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Kamayan para sa Kalikasan
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Beyond Policy Advocacy & Other Political Tasks Green Party Politics: Can We Hack It? Questions Need to be Faced Squarely in Dialogue! GERMANY has long had a Green Party slugging it out in electoral and coalition politics within a parliamentary system. Filipino environmentalists, known internationally for strong civil-society environmental advocacy and participation in government policy-making, have been asked abroad when, not “if,” we are going to form our own, especially in the context of the relatively new party-list system supposed to account for a fifth of members of the House of Representatives. The responses have always been mixed, and recently we got word that a birthing had been made.
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Earth-friendly Energy Modern Living and Industry Could Use ‘Clean Technologies’ VARIOUS models of environment- friendly energy generation technologies were presented and discussed at the Kamayan para sa Kalikasan forum's 155th monthly session last January. Consensus was reached to the effect that modern human civilization can continue but at a less wasteful and pollutive mode and industry can even benefit from decentralizing electric power production and generation in the country. Another consensus was for the enough political will to commit more fiscal resources to support the shift. |
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EDITORIAL NEWS REPORT: BOXED FEATURE:
SPECIAL ITEM FOOTER QUOTE:
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Political Wisdom, Political Will and Political Work Palawan city to be WED 2003 central site in RP Political Will Needed for Environment-Friendly Industrialization and Economic Development Nationalist businessmen are for 'green' policies "The questions are not meant to discourage those friends and green colleagues of ours who have in fact organized a Green political party as such. These questions only seek to surface some of the areas of concern that need to be frontally and prudently addressed in earnest discourse joined in by all concerned.” – Ding Reyes, e-mailed article on Green politics. |
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Political Wisdom, Political Will, and Political Work
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Beyond Policy Advocacy & Other Political Tasks Green Party Politics: Can We Hack It? Questions Need to be Faced Squarely in Dialogue! GERMANY has long had a Green Party slugging it out in electoral and coalition politics within a parliamentary system. Filipino environmentalists, known internationally for strong civil-society environmental advocacy and participation in government policy-making, have been asked abroad when, not “if,” we are going to form our own, especially in the context of the relatively new party-list system supposed to account for a fifth of members of the House of Representatives. The responses have always been mixed, and recently we got word that a birthing had been made. There are significant differences of opinion on various aspects, including the very approach that should be taken in the event that efforts to build a “Green” electoral party shall have started in earnest. In the Philippines where the word “politics” has become dirty in the view of public opinion, the steps do have to be chosen and taken seriously and carefully. The most vital among these questions will be discussed during this month’s session of Kamayan para sa Kalikasan on Feb. 21. Many questions have to be addressed pertinent to forming a Green political party, and these include the general approach and even the timing of the steps in this direction. Will the formation of a Green party help to unite the environmental movement? Which approaches will have the tendency to create divisions? Will the formation of a “Green political party” help enhance a positive image among the people for the environmental advocacy, considering the image among the people of traditional politicians, including those who to varying extents also projected themselves as champions of the Green cause? Will the unity of the broad environmental movement be affected or not by clarifications that “no, we are not all politicians!” or “no, we are not the ‘trapo’-type of politicians,” “no, we are not all EDSA-dos partisans,” or “no, our own Green group is not involved in that environmental party, don’t ever lump us with them!”, “how should a Green political party relate to international commemoration like Earth Day (April) and World Environment Day (June)?” etc. etc.? Main speakers at the forum will be Vic. Milan and Roy Cabonegro for the recently formed Green Party-Pilipinas, headed by Delfin Ganapin; Roberto Verzola of the Philippine Greens, and local government officers who will bring the grassroots politics perspective. Milan, who heads CLEAR, one of the convenor groups of the forum, will not be moderating this time. |
