Quezon City, Philippines — In an effort to foster synergy and collaboration among implementers of nutrient loading and ecosystem modeling efforts in the Manila Bay watershed, a technical workshop to discuss the scope, expected outputs, challenges and way forward was held on 10 April 2014 at the PEMSEA Resource Facility with representation from various research and computer modeling projects in the Bay.
Preliminary results from existing nutrient, pollutant and ecosystem modeling efforts in Manila Bay were presented. These included:

 

 

Germany and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) raised the bar on their cooperation on biodiversity conservation when Mr. Hans-Joachim Fuchtel, German Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), visited the headquarters of the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) at the foot of Mt. Makiling in Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines.

 

 

 

 

Batangas, Philippines — In an effort to establish and operationalize the Province's integrated information management system (IIMS), a decision-support system for coastal and marine and river basin management, the Province of Batangas through the Provincial Government-Environment and Natural Resources (PG-ENRO) entered into a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with De La Salle Lipa and PEMSEA in March 2014, coinciding with the Batangas Environment Summit (BEST) 2014. The signing of the MOA was graced by Hon. Vilma Santos-Recto, Governor of the Province of Batangas, Bro.