Palawan Tropical Forestry Protection Programme

Programme Components

Geographic Information System

Among the priorities of the Programme is to apply Geographic Information System (GIS), a computer-assisted method, to acquire, store, analyse and display land-based data on Palawan. GIS is seen as a management tool which would describe and explain particular locations and phenomena within the catchment areas.

Particularly, GIS can benefit the indigenous peoples, agriculture, forestry, and the engineering sectors.

In PTFPP's five year existence, it has generated, updated, acquired and shared data which were processed to become information. With all these useful findings from the GIS, and even from other tools employed by PTFPP, access to these information by individuals within the Programme and those outside is necessary, bearing in mind that research not used is equivalent to research not done.

Strengthening Information Pool. With Palawan's rich ecological, cultural and economic resources, growing research and development projects are being undertaken all over the province by the local, national and even international communities. Along the process, voluminous amounts of useful and educational information are constantly being discovered and generated.

In order to optimise these valuable information, the PTFPP Library is now well-organised in a systematic display using the Library of Congress classification scheme. Operation has been in full swing and the library is open to all staff and outside researchers.

In addition, the PTFPP also hosted a book fair, with the co-operation of Linar and Goodwill Bookstores, that generated P27,000 from book sales. The proceeds were turned-over to the Palawan Information Research Centre (PIRC) another PTFPP-assisted program, where copies of the Programme's reports and relevant documents are forwarded for public use.

PIRC is seen as an essential venue to address faster and easy access of information from various fields and facilitates a systematic tool for data gathering and co-ordination among related institutions. It caters to students, locals, tourists, scientists, and all sort of information seekers.

Networking. Keeping pace with internetworking, communications between two or more networks, PTFPP's Local Area Network (LAN) Design was approved and is currently implemented. It has seven servers with around 53 existing workstations. PTFPP LAN, with the aim of extending the link with other government organisations, hopes to have an integrated data management system, to enhance information sharing.

Electronic Media and Website. With the advent of computers, information seekers get answers in a split second with the high-speed cutting-edge communication technology. Taking advantage of the state-of-the-art technology, the Programme plans to share its experiences, discoveries, and forest protection approaches to be used by various information seekers by coming out with its own link in other agencies and development partners.