Coastal Currents: Reflections on Community Science towards Participatory Risk Knowledge Building in Coastal Localities of Pagbilao, Quezon and Puerto Galera, Oriental Mindoro, Philippines

This paper brings together the reflections of external scientists, academics, and activists collaborating in a community science project, supported by a broader community-based research program, “Supporting our seas through automated and integrated networks (SUSTAIN): strengthening ocean observation and management of risks to coastal ecosystems” in the Philippines. Through this initiative, community development practitioners and scientists from allied fields collaborate with fishers and rural coastal community members in the municipalities of Pagbilao and Puerto Galera. Many communities face increasing vulnerabilities linked to corporate fish cage operations, proliferation of invasive species, pollution, gentrification from tourism, development aggression by energy projects, port construction and expansion, and many others. These issues are often rooted in structures that maintain economic hegemony of urban enclaves over rural communities, eroding rural livelihoods, displacing agricultural and coastal spaces, and widening disparities among populations. 

Discussions on Pakikipamuhay (Community Immersion), Pag-organisa ng Pamayanan (Community Organizing), and Kwentuhang Kababaihan (Women's Conversations) offer insights into community science processes and dilemmas, coastal resources and uses, gendered risks, and governance issues in Pagbilao Bay and Puerto Galera. The presentations examine through intersecting lenses how fisherfolk communities collectively analyze and interrogate government and external experts’ marine spatial plans and coastal zoning. This paper hopes to shed light on how community science becomes a tool for emancipatory knowledge production, sharing, and application based on explicit social justice goals and participatory process. In particular, the discussion highlights how communities’ sense-making imagines and creates actions to reject value-free ocean observation research and instead promote a participatory science where coastal communities reclaim their voice and power in coastal resource governance.

Ultimately, this paper aims to glean lessons on community science beyond the implementation of the project, and to think and rethink science work and knowledge co-creation process towards transformative work with coastal communities.