and regional flyway initiatives in the long-term.

The project is expected to bolster effective protection and sustainable use of a network of wetland sites in the EAA, benefitting wetland biodiversity and people.

The assistance targets environmentally sustainable growth, inclusive economic growth and regional integration.