The Diocese of San Pablo in cooperation with the Provincial Government of Laguna and other organizations including our FSLF organized the Lakbay Lawa Forum held at the Community Center of the Capitol grounds on March 3, 2017. 

There were five speakers who gave inputs. The first was Dr. Espaldon, who spoke about Laguna de Bay: Towards a Sustainable Future.  This gave the participants a situationer on the water quality in the lake. He discussed pollution in the lake which is largely due to increase in urban and human settlements.

The second speaker was Dr. Josefino Comiso from NASA.  He is a visiting professor at the University of the Philippines. He showed maps and satellite images of Laguna de Bay as viewed from space.  He talked about remote sensing principles and the power of high resolution data to benefit the country. Through these technology we can see how serious pollution is in our lakes.

The third speaker was a young person representing the Asian Development Bank Youth. Her name is Eka Menez and she introduced the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. She also spoke about capacity building and what young people can do to save our lakes. She encouraged the participants to understand the UN SDGs and use them as guidelines in our effort to protect the lakes.

Director Lennie Borja represented the Laguna Lake Development Authority which is supposed to be the agency that takes care of our lakes. She talked about a new LLDA Board Resolution that directed a one year moratorium on the operation of fishpens, fishcages and all aquaculture structures in Laguna Lake. She said this is important so that there can be an equitable distribution of resources of the lake for all stakeholders.

The last speaker was Dr. Charity Zafaralla. She also talked about the conditions of the water and water quality indicators. She presented her project which is the Aquatic Macrophyte Biosorption System, which is a green filter system that cleans water sources like creeks, rivers and lakes.

The Forum ended with a workshop in the afternoon that had the participants discuss the issues they heard and come up with recommendations on how to bring life back to the lake as our gift to our Lake of Hope.