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Friday, March 29, 2024

The black state of the Philippine environment

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"We are failing in addressing effectively the climate emergency and the biodiversity crises."

 

Last Thursday, I had the honor of delivering the keynote address at the forum on the State of the Philippine Environment. I am grateful to the Center for Environmental Concerns, Kalikasan People’s Network, Development Studies Program, Rosa Luxembourg Stiftung, and the Ateneo Environmental Science Society for asking me to make this presentation. It gave me an opportunity to reframe Philippine and global environmental concerns and propose a new taxonomy of environmental issues that the world and the Philippines face.

The usual classification has been to categorize environmental issues as green (for terrestrial ecosystems), blue (for coastal, marine, and water related challenges), and brown (for pollution, waste and other industrial problems). In my presentation, I introduced a fourth class of environmental challenges – the black issues, which are the enormous and existential challenges we are facing today. These issues are climate change, extinction of species, large-scale mining and big dam projects, and destruction by China of the resources of the West Philippine Sea. These black issues are characterized by development aggression, global inequity, loss of national sovereignty, and social injustice.

I will now be using this presentation for my environmental law classes in Ateneo Law School, Ateneo de Zamboanga, San Beda Graduate School of Law, FEU Institute of Law, and University of Makati and in many forums I expect to be invited to in the months to come.

Indeed, the state of our environment is black. This in spite of generally good and competent leadership in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

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Secretary Roy Cimatu has taken big steps to try to fix Boracay and Manila Bay. It is too early to say whether he will succeed or not. But for sure, Boracay and Manila Bay are not the Philippines. And in the rest of the country, the efforts of the government are simply not adequate to respond to the challenges.

This is especially true of the black environmental issues.

We are failing in addressing effectively the climate emergency and the biodiversity crises, in fact making bad decisions about them in concrete cases like allowing a new coal power plant to be built in Palawan.

We are failing in mining with the DENR supporting the renewal of the Financial and Technical Assistance Agreement of Oceana Gold in the face of strong opposition by all levels of local governments and the indigenous peoples and local communities.

We are making a bad decision in pursuing big dam projects like Kaliwa River Dam that will only result in inundating flora, fauna, and people without solving the water shortage in Metro Manila and in financial terms with China that is grossly disadvantageous to the Philippines.

And, yes in the West Philippine Sea, we are giving up our sovereign rights, allowing Chinese militia fishermen to exploit our fisheries at the expense of our own food security and the livelihood of many Filipinos.

In the face of these black environmental issues, I welcome the pastoral letter on ecology issued earlier this week by the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines entitled “An urgent call for ecological conversion, hope in the face of climate emergency.” Signed by CBCP President Romulo Valles, Archbishop of Davao, it minces no words and speaks truth to power. Below are excerpts from the letter:

“Our remaining forests and biodiversity are continually being threatened by extractive mining operations and the building of dams. Respect for God’s creation is disregarded when irresponsible mining practices are allowed to continue. Land and life is desecrated when almost two-thirds of the ancestral domains of indigenous peoples and more than half of protected and key biodiversity areas are directly threatened by mining applications and operations. Despite evidences against 26 mining operations ordered closed or suspended last February 2017, not one mine has stopped extracting because of technical administrative loopholes. Social justice is not served when only the few mining companies, many of which are also owned by political leaders, reap the benefits from mineral extraction. The rural poor remain poor as mining only contributes less than one percent to our GDP, employs less than 0.4% of our labor force and directly threatens agriculture, forestry, watersheds and fisheries resources that are essential for the survival of the rural poor.

Another problem related with mining is the phenomenon of our country’s growing dependence on fossil fuel-based energy, such as coal. There are at least 23 existing coal-fired power plants operating across the country; 28 more may be operational by the year 2020. To support and sustain this dependence, a huge number of coal power plants involved in extensive coal extraction has to be put in place. Thus, coal mining projects have been allowed to increase to 186, including small-scale ones. Worse is, most of these coal projects are located within the vicinity of communities of indigenous Filipinos and are supported by rich ecosystems and biodiversities.

Centuries of emissions from coal have been scientifically proven to be among the lead causes of the current climate degradation. Coal projects also further exacerbate the vulnerability of impoverished host communities in the Philippines already struggling to cope with the effects of the worsening climate. Many coastal and agriculture-reliant communities face the loss of their livelihood because of land conversion and the pollution of resources caused by coal. Health problems also plague such communities due to the toxic substances and heavy metals released into the air and water resources by the mining, transporting, and burning of coal.

The burning of coal and other fossil fuels and the destruction of nature are natural consequences of extractive mining. Needless to say, these industries are pursued primarily for profit accumulation and rarely, if at all, in response to peoples’ needs. This is the root cause of the continuous escalation of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere which, in turn, is causing the climate crisis. The climate crisis has thus far claimed tens of thousands of lives, displaced millions of people, and brought about tragic devastation in many parts of the world. This climate crisis is bound to get much worse in the years ahead.

* * *

The Philippines, being an archipelago, is prone to climate-induced disasters brought about by sea level rise, storm surges, prolonged droughts, and flash floods, among others. We are known to be the second among the countries with the greatest exposure to disaster risks worldwide. We are at the doorstep of all the major threats of climate change which cause irreversible damage to agriculture, marine resources and the entire bio-networks. Moreover, extreme weather events are occurring more frequently in our country. The catastrophic super typhoons like Yolanda, Ondoy, Sendong, and Pablo, that have devastated several of our regions, attest to this level of climate vulnerability. On record, Yolanda (Haiyan) is the strongest tropical cyclone ever to make a landfall on our country. The damage from Yolanda was catastrophic, resulting to an estimated 8,000 casualties, affecting 16 million people in 10 provinces, while over 1.1 million homes were damaged, about half of them completely destroyed. The sources of livelihood of an estimated 5.6 million poor people were severely affected.

Climate-related disasters threaten us all. The reality of the climate crisis, proven by the catastrophic impact of typhoons and other human induced-disasters, has made us aware that the time to act is now, not tomorrow. We must activate climate action on behalf of the voiceless people and the planet.”

In the next column, I will write about solutions to the black state of our environment, including the recommeandations proposed by the CBCP.

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