Day after the SONA, whether the President gave a few minutes of his expected glowing address on the state of the Philippine environment or not, there is no magic wand to waft the country’s problems to the horizon or parts of it which cannot send them back to our land in the form of climactic scourge.
Rather, it’s on a move-on mode calling for a multi-sectoral, hand-in-hand action in making the country a sustainable place to live in. Especially since the Philippines has a long way to go in sustainability, as shown in the 2022 Environmental Performance Index which ranked it as 158th among 180 countries in terms of progress toward improving environmental health, protecting ecosystem vitality, and mitigating climate change (CC).
Continuing major environmental issues for us to face are climate change, pollution, habitat destruction, deforestation, and loss of biodiversity.
Sins Of Nature
Except for CC which is global and a confluence of the sins against Nature largely by highly industrialized and consuming countries, all the rest are unarguably due to the abuses and neglect of us the citizenry.
National laws are in effect to address them but fall very short, having been promulgated by the government too late when the problems have been blown up or there are much politics and corruption that affect the implementation of well-intended provisions.
Major laws include Environmental Impact Assessment Law, Toxic Substances and Hazardous Waste Management Act, Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, Clean Water Act, and the Environmental Awareness And Education Act Of 2009.
Life-Long Woes
The true state of the Philippine environment, to get real, can be deduced from the everyday and even life-long woes Filipinos live.
We breathe heavily polluted air, eat chemically treated (think fertilizers, pesticides) and genetically modified food, drink unclean water, indiscriminately use cosmetics and other items with toxic chemical substances, all of which cause damage to our health and prematurely send a number to the grave.
We excessively cut trees in our forests that our carbon sink is diminished as a result letting the heavy rains downstream freely causing overflow of rivers and other water bodies and inevitably massive floods on the streets and loss of properties and lives.
We fail to see the value of a rich biodiversity in our diminishing food supply and raw materials. We do not seriously mind a few ultra rich and powerful capitalists insatiably dig and mine in our mountainsides and in the process decimate communities and degrade our protective landscape.
Environment Education
Of course, we can not stop at looking at the problems; we can only move forward by looking at possible solutions.
Much credit goes to the environment education program of a few academic institutions, passionate advocacies of environmental NGOs and individuals, and change initiatives of some big businesses which help raise concern and stewardship for our degraded earth.
Likewise, some entrepreneurial individuals have accepted the challenge to produce alternative solutions to mitigate or solve our environmental problems.
As to the government, there’s one particular program that nudged my hope that it may create good ripples. This March, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the European Union have launched the Green Economy Programme in the Philippines.
The initiative aims to enhance waste management, support the transition to a circular economy, and accelerate the deployment of renewable energy technologies.
(More on this in detail in a future column)
(Erlie Lopez is a writer, poet, PR consultant, and environment advocate.
Email address: erlielopez@gmail.com)
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