Traditional Filipino boat gets makeover

Manila: The banca — the hardy Philippine wooden boat known as an all-round workhorse that provides a livelihood as well as transport for the coastal and river communities dotting the archipelago — is getting a makeover.

In use since the ancient times, the all-wood boat’s basic design and structure have hardly changed over hundreds of years.

But that is about to change.

Against the backdrop of increasingly harsh weather, brought about by climate change, the traditional boat is being reinvented using fibreglass, a synthetic material, to make it more durable.

Fibreglass has been used as a boatbuilding material since the late 1940s.

In the Philippines, the material has been available for over 50 years.

Watertight and relatively easier and less time-consuming to construct than wood, fibreglass boats prevent leaks and reduce maintenance costs.

When Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines on November 8, 2013, leaving a trail of destruction, coastal communities in the Visayas and Palawan were among those who bore much of the super storm’s wrath. Some 30,000 bancas were destroyed.

For fishermen like Benjamin Pedrero, from Tacloban City, the loss of his banca not only meant the loss of property, but also his source of income.

Some 146,700 small-scale fishermen like him were affected by the disaster.

Now, with the help of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the fishermen are getting back on their feet in their shiny new boats made of fibreglass.

Indigenous watercraft expert Ramon Binamira Jr said WWF-Philippines, while aware of the challenges of helping fishermen to recover from their losses, also saw Haiyan’s destruction as an opportunity to introduce a smart alternative to building bancas.

“Fibreglass is now widely available, relatively cheap, and easy to build boats from,” Binamira said.

“It is time to think and act beyond relief,” WWF-Philippines vice-chair and CEO Jose Ma Lorenzo Tan said. “By enhancing the traditional banca design and providing fisherfolk with the resources to build new boats, we will minimise our growing dependence on local and foreign aid.”

WWF-Philippines created the blueprint for Bancas for the Philippines to restore food security among local fisherfolk and establish resilience in coastal communities that stand vulnerable to climate change impacts.

Since February 2014 when it was launched, a crowd-sourcing endeavour to support the project, called “Bancas for the Philippines” has completed the training of local fishermen and boat builders from at least eight population nodes in Leyte and Northern Palawan for the production of 600 fibreglass boats.

The fishermen and boatbuilders, who received training for a week, can then transfer their knowledge and skills to fellow mariners in their coastal communities. Key resources like boat moulds, tools, and training modules are provided to sustain the building of fibreglass bancas for the long term.

“Bancas for the Philippines went beyond physical re-engineering. In a sense, it involved rebooting social software. This project is about building skills, creating opportunities, and crafting new platforms for resilience,” said Tan.

Experts said such approaches are critical for countries like the Philippines, which are susceptible to the effects of climate change. They said the project embodies the “Build Back Better” philosophy of resilience.

At the recent Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) Manila Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction and Management, Kristalina Georgieva, EU Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid & Crisis Response, said integrating preparedness in everyday life was necessary for people to confront the challenges of climate change.

“Over the last three decades, the cost of natural disasters have quadrupled. From $50 billion [Dh183 billion] in average per year in the 80s to $200 billion on average per year in the last decade. But we can do something about it. We can build preparedness in everything we do,” she said.