Also known as: Lalawigan ng Palawan
Palawan is a province in Region IV-B (MIMAROPA). Population 969K (PSA 2024 census), 0 component cities + 23 municipalities, 367 barangays total, land area 14,649.73 km². Provincial capital: Puerto Princesa City (seat of the provincial government; an independent Highly Urbanized City, administratively separate from the province).
Palawan is a province in Region IV-B (MIMAROPA). Its capital is Puerto Princesa City (seat of the provincial government; an independent Highly Urbanized City, administratively separate from the province).
Palawan had 968,795 residents in the 2024 census (PSA 2024 Census of Population (POPCEN 2024), reference date July 1, 2024). That is the most recent official count. There is no 2026 census result, so any 2026 population figure is an estimate.
Palawan covers 14,649.73 km², per the PSA Philippine Statistical Yearbook figure used on this page.
Palawan has 0 component cities and 23 municipalities (23 LGUs under the province), per PSA's Philippine Standard Geographic Code (2Q 2026), and 367 barangays. Puerto Princesa City is a highly urbanized city located within Palawan but administered independently of the province, so it is not counted above; counting it, there is 1 cities in all.
Palawan has no component cities. Its 23 municipalities are Aborlan, Agutaya, Araceli, Balabac, Bataraza, Brooke's Point, Busuanga, Cagayancillo, Coron, Culion, Cuyo, Dumaran, El Nido, Kalayaan, Linapacan, Magsaysay, Narra, Quezon, Rizal, Roxas, San Vicente, Sofronio Española and Taytay. Puerto Princesa City is a highly urbanized city located within Palawan but administered independently of the province, so it is not counted above; counting it, there is 1 cities in all.
Palawan is, and remains, one undivided province — a fact worth stating plainly given a genuinely contested history. Republic Act No. 11259 (2019) authorized splitting Palawan into three provinces, and the Supreme Court upheld that law as constitutional in 2020. But the plebiscite required to trigger the split, held in March 2021, was rejected by voters (58.5% No), and no subsequent legislative or electoral action has revived it — the PSA's own 2024 census still counts Palawan as a single province.
Key industries: Tourism (El Nido, Coron), Mining (nickel — Rio Tuba, the country's largest lateritic-nickel producer), Fishing, Energy (Malampaya offshore gas field)
What makes Palawan's land-use planning genuinely distinctive is that it doesn't run on the standard provincial framework alone: Republic Act No. 7611, the Strategic Environmental Plan (SEP) for Palawan Act (1992), created the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD), a body that answers directly to the Office of the President and administers the province-wide Environmentally Critical Areas Network (ECAN) zoning system. That framework has also been the site of real conflict: Rio Tuba Nickel Mining's push to expand into Mt. Bulanjao, originally a maximum-protection ECAN core zone, was progressively reclassified toward mining use between 2008 and 2021 over the objections of indigenous Pala'wan communities and environmental groups. Notably, the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Puerto Princesa Subterranean River sits inside Puerto Princesa City — the separate, independently-chartered HUC — while Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park, another UNESCO site, is legally part of Palawan province itself.
Key industries: Tourism (El Nido, Coron), Mining (nickel -- Rio Tuba, the country's largest lateritic-nickel producer), Fishing, Energy (Malampaya offshore gas field)
More on the regulatory framework: CLUP explainer · RA 7160 explainer · SGLG explainer · full glossary. Working a CLUP review cycle? Run the CLUP readiness self-check or see CLUP compliance monitoring.
Palawan is the one province in this batch with its own standalone environmental-planning law (RA 7611) and a dedicated council (PCSD) sitting between the province and every municipal CLUP. That's an unusually structured, high-stakes coordination problem — ECAN zoning, 23 municipal CLUPs, and a live mining-vs-conservation conflict — that a cross-LGU planning dashboard is built to make legible in one place.
Every one of Palawan's 23 municipal CLUPs has to reconcile with the province-wide ECAN zoning map -- a coordination layer no other province carries. A Nova Gov pilot brings that alignment into one dashboard across every municipality.
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