...the UK's top 10 destination list

Philippines in UK’s top 10 countries to see in 2014
 

by Ron B. Lopez

Manila Bulletin
January 5, 2014

 

 

The Philippines is among the Top 10 Countries worldwide to visit this 2014, according to British travel guidebook Rough Guides.

In its 2014 edition, the Philippines made it to the 10th place along with other beautiful and culturally-rich countries. Rough Guides cited Philippines’ natural places that are “not to miss” which include the islands of Boracay, the limestone islands El Nido in Palawan, the coasts of Coron that hides beautiful beaches and pristine mountain lakes, and Puerto Gallera.

Rough Guides said Boracay’s enchanting white beach on picture-postcard setting is one of the country’s

major tourist draws.

The Rough Guides, known for its travel references, has also recommended a must-visit in Chocolate Hills in Bohol, despite being partly damaged by the 7.2-magnitude earthquake the struck the province last year. It also recommended to visitors to see the tiny primate Tarsiers in the region.

“Soak up the bizarre landscape of Bohol’s iconic Chocolate Hills, conical brown-green mounds said to be the calcified tears of a broken-hearted giant,” Rough Guides said.

Aside from the crystal-clear waters of Philippine beaches, Rough Guides also suggest to tourists to also try to explore the country’s beautiful mountains and the majestic top views they offier, including the perfectly-coned Mt. Mayon and mountain lakes in Mt. Pinatubo.

Rough Guide describes the crystal-clear waters of Apo Reef Marine Natural Park in Mindoro as a “scuba diver’s dream,” along with other underground river in the country.

Aside from places, tourist should also explore the traditions and colorful festivals in the country like the Ati-Atihan Festival on Panay to see the “indigenous dress and learn tribal dances,” the travel advisor said, adding that if one gets exhausted from the heat of the sun, a tall glass of Halo-halo, a local sweet icy dessert, will quench tourist’ thirst.

Other countries in Rough Guides’ Top 10 countries to visit in 2014 are Georgia in Central Asia, Turkey, Macedonia, Japan, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Brazil, Bulgaria and Madagascar.

 

...the pilot countries for WB green accounting project

PH picked for WB ‘green accounting’ project

By DJ Yap
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Saturday, April 20th, 2013

 

  "...the Philippines was selected (by the World bank) as a pilot country for the WAVES program because it was one of the very few nations that had been conducting an accounting of natural resources since the 1990s." - Environment Secretary Ramon Paje  

Environment Secretary Ramon Paje

 

MANILA, Philippines—The Philippines has been chosen along with four other countries for the pilot implementation of a World Bank-led project to develop “green accounting,” or the inclusion of the value of natural resources in measuring a nation’s economic progress.

Environment Secretary Ramon Paje made the announcement on Saturday from Washington D.C., where he represented the country at a high-level ministerial meeting on “natural capital accounting (NCA)” or “green accounting” organized by the WB on April 18.

Paje said the Philippines, along with Botswana, Colombia, Costa Rica and Madagascar, were selected as the implementing partners of the Wealth Accounting and Valuation of Ecosystem Services (WAVES) project of the World Bank.

WAVES is a global partnership that aims to promote sustainable development by ensuring that the national accounts used to measure and plan for economic growth include the value of natural resources.

In a statement, Paje said the Philippines was selected as a pilot country for the WAVES program because it was one of the very few nations that had been conducting an accounting of natural resources since the 1990s.


Accurate information

“The country was noted for accounting for our natural resources such as minerals and forests to provide policy makers with accurate information that could help them make better decisions regarding development priorities and investments that are feasible and sustainable,” he said.

Paje said his participation at the meeting underscored the Aquino administration’s focus on preserving the environment while pursuing sustainable, inclusive and resilient growth.

“It is very important for us to account for our natural wealth, to uphold the principle of intergenerational equity wherein we protect the interest of future generations by protecting our natural resources, especially those that are finite such as minerals,” he said.


Classic example

Paje cited Executive Order No. 79, which institutionalizes and reforms the mining industry, as a “classic example of accounting for natural wealth for future development.”

“While increasing excise taxes from mining companies makes sure that the state gets its rightful share from mineral resources … there is a need to account for the resulting increase in government revenues by investing them in certain long-term infrastructure and programs, such as education and research,” he said.

“This way, even though the nonrenewable resources are extracted, future generations can still, though indirectly, enjoy them through improved goods and services and additional infrastructure,” he said.

The four-year project costs $1.45 million and will begin implementation in the second half of this year, with the National Economic and Development Authority, National Statistical Coordination Board and the Laguna Lake Development Authority as collaborating agencies.


Program of action

WAVES was launched in October 2010 during the Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya, Japan. The partnership was able to formulate and propose a program of international action on ecosystems accounting at the Earth Summit held in June 2012.

Advocates argue that “green accounting” is more accurate in determining economic growth and its sustainability, rather than relying on traditional economic indicators such as gross domestic product.