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Modern Living and Industry Could Use ‘Clean Technologies’ VARIOUS models of environment-friendly energy generation technologies were presented and discussed at the Kamayan para sa Kalikasan forum's 155th monthly session last January. Consensus was reached to the effect that modern human civilization can continue but at a less wasteful and pollutive mode and industry can even benefit from decentralizing electric power production and generation in the country. Another consensus was for the enough political will to commit more fiscal resources to support the shift. Among those present at the forum were Atty. Angela Ibay, Climate Change information coordinator of the Manila Observatory; Filipino Inventors Society chairman Felipe Odullo and fomer chairman Ming Modanza; inventor Juan ‘Johnny’ Sombillo, and “green charcoal” inventor Gonzalo Catan Jr. |
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Political Will Needed for Environment-Friendly Industrialization
and Economic Development This
was written by Antonio
M. Claparols, leading
Filipino environment conservationist and businessman and conveyed to
the National Economic Protectionism Association (NEPA), which held
its 69th anniversary grand reunion on February 25, 2003 at
Club Filipino, Greenhills, San Juan, Metro Manila. THE
PHILIPPINES needs to have industrialization but not at at the
expense of the environment. Economic development is needed but it
has to come hand in hand with environmental conservation, to be
really productive and sustainable. Otherwise, it’s all
counterproductive. We
should have the political will to enforce sound economic policies. The
Philippines doesn’t need big industrial investments. Most such
investments have been lemons, anyway, cooked up in connivance with
international lending institutions. World Bank, International
Monetary Foreign
investors are allegedly not coming in due to the Clean Air and the
environment? Is that their concern? What about us, we are dying each
day, the poor and elderly, from foreign second-hand junk. Let’s
face it we have been a dumping ground for toxic, hazardous
waste, as well as a dumping ground for surplus products, etc. It
has often been mentioned that the poor are not getting poorer in the
provinces. This is a wrong observation, the poor are
getting poorer by the day. In every province. They don't have the
fish and the food to consume. It is all gone. There are no more fish
for the subsistence of local fishermen. Anyone coming from the
provinces would see that life is hard even there. Crime is high and
there is no food and potable water. We cannot even plant as the soil
is degraded of nutrients due to abuse of chemical, western-style
agriculture. We cannot
live on sugarcane alone, can we? We
have been overmined since the beginning of time. After we lost our
war of independence. Our mountains are out of gold, silver, copper.
And the money is not with us but out there somewhere, We need to
clean up those 200 toxic mining pits, we need a moratorium in
mining, we need to rehabilitate the sites and ancestral lands of our
indigenous peoples. No more new mines! Our biodiversity is almost
all gone. I
agree that we cannot always blame the foreign investors, we were the
ones who let them in here in the first place. We must blame
ourselves and the decision-makers that allowed the wanton systematic
rape of our country and the state of our people today. We need a
self-sufficiency strategy that is agro-industrial based without
destroying the environment and with renewed corporate
responsibility. And we can do it. For ourselves. For the next
generations. There has
been no political will to do what we need to do to alleviate the
poor, to feed our people, to give water to them at no cost to
water-only infrastructure. Lower the price of fuel and insist on
clean fuel. Get out of fossils and get into clean renewable energy
sources. It was better once upon a time. when Juan de la Cruz did
not have CNN and BBC but had food, water and clean air for their
children. We of the environment movement welcome with optimism the
revival of NEPA. We really need to pursue NEPA's advocacies for the
nation's economic salvation. They are our advocacies, too. And we
are confident that NEPA shares our concern for the environment.
Everyone has reason to be concerned. Mabuhay ang NEPA! Mabuhay ang Pilipino!
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Palawan city to be WED 2003 central sire in RP come June THE World Environment Day-Philippines Network recently announced that Puerto Princesa City in Palawan will be the central site of the “Green Families and Communities Festival” of WED2003 in the Philippines. This was announced via the environment-focused email list groups by Ed Aurelio C. Reyes, holdover chairman of the 3-year-old commemorative network, after consulting with Luis V. Torres of the United Nations Information Center office in Manila, who is WED-Philippines convenor. The decision to rotate the site nationally was made by the WED-Philippines steering committee last year. Also decided then was the transfer of the Metro Manila site to Las Piñas City, subject to the latter’s readiness.
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Fund.
Remember, History has shown us that we have been consistently abused
and exploited since time immemorial.
