The Philippine Council for Aquatic and Marine Research and Development will hold the Second National Congress on Philippine Lakes April 27-29, 2011 at SEARCA, Los Baños, Laguna. Dubbed as the LakeCon 2011, the Congress aims to enhance public awareness, explore new perspectives and options for coping with sweeping development imperatives, build on existing knowledge, find better solutions to growing environmental threats and foster stronger alliances for decisive action.

The Congress has the theme "Building on the Pillars on Integrated Lake Basin Management" to create awareness on integrated lake basin management (ILBM) as an option that can be applied at the national and local levels and to help the country move forward strategically to a common framework for lake management.

ILBM is an approach that considers lakes and their basins as simple mutually-interacting management units. ILBM integrates six management elements or pillars resiliency, namely institutions, policy, stakeholder participation, technology, science, and finances.

The complexities of this approach require the converging in a single venue of the experts, key stakeholders, decision makers and financing sources to share their knowledge and experiences, promote collaboration and linkages, and build consensus on the future of basin-wide approaches to lake management.

In 2003, the First National Congress on Philippine Lakes or LakeCon 2003 brought together more than 100 stakeholders from government, academe, NGOs, Local Government Units and business companies who signed a declaration on their vision of Philippine lakes as heritage and pride of the Filipino people.

The Congress became a launching pad for organizing the Philippine Lakes Network (PlaNet), a group of individuals committed to strengthening partnerships and information sharing on the status of lake and inland resources.

Seven years hence, the country's lakes remain threatened by growing demands for fish, water supply electricity, transportation routes, vegetation and habitats and the perils from climate change, land degradation, pollution, flooding and population fluxes to shore land areas.

For more information on LakeCon 2011, please visit http://www.pcamrd.dost.gov.ph/lakecon/.