With the GDP, for example, while income from mining or timber harvesting is recorded in national accounts, the simultaneous depletion of natural forest assets and mineral reserves is not accounted for.

The GDP also fails to explicitly identify critical ecosystem services such as tourism, regulating water cycles, preventing erosion and flooding, and carbon sequestration, resulting in misleading economic signals about economic growth and development.



 

...the new ant species

40 new ant species found in the Philippines

By Jojo Malig, ABS-CBNnews.com

06/27/2012

One of the new ant species discovered on Mt. Isarog by researchers from Palawan State University and Harvard University. ZooKeys photo

 

Deforestation threatens unique ant species

MANILA, Philippines - Researchers have discovered 40 new ant species in the Philippines.

However, the discovery could be short-lived as deforestation and the destruction of the insect's natural habitat threaten ant species in the Philippines that are found nowhere else in the world, David General and his colleagues at the Palawan State University and Harvard University said in their paper published in ZooKeys science journal.

General told the OurAmazingPlanet website that the 40 new species of ants belong to 11 various genera (plural of genus), bringing the total number of genera to 92, which is twice the number of genera found in biodiversity-rich Madagascar.

One of the new species has a unique mouth and mandibles, which may have evolved for the ants to manipulate their environment, he added.

General and Harvard University's Gary Alpert said in their paper that there are 474 ant species and subspecies known from the Philippines and at least 100 other unidentified species based on museum specimens and recent collections.

"The total size of the ant fauna is no doubt much larger, almost certainly more than 1,000 species are present," they said.

The new ant species were discovered on Mt. Isarog, a dormant volcano in Camarines Sur province.

Guardian blogger GrrlScientist, an evolutionary biologist and ornithologist, told ABS-CBNNews.com on Wednesday about the discovery of the new ant species.

Biodiversity hotspot

In their paper, General and Alpert described the Philippines as a biodiversity hotspot.

"The Philippines is so ecologically diverse that it is very difficult to characterize the country in a single paragraph," they said, citing the different climate and weather systems in the country that change because of the country's varying topography.

"This complex blend of climatic diversity and opportunity for geographic isolation has likely led to high levels of endemism, a phenomenon that deserves much further exploration," they said.

In their paper, the scientists raised the specter of unique animal species being wiped out because of human activities.

"The Philippines is considered one of the hottest of the biodiversity hotspots because of the severe human pressure on its highly endemic native flora and fauna," they said.

"Time is running out for the the remaining primary forests. Despite decades of regulation and reforestation, forests continue to dwindle," they added.

The paper said all the privately reforested narra trees in their study site in 2003 and 2004 were poached by 2009, "wiping out 27 years of stewardship of the area."

"Even the stumps were removed. Forest destruction seems to go on unabated, exacerbated by new large-scale mining projects that seem to target the mineral resources under primary forests," it added.

Invasive species also threaten native ants, the researchers said.

They added that much is yet to be discovered by scientists undertaking ant research in the Philippines.

"The Philippine ant fauna is very poorly explored and records are few and spotty at best. A researcher can essentially choose a mountain among several hundred mountains, get the necessary permits and be the first one to study the ants on that mountain. However, that mountain may also be very disturbed or degraded, leaving only the tramp species that abound in disturbed habitats," the said.

"In addition to environmental damage, there is also an active communist insurgency and other serious security threats to researchers in the field. Other areas may harbor malaria mosquitoes and other serious health threats. Hence, local collaboration is quite necessary to minimize the risks of field work in the Philippines," they added.

---

..the prexy

DFA: PHL assumes presidency of LMMC until 2012

GMANews – 08 jUNE 2011

The Philippines has assumed the presidency of the Group of Like-Minded Megadiverse Countries (LMMC) for 2011 to 2012 during a meeting in Canada.

The LMMC is a negotiating bloc of 19 countries that harbor 70 percent of the Earth’s biological resources.

“[The Philippine assumption of the LMMC presidency is] a vote of confidence in our stewardship of our bio-resources and our country’s environmental programs," Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario said in a statement Tuesday

The DFA said the group met in Montreal in preparation for the “First Meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee on the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefits Sharing of Genetic Resources in Montreal" from June 6 to 10.

In the opening statement delivered by the Philippines, the LMMC called for immediate collaboration on measures to operationalize the Nagoya Protocol, an agreement that establishes more predictable conditions for access to genetic resources.

The Nagoya Protocol, adopted in October 2010, stemmed from the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, which the Philippines ratified on Jan. 3, 2007.

The LMMC was established in 2002 when 17 countries rich in biodiversity banded themselves together to promote their collective interests in the preservation and sustainable use of biological resources and aims to protect traditional knowledge.

“The Philippines has about 7,000 endemic plant, mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian, and fish species, and is one of the few nations that is, in its entirety, a megadiverse country and has enacted an access and benefit-sharing law in 1995," the DFA said.

