Siargao Urban Resilient Future (Del Carmen SURF) Project

Del Carmen, a municipality in Siargao Island, Surigao del Norte is experiencing a rapid influx of migrants, tourists, and commercial establishments.  This has created serious solid waste management challenges which are adversely affecting the quality of life of local communities. The current waste collection rate in the municipality is about 10%, and uncontrolled dumpsites and illegal waste disposal practices have proliferated, damaging the marine and island environment (Municipality of Del Carmen, 2016). 

Local communities and the environment are already being stressed by climate change e.g. rising temperatures and saltwater intrusion have reduced agricultural production and damaged livelihood opportunities. Future climate scenarios from the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) project an increase of between 0.9oC to 2.1oC in mean temperatures during the island’s dry season. Biodiversity, the marine ecosystem, agriculture production and fishing, water supply and public health will be increasingly stressed by climate change. Higher temperatures will hasten waste decomposition and will affect local communities, destroying the aesthetics of their island community and increasing health risks. Climate change impacts and uncontrolled solid waste management is and will become an ever-increasing toxic mix for communities and the environment.  

This project page presents the “Siargao Urban Resilient Future (Del Carmen SURF)” project, which aims to improve the resilience of the community by strengthening its solid waste management system.

The community-led project (CLP) places urban poor communities as active and informed participants at the centre of the process of resilience planning, from assessment to implementation, and gives them a role in the maintenance of CLPs. Through the Community Resilience Planning (CRP) process, people from poor and vulnerable groups work together with other stakeholders from government and the private sector to collect and analyse data about how hazards impact vulnerable groups and livelihoods and design and agree resilience solutions.  The CRP process requires strong social mobilization, communication and engagement with all stakeholders. It also requires the creation of the Community Stakeholder Group (CSG), an institutional and multi-sectoral mechanism for transparent and effective information sharing, decision-making and implementation of community decisions and actions.  

Through the Community Resilience Planning process, Del Carmen community stakeholders identified and developed the community-led project called “Siargao Urban Resilient Future (Del Carmen SURF)” which aims to improve the resilience of the community by strengthening its solid waste management system.  The project will establish a community-based waste recovery and recycling center and implement solid waste management technologies. 

Innovations

Del Carmen SURF is the very first waste recovery and recycling facility in the island of Siargao. The Waste Recovery and Recycling Program is a community-managed recovery and recycling system centered around a Material Recovery Facility (MRF) where biodegradable waste materials are processed into compost fertilizer; recyclable plastic materials are recovered, recycled or sold; and residual wastes are processed and melted to form recycled bricks and construction materials (Asian Development Bank, 2013).

Gender and Social Inclusion

Women and youth groups are involved in project development and implementation. Community-based solid waste management is driven by strong volunteerism, but the burden of volunteering falls on women. This assumes women have time, however to volunteer they transfer unpaid care and household work to other women (e.g. the eldest daughter or grandmother).  Transferring home care work to other women affects their productivity, time for education, self-care and enterprise. Women working in waste separation, waste collection promotion and other waste management activities should get paid for doing work and the time they invest should be properly acknowledged. The provision of child-minding facilities in recycling centers can help women in their child-minding duties making it less worrisome to do solid waste management work while taking care of toddlers. Also, the youth have expressed their commitment to marketing the recycled products through social media. 

The implementation of the CLP requires addressing several challenges including the need to strengthen the community’s technical and operational capacity to manage and maintain the waste recovery and recycling center, and market the composts and recycled products. The CSG will need to develop linkages with the private sector to improve waste recovery value chains. New livelihoods will need to be created to support the recovery and recycling of wastes. The municipality will also need to contribute to financing the project’s operations and maintenance cost by securing institutional funding through the local government budget.