Kamayan para sa Kalikasan

October Forum Consensus:

Much work needs to be done in wake of ‘World Summit’

PARTICIPANTS in last month’s session of Kamayan para sa Kalikasan liked the way this Forum Journal had put it: that it was a case of “win some, lose some” during the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) held in Johannesburg, South Africa last August. Two days after that session, environmental NGO leaders and government functionaries at another forum on the subject, held at the University of the Philippines in Quezon City, echoed the same sentiments along with the realization that much work remains to be done.

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Dare we Breathe Much Longer?

New coal-fired plant project

being ‘railroaded’ by Palace

Clean Air Act to suffer still another delay?

“WHEN you can see the air you’re breathing, the pollution situation is really bad!” This is a quotable quote from an official of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources who spoke at a recent session of Kamayan para sa Kalikasan. The air pollution situation in the country, especially in its urban centers, is really so bad that public health alarms have been raised. Still, there are moves to delay much longer the full implementation of the Clean Air Act, even as a coal-fired plant is reportedly being rushed for approval with heavy Malacañang pressure for its immediate construction in Misamis Oriental.

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Beth Roxas receives international award

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EDITORIAL

BOXED FEATURE:

SPECIAL:

FOOTER QUOTE:

Environment Dept. a Hardship Post

Outraged! (Statement)

DakiLahi Salutes Kamayan Forum

“Pessimists may be right to say ‘I told you so.’ But they’d be wrong not to appreciate the complexities and agony of negotiating fairness (justice) in this world.”

--Isagani Serrano, senior vice president of the Phil. Rural Reconstruction Movement (PRRM), as author of the forthcoming book, It’s About Fairness, Yes, But… (Another View on Earth Summit 2002)

WSSD output tackled at Kamayan’s October session, which also received the report on ‘Bancaravan para sa Kalikasan.’ L-R: DENR’s Juan Raña; Beth Roxas of CSCCSD and EBC; moderators Ding Reyes of Saniblakas & CLEAR and Marie Marciano of SALIKA; and CLEAR president Vic O. Milan, shown explaining details of the successful Bancaravan. (CLEARfoto by H. L. Nava)

EDITORIAL

Environment Department a ‘Hardship Post’

SECRETARIES of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources have come and gone, but still the overall performance of DENR at any given time has depended more on the political will of their respective presidential bosses for environmental conservation.

And because such political will has not been known to exist, the powerless secretaries had to suffer blackeyes from the viewpoint of a citizenry indignant over the department’s dismal record.

When former DENR Sec. Jun Factoran spoke during the first-ever session of Kamayan para sa Kalikasan back in 1990, he was saying he faced a big challenge in the apparently anti-environment predospositions of the economic secretaries in Cory Aquino’s Cabinet. We sympathized with him and wished him luck in the effort to influence those adversaries for the sake of Mother Nature. Shortly before ending his term, however, he returned to the forum speaking much like a technocrat from NEDA.

Sec. Angel Alcala was even an environmentalist before he was drafted to head the DENR, but the department did not perform much better under his helm.

It would be safe to assume that most, if not all, who have succumbed to the draft had all the best intentions to clean up the DENR, to institute reforms

and transform the department into an effective guardian of the natural environment that it was created to be. When they speak of their plans and promises they are impassioned enough to convince many at least of the earnestness of their intentions. However the public has always had reason to half-expect the plans and promises to be replaced sooner or later with whispered handwashings and other excuses. Ipit kami eh! Our hands are tied, we can do nothing but obey the president. Such honesty in private whispers!

Actually, they can do something when their respective presidents order them to sign permits for environmentally-destructive projects. They can resign and deprive the Palace of a fall guy and a deodorant. The fact that they don’t choose that extremely difficult but very honorable option does not mean the option doesn’t exist. It does!

It boils down to political will and integrity, not only the presidents’ but theirs. President Gloria Arroyo reportedly ordered pointblank a DENR official to sign the ECC for the coal-fired plant Misamis Oriental. She could only do that if her underlings are more willing to completely lose their real honor and clean conscience than lose their jobs and their “honorable” titles. Tsk! Tsk! Tsk! So pathetic, isn’t it? How can we tell these hostages to escape?

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FORUM FOCUS

Dare we Breathe Much Longer?

New coal-fired plant project

being ‘railroaded’ by Palace

Clean Air Act to suffer still another delay?

Still, there are moves to delay much longer the full implementation of the Clean Air Act, even as a coal-fired plant is reportedly being rushed for approval with heavy Malacañang pressure for its immediate construction in Misamis Oriental.

Task Force Macajalar recently accused Malacañang of arm-twisting the environment department into issuing an environment clearance certificate (ECC) for the coal-fired power plant project.

