KM Reyes
Conservation Campaigner
protecting palawan
KM Reyes is a conservation campaigner, expedition leader, & Executive Director of Centre for Sustainability PH (CS), a women-led, youth, environmental NGO from Palawan, Philippines with a mission to conserve the country’s last remaining 3% of pristine rainforest by establishing protected areas. KM’s work through CS spearheaded the establishment of Cleopatra’s Needle Critical Habitat, now the Philippines’ largest critical habitat at 41,350 hectares, bringing countless local to international stakeholders into cooperative action. CS formed the Southeast Asia coalition 30x30SEA and successfully campaigned for the Philippines to support protecting 30% of land & water globally by 2030, adopted at the UN Biodiversity Convention. This supports CS’s efforts to establish another protected area, Sultan Peak, and eventually the legal conservation of all of Palawan’s unprotected Key Biodiversity Areas.
I started out as a community organiser working in human rights in an informal settlement located on a steep mountain slope, until the community I was living and working in suffered a landslide, and I witnessed all my work in community empowerment literally plummet down the side of a mountain. Amid post-disaster relief, I learnt first-hand that we have no human rights/security without environmental rights/security, and my approach to community empowerment pivoted almost immediately. I pursued work supporting communities to protect the immediate landscapes and biodiversity that surround us, and the basic resources these afford us like stable ground and clean water, as a means of overcoming impoverishment.
When I co-founded the Centre for Sustainability PH, we resolved that our work comes From communities, is For communities, and goes To communities. On the island of Palawan, we live at the very frontlines of our global climate and biodiversity crises. The Philippines is one of the most climate vulnerable countries worldwide, only 3% of rainforests and 4% of coral reefs remain in pristine condition, and yet we are still recognised as one of only 17 “megabiodiverse” countries globally. I thus feel an urgent responsibility to overcome these climate and biodiversity challenges for my country.
“Our work comes From communities, is For communities, and goes To communities.”
The most meaningful aspects of my work are always those involving the indigenous and local communities living in and around the landscapes that we work to protect, and who stand alongside me everyday to hold the line, protecting not only ancient rainforests but also indigenous cultures and traditions.
Recently we brought indigenous- and community- forest rangers from Cleopatra’s Needle Critical Habitat, who CS trained as parabiologists, to assist in conducting scientific research at our new site, the proposed Sultan Peak Critical Habitat. These forest rangers are now trained to not only conduct independent biodiversity research (and thus reduce dependency on outside scientists to understand the biological importance of our own backyard), but also communicate and disseminate their findings with their communities and key political decision-makers to shape environmental management on this island.
Witnessing conservation efforts spread on-ground directly from one community to another, from one protected area to a potentially new one, is ultimately one of the aspects of my work that I value most.
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