The group’s members include Bolivia, Brazil, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Iran, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, South Africa and Venezuela. — JE/VS, GMA News

...the cave that housed the extinct sea cow

Extinct sea cow fossil found in Philippines

Agence France-Presse

 Monday, June 6th, 2011

MANILA, Philippines — The bones of an extinct sea cow species that lived about 20 million years ago have been discovered in a cave in the Philippines by a team of Italian scientists, the expedition head said Monday.

Several ribs and spine parts of the aquatic mammal were found in February and March in limestone rock above the waters of an underground river on the island of Palawan, said University of Florence geologist Leonardo Piccini.

“The fossil is in the rock, in the cave. We cannot remove it and we don’t want to extract it. We would like to wait (for) when the technology will allow us to study the fossil without extracting it,” Piccini told Agence France Presse.

Speaking on the sidelines of a symposium at the Philippine presidential palace where the find was announced, Piccini said it was a rare discovery in the region from the Miocene era — 20 million years ago.

“It’s the first remains of this kind of animal in the area, so it is important in reconstructing the habitat and the diffusions of this animal in the Miocene,” he added.

Initial comparisons with fossil specimens suggest it belongs to one of two extinct species of plant-eating sirenia, also known as sea cows, according to research by Federico Panti and Paolo Forti, a member of the Palawan expedition.

They said the animal would have been about 180 centimetres (about six feet) long.

Two sea cow species live to this day, the dugong of the Indo-Pacific region and manatees of the Atlantic basin.

The paper said such fossil finds in the East had been limited to India along with some fragmentary finds in Madagascar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the Indonesian island of Java.

“The specimens (found) in the Palawan Island represent the first from the Philippines and the easternmost occurrence in the region,” it added.

It called on the government to protect the area of the find in the Puerto Princesa subterranean river, which is being heavily promoted as a major tourist destination.

...the new specie

PH lizard lands on top 10 list of new species

Philippine Daily Inquirer 

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

WASHINGTON—A Philippine fruit-eating lizard measuring 1.8 meters (6 feet) in length was among the top 10 new species discovered in the world last year, US scientists said on Monday.

Also on the list were a jumping cockroach, a glow-in-the-dark fungus, a rust-eating bacterium, a leech named “T-rex.”

The creatures were discovered in the Philippines, Brazil, Madagascar, South Africa, Peru, West Africa, the US state of Oregon, Mascarene Islands in the Indian Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and North Atlantic Ocean.

The top 10 list was compiled by global experts and released annually by the International Institute for Species Exploration (IISE) at Arizona State University.

The Philippine fruit-eating lizard, which weighs 10 kg (22 pounds), can only be found living on trees in the Sierra Madre forest on Luzon island.

The lizard, which is brightly colored with stripes of gold flecks, has “a scaly body and legs that are blue-black mottled with pale yellow-green dots and a tail marked in alternating segments of black and green,” the IISE said.

‘Tyrant leech king’

The leech named after a ferocious meat-eating dinosaur was removed from a man’s nose in Peru.

While the leech measures less than 5 centimeters (2 inches) long, its powerful jaw and massive teeth earned it the name Tyrannobdella rex, which means “tyrant leech king.”

Scientists in Canada and Spain identified the iron-oxide munching bacterium from a section of the Titanic which sank deep into the Atlantic Ocean in 1912 after striking an iceberg.

“Researchers believe this bacterium could be useful in the disposal of old ships and oil rigs that lie deep in the ocean,” the IISE said in a statement.

The IISE said minuscule mushrooms in the forests of Sao Paulo, Brazil, were found to “glow constantly, emitting a bright, yellowish-green light,” becoming one of the around 70 species of fungi in the world known to be bioluminescent.

Legs for jumping

A cockroach that mimics a grasshopper in its jumping ability was detected in South Africa.

The Saltoblattella montistabularis has legs specially made for jumping, a stabilizing antenna and round eyes at the sides of its head.

A raspy cricket, Glomeremus orchidophilus, found in the Mascarene Archipelago in the Indian Ocean was discovered to be the only creature that pollinates a rare orchid, Angraecum cadetii.

Scientists in the northwestern state of Oregon found an unusual mushroom thriving under the chilly waters of the Rogue River.

Darwin’s Bark Spider

And a spider that can weave its web—with silk twice as strong as any spider known to man—across the entire width of a river was discovered in Madagascar.

“The webs of Darwin’s Bark Spider have been found spanning rivers, streams and lakes, and in one instance, a web stretched 25 meters (82 feet) across a Madagascar river with at least 30 insects trapped in it,” the IISE said.

Other top selections included a new type of antelope and a pancake batfish—a fish that resembles a walking bat when it moves awkwardly through the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

“Our best guess is that all species discovered since 1758 represent less than 20 percent of the kinds of plants and animals inhabiting planet Earth,” said Quentin Wheeler, an entomologist who directs the IISE.

“A reasonable estimate is that 10 million species remain to be described, named, and classified before the diversity and complexity of the biosphere is understood,” Wheeler said. AFP