Decades of work as an NGO volunteer have taught me a principle so simple it is often overlooked: consult first. It sounds obvious. Yet time and again, it is the first thing forgotten when projects arrive that grow large, urgent, and well-funded.

Too often, consultation is treated as a formality. Meetings are called. A few voices are heard. Attendance sheets are signed. Photos are taken. Then the real decisions are made elsewhere. What follows is not consultation-it is performance. And communities can tell the difference. True consultation is not about asking people what they want. It is about recognizing that those who live closest to the land and sea understand realities that no feasibility study can fully capture.

Armand, a fisherman, does not just see water; he sees the shifting patterns of wet and dry seasons, the pull of currents, the risks at sea, and the memory of what has changed. Nelia, a coastal mother, does not just see a livelihood program; she sees whether it will endure typhoons, pay for schooling, and keep food on the table. Jimmy, a tricycle driver who turned to skills training, does not just see opportunity; he sees whether it leads to dignified work-or another cycle of underemployment.

When these perspectives are ignored, we may still build but we build the wrong things: Ports without fishermen. Training without jobs. Infrastructure without ownership.

This is why consultation must evolve into something more honest: co-creation. Not just participants but co-creators. Not just beneficiaries but co-makers and co-producers of development.

Consult first, yes but then build with. This shift is especially urgent as the Philippines advances toward a Blue Economy anchored on renewable energy, offshore wind, and coastal industrialization. In places like San Miguel Bay, where billion-dollar wind projects are being proposed, the stakes are not abstract. They are deeply human.

Government plans for energy transition. Climate action is a national and global imperative. But the pathway we choose matters. Will we exclude stakeholders or include them?

If development is imposed, it will be resisted. If it is co-created, it can be sustained.

We cannot afford to treat coastal communities as passive beneficiaries of progress. They are not obstacles. They are partners.

And partnership requires more than meetings. It requires:

• Listening before deciding on the problem
• Including those often excluded-women, youth, small-scale fisherfolks and farmers
• Translating feedback into real design changes
• Treating questions and agam-agam as insight, not opposition
• Closing the loop showing how community voices shaped outcomes
• Staying engaged long after the ribbon-cutting, when real impacts unfold

These are not extra steps. This is the work. Platforms like the DUROS multi-stakeholder consultation on wind farms in Camarines Sur remind us that solutions are stronger when they are shared, when fisherfolk, government, academe, and industry sit at the same table. Not perfect, not easy but grounded. Because ultimately, development is not about infrastructure. It is about people to be listened to by each other, especially those who are often sidelined by development projects.

And people do not resist progress. They resist being excluded from it. They resist when answers are unclear, when risks are theirs to bear but decisions are made elsewhere. The agam-agam grows not from stubbornness, but from lived experience and long-standing gaps in trust. That trust cannot be demanded. It must be built and rebuilt through genuine participation.

So, the principle remains as relevant now as it was decades ago: Consult first. But do not stop there. Consult first, then build with stakeholders, decide with them, and grow with them.

Because the future we are trying to build will only stand if it is rooted in the voices of those who must live in it.

And when done right, this principle does more than improve projects it shares power. It ensures that development is not something done to people, but something created with them, from planning to ribbon-cutting and beyond.

The header features the DUROS consultation and workshop attended by San Miguel Bay fisherfolks, stakeholders, partner organizations and community leaders held last February 20, 2026 at the JaimeLiza Center, Baras, Canaman, Camarines Sur. (photo contributed)

About the author

EVITA JIMENEZ-TUAZON is the Founding Chair of the Tabang Bikol Movement, Board Chair of the Mariners Polytechnic Colleges Foundation in Bicol, and a Board Member of CenPEG, a policy study center where she served as Founding Director. An educator, social entrepreneur, and advocate for culture and the arts, health, and the environment, she pursued her undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of the Philippines Diliman and writes a regular column for Bicol Mail. In 2020, she was recognized as Outstanding Volunteer for Region V by PNVSCA-NEDA, with TBM later honored as Outstanding Non-Profit Volunteer Organization (2023)