According to Mindanao Gold Star Daily, TFM declared the Palace’s alleged move as a “mad rush to have the 210-mw Coal-Fired Power Plant” pushed by the project proponents, State Power Development Corporation (SPDC) and its foreign partner SteagAG of Germany. Spokesperson BenCyrus Ellorin said the group learned this from an “unimpeachable source.”

Ellorin will speak on this during the Kamayan para sa Kalikasan forum session on November 15, to which DENR Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) Director Julian Amador had been invited. Also to be discussed is the planned delay of implementing the Clean Air Act’s provisions on allowable quality of petroleum fuels for vehicles originally set to start in January 2003, but the De-partment of Transportation and Communications and the Senate have moved to hold in abeyance the implementation of this law, and the House of Representatives started following suit until it was stopped from doing so by the statute’s mauin author, Rep. Nereus Acosta. The Partnership for Clean Air has started a sign-up drive to oppose the delay in the full implementation of the measure (see boxed feature in page 2).

Issues on Coal-Fired Plant

Task Force Macajalar raised the following issues against the plant project:

1) findings that the project is not economically and financially feasible;

2) findings of the IPP Review Committee that the Mindanao Coal-fired Plant Contract has some unresolved financial issues;

3) the issue of Global Warming and Climate Change due to Greenhouse Gases Emissions, the biggest contributor of which is the use of Coal as fuel;

4) Toxic emissions (e.g. Mercury, Uranium, Sulfur Oxides, Nitrogen Oxides) from coal plants threatens the health of people. In the US, it is associated with 15,000 deaths per year. It is indicated in hundreds of thousands of asthma attacks, cardiac problems, upper and lower respiratory ailments.

5) dislocation of hundreds of poor farmers in the project area

TFM leads the People’s Campaign Against the Mindanao Coal-Fired Thermal Plant (People'’ CAMP).

Church Statement

Eadlier, the Archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro issued a stateent saying that the Church, “more than for development and cheaper electricity (is) first and foremost, for life, for human life and every life form on Eartth,” and is against anything that endangers life.” Signed by Archbishop Jesus B. Tuquib, the statement also revealed that the Vice Governor of Misamis Oriental had earlier boasted that the project still being opposed was already a “done deal.”

Despite reports of the Coal-firted plant’s ECC being already signed under Palace pressure, Sen. Aquilinio Pimentel pledged to file a resolution for the chamber to investigate the project. TFM spokesman Ellorin said the issuance of an ECC for the project should be postponed until after the pledged Senate probe is finished.

Ellorin also told the Kamayan Forum Journal in an interview that TFM and People’s CAMP need all the support that Manila-based national environment organizations could extend would go a long way in pursuing this struggle.

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FORUM ECHOES

October Forum Consensus:

Much work needs to be done in wake of ‘World Summit’

PARTICIPANTS in last month’s session of Kamayan para sa Kalikasan liked the way this Forum Journal had put it: that it was a case of “win some, lose some” during the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) held in Johannesburg, South Africa last August. Two days after that session, environmental NGO leaders and government functionaries at another forum on the subject, held at the University of the Philippines in Quezon City, echoed the same sentiments along with the realization that much work remains to be done.

At Kamayan, a report on the highlights of the WSSD was given by Elizabeth C. Roxas, executive director of the Environmental Broadcast Circle (EBC), Vice Chair of the Philippine Civil Society Counterpart Council for Sustainable Development, and Executive Committee member of Sanib-lakas ng Inang Kalikasan (SALIKA), and John Raña of the Foreign-Assisted Projects Office of the Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources.

Besides giving major WSSD output items, they also told the jampacked crowd how the representative of US President George W. Bush was booed throughout his speech at the Summit. The US government got the ire of countries worldwide for refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol for Clean Air. What needs to be done, speakers in both fora said, is to review the Philippine Agenda 21 and make plans to maximize on favorable WSSD resolutions and protect ourselves from the unfavorable ones.

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NEWS FLASH

Beth Roxas receives international award

ELIZABETH C. Roxas, executive director of the Environmental Broadcast Circle (EBC), and Executive Board member of Sanib-lakas ng Inang Kalikasan (SALIKA), was one of four winners of International Green Pen Awards 2002 given by Asia Pacific Forum of Environmental Journalists, the APFEJ headquarters in Sri Lanka announced.

Roxas was active in the crafting of Philippine Agenda 21, the country's policy for sustainable development. She is the co-chair of the Civil Society Counterpart Council for Sustainable Development (CSCCSD) and co-chair of its sub-committee on Information and Education. She initiated the training for reporters and broadcasters and has written production scripts, research analysis, presentations, and publications.

Philip Mathews of Malaysia, Mr. Mangal Man Shakya of Nepal, and Mr. Ivan Lim Sin Chin of Singapore.

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BOXED FEATURE

Outraged!

WE ARE OUTRAGED by the actions of our public officials who do not seem to take seriously the horrible quality of Metro Manila’s air. Are they not convinced that Metro Manila air is one of the worst in the world as reported by the World Health Organization? Do they not believe the statistics of the Department of Health which show an alarmiing increase an respiratory diseases?

DOTC Secretary Leandro Mendoza recently signed a memorandum suspending the accelerated program for vehicles’ emission testing. Just before recessing for the All Saints’ holidays, the Senate voted to defer the implementation of the Clean Air Act with respect to the reformulation of gasoline that would reduce its toxic contents. The house of Representatives followed suit up to the second reading except that the momentum was stopped by opposition from Representative Nereus Acosta. Representative Acosta questions the haste with which the above decisions were made in contrast to the careful, deliberate process that led to the passage of the clean air act.

The Clean Air Act is a landmark piece of legislation that Filipinos can be proud of. After many years of discussion, research and argumentation participated in by all stakeholders, the bill was passed and signed into law in 1999. No one doubeted that it would be difficult but everyone agreed that we just had to bite the bullet if we were to start turning things around.

All sectors involved have been sufficiently warned and most have prepared for the inevitable. The necessary instruments for testing and monitoring have been imported. The manpower has been trained to use the instruments. The Partnership for Clean Air, which is composed of civil society, academe, media, and business including the oil and transport industries, has prepared an action plan for information, education, implementation, coordination, monitoring etc. Psychologically and otherwise, society is prepared for the sacrifices needed.

How could Secretary Mendoza and Congress undo all this work with hardly any consultation, much less public hearings?

The hasty decisions are said to be based on the crisis that the country is in. When has the country not been in crisis in the last half century? The socio–economic environment was not much better when the Clean Air Act was passed. In fact, if we do not prioritize clean air, the national situation will continue to worsen with our population getting sicker and less productive. The economy will be saddled with bigger demands for public health.

We demand that the decisions of Sec. Mendoza and the Senate be rescinded. We demand that the Clean Air Act be implemented as scheduled. We say to our public officials: Stop poisoning the air! Do not gamble with our people’s health!

(This statement is for signing by all concerned citizens. Please help us gather more and more signatures. You may coordinate with Ms. Bebet Gozun, c/o Earth Day Philippines Network, tel. 9205091.)

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SPECIAL

The newly-formed Katipunang

deems it a distinct honor to acknowledge the monthly KAMAYAN PARA SA KALIKASAN forum as a worthy contribution to the Pambansang Talastasan (national discourse) process for national synergy-bulding, specifically on environmental issues. Let us team-up!

PAMBANSANG TALASTASAN covers the encouragement, acknowledgment and public promotion of fora and publications on various themes, thus popularizing a culture of earnest conversations and dialogues to enrich, deepen and unify the views of the people on our fragmentation and the urgent need to synergize. An important component here is sense of history.

PAMBANSANG TANGKILIKAN covers all programs, projects, activities and win-win transactions involving cooperatives, small and medium enterprises, and individual entrepreneurs, as well as local economies, so they would interphase for mutual benefit, save Filipino jobs and businesses, and build, ground-up, the solid and broad basis for national industrialization and strong economic upliftment through the broad revival of the “bayanihan” philosophy.

Katipunang DakiLahi was convened by the Saniblakas ng Taongbayan Foundation and launched on Augusat 24, 2002 DakiLahi-affiliated organizations include the Kampanya para sa Kamalayan sa Kasaysayan (Kamalaysayan); National Economic Protectionsism Association (NEPA); Suriang Ugat-Loob (SULO); Labat-Liwanag Network of Centers for Empowering Paradigms; Galing Pilipino Movement (GPM); Sanib-Sikap Initiatives Network; and Advocates of Cooperative Education on Synergism (ACES). DakiLahi accepts organizational and individual members. Organizing Cmmittee members include: Faustino Mendoza, NEPA, chairman; Sixto K. Roxas, economist, honorary chairman; Ding Reyes, SanibLakas, Pambasang Talastasan overall facilitator; and Tony Cruzada, Pambasang Tangkilikan overall coodinator.

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THIS ON-LINE EDITION OF KAMAYAN PARA SA KALIKASAN JOURNAL IS PREPARED FOR SALIKA & CLEAR BY SanibLakas CyberServices


	*All are invited.* to the *Kamayan para sa Kalikasan Environmental Forum* held regularly since March 1990 on the 3rd Friday every month, 10 am-2pm at the Kamayan Restaurant along-EDSA, Mandaluyong City. It is convened jointly by the Communicators’ League for Environmental Action and Restoration (CLEAR) and Sanib-Lakas ng Inang Kalikasan (SALIKA), fully sponsored by *Kamayan*.