Can the LGU be a Life-loving Government Unit?

POLITICIANS are said to remember the citizens, along with the latter’s worsening woes, only when they are campaigning to acquire or retain electoral posts. There is a rebuttal to this, of course, and it says the politicians in power are active throughout their terms, actively trying to recoup their invested resources in the effort to get elected, and their acts have always redounded to the further worsening of the plight of the people.

When Sen. Aquilino Pimentel, principal author of the Local Government Code of 1991, guested at this Kamayan para sa Kalikasan forum about a decade ago, we asked him what we could expect the Code to do to make government units at the scope of localities to be predisposed for environment conservation, and his answer did not give us much reason to be optimistic. He said, “The local communities must be prepared to march, to organize rallies, to demonstrate!” By this time, we have learned what the senator might have meant.
As early as 1999, Fe San Juan Hidalgo pointed out in her book Sustainable Development–Every Filipino’s Concern only the direct actions of the people, and the possibility for NGOs and POs to be accredited by the Sannguniang Bayan (municipal council) to get seats in decision-making bodies affecting environment conservation, such as: the Local Government Council (not less than 1/4 of the total membership of that body); Local Prequalification, Bids and Awards Committee (2 qualified NGO/PO members of the LDC); Local School Board; and the Local Health Board.

Although Hidalgo’s book says “NGOs and POs are active partners of the local government units, she does not say anywhere in it that here that LGUs can be predisposed to be environment-friendly and would gladly welcome NGO-PO partnership. In fact the chapter following the enumeration, aptly titled “Citizens’ Actions,” illustrates for emulation what people in the various localities had been doing to resist environmentally-destructive projects that have been getting the full support, including the often-deceitful and arm-twisting support, of local government units.

Many problems impede LGUs from being allies of the environment. These include pressures from the Palace, which has never been known to be environment-friendly. Local government units are supposed to have been given a large amount of autonomy, but many of the functions devolved to them are unfunded, as LGUs receive a measly 15 percent of the Internal Revenue Allocation (IRA), which is often delayed. Moreover there has been an observed lack of support from the national government agencies (NGAs) that have devolved functions but not funds. The LGUs are thus being blamed by their constituents for non-delivery of basic services and this drives a wedge through what should be an atmosphere of cooperation in the community for conscious owning and active stakeholdership in their collective patrimony.

Still we dream of many prototypes of LGUs of the future that would really deserve the gratitude and respect of the constituents. Sen. Pimentel and Ms. Hidalgo may have been realistic and prudent in their focus on citizen vigilance and action. But that should result in a better selection of local chief executives and members of local government councils, that would redefine LGUs as Life-loving Government Units.
LGUs are logically closer to the people and closer to Nature. Maybe local officials, as such, can be made to favor these over the pressures and veiled bribes of money-oriented national government bodies.

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  Poetic Beauty vs. Greed and Apathy

ALLOW us to wax poetic when we gush out our ecstatic exhilaration over the rugged beauty, dynamic symmetry and interactive diversity that is Nature herself. It is an endless testimonial to endless creativity and genius, glaringly clear to anyone whose eyes are open and whose mind is fully awake and present in the moment.

What would seem to be simple spots of surface of green and blue on Planet Earth when viewed from afar, actually embrace a breathtakingly lovely and variated family of flora and fauna. Thriving on the symbiotic Lifeweb, the beautifully ingenious mutual life-support system, this family lives veritably as one organism, as Earth itself apparently behaves as a single "super Plantanimal".

What can be seen from afar as green masses on the globe are three-dimensional mosaics of dark and mysterious jungles and forests where dancing shafts of sunlight filter through layers of foliage swaying in gentle breezes, of windswept prairies with their grassy blankets and pillows made of bushes, of majestic mountains reaching out to the clouds, of cradled valleys and wide open plains, of laughing brooks and rushing rivers and streams and bridal-veil waterfalls, of cool and crystalline ponds and lakes, of adventure-filled marshlands and mangroves.

These are teeming with countless throbbing and quivering, breathing and growing, crawling and flying, swimming and dancing, nursing and suckling, eating and sleeping, playing and mating flora and fauna of all colors sizes and shapes.

The glowing kaleidoscope of flowers mesmerizing not only fluttering butterflies and buzzing bees. The best of painters and photo-artists could only be humbled in attempts to capture with the blushing beauty the fragrance and fragility of these colorful children of the Sun. Roses and orchids, lilacs and lilies, even those totally unknown -- they would all, by any name, smell as sweet.

And the music, 'tis exquisite symphony -- with the gurgle of the brooks and the humming and crackling of breezeblown branches you'd hear the birds twittering, the crickets chirping, bears and lions growling, monkeys chattering, flies and bees buzzing, owls hooting, frogs croacking, snakes hissing and nightingales crooning. And don't leave out the elephants who are triumphantly trumpeting!

Manifestations of synergism abound in Nature, where every ecosystem, the complex sum of all symbiotic relationships among all species in a given area, exists and thrives in greater stability the more harmoniously interacting and interdependent species participate and the more diverse these species are.

Harmony in this sense does not imply that predators would hunt and kill their prey very gently; rather it is in the interdependence preponderant in the entire food web, in pollination processes, in seed dispersal, in umbrella canopies