In a recent trip I took to Palawan, lawyer Bobby Chan, an alternative lawyer, showed us a rather strange collection. There were chain saws, fish and dolphin spears, homemade shotguns, commercial fishing nets, knives and hacks. Two hundred of these items were under lock and key. His collection is a testimony to this courageous advocacy for protecting the rainforests, mangroves and fishing reserves of Palawan.
Chan is the dynamic, comic and courageous head of PNNI or the Palawan NGO Network Inc. In 1991, the mainstream NGOs and people’s organizations in Palawan formed PNNI, motivated to present a broader NGO consensus that would carry more weight in the policy-making process in the various local government units in the province. They work towards the unity of NGOs and POs to strongly influence the direction of development for Palawan. While community and livelihood developments are being done, the network actively engages in the arena of developmental debate and sees its role as an advocate of policies that directly benefit the communities and those that protect the environment. I met him with my two business partners from ECHOstore as we went there to help build Palawan’s ECHOVILLAGE Store (the first one is already up at 69 Esteban Abada in Loyola Heights), which is the retail store specific to communities funded by the Peace and Equity Foundation’s Partner Access Centers (PACs). Chan now heads the cooperative of the PACs.
How did he start building his strange collection? Chan and the communities wanted to guard the forests and the reserves. Five years ago, he gathered his community members to come together to try to stop the case of illegal loggers and fishermen. He formed groups of men from the communities aligned with four men of the PNNI as para-law enforcers. Commando-type units were formed. They would secure the perimeter for arms, crawling in the dark surveying the illegal loggers and fishermen. Then they would confiscate the equipment such as chainsaws, fishhooks, spears before any illegal activities could be done.
As a team, they did (and continue to do) citizen arrests. Chan won a landmark case where even the judge ruled in his favor when Chan was arrested for keeping the items he has confiscated from illegal loggers and fishers in the area. A law dictates that private citizens should not remain in custody of confiscated items. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) wanted him to turn them over but everyone knew from real practices that these items would be sold back to illegal loggers and a cycle would continue.
While the DENR is tasked to take care of the forests and enforce the security of the area, the government agency has not been that active or successful. Chan said that DENR would only send enforcement at checkpoints after the loggers had already felled the trees.
Chan’s story with Palawan began even since he was a law student, assigned by the Ateneo Human Rights Center to handle some environmental cases for free. When he passed the Bar in 1995, he decided to go into NGO work despite invitations to join traditional, private law practices in Manila. His decision to become an alternative lawyer focused on the environment is a passion he tries to explain, supported by the Jesuit teaching “man for others.” In the mode of the Jungle Jim style, Chan has never balked at challenges.
Today Chan and his team are focused on poachers who they apprehend with the Palawan wildlife like parrots, talking Myna birds, eagles, bear cats, owls and hawks.
His vision is to change NGO work, making it more professional. He has also recently assumed the leadership of the Partner and Access Centers Consortium Inc. (PACCI). Through this, he hopes to be able to open many ECHOVILLAGE Stores all over the country to help develop markets for livelihood products.
He also talks about information and training programs that will help get his communities towards this professional level. They include alternative tourism, social entrepreneurship, alternative law, climate change affairs, mapping of the watersheds, tribal affairs to help with dispute and land issues, as well as enforcement programs. He explains that by making his NGOs move into the wood and bamboo business they can make use of all their confiscated logs, and to create furniture from bamboo, which is a highly renewable and sustainable natural resource. “The natural resources of the community should go back to help support our communities,” he says. He tells us that with Mayor Edward Hagedorn’s full support, they managed to close all the furniture shops in Palawan as these stores were the “bagsakan” or drop-off point of the illegal logs. Mayor Hagedorn is also one with them towards the development of the bamboo industry in the area.
In the hinterland of the Palawan rainforest, DENR personnel balk at patrolling the forest as they are afraid of malaria. Chan has caught malaria four times, the latest one where he almost died. “They tested a new malaria drug on me, and it was good,” he laughs, as though his brush with death was nothing serious. And he continues to plan next Jungle Jim enforcement activities in the malaria-infested rain forests. There may be little madness there, but what is clear is that Chan is committed to serve his communities, and save whatever he can of Nature under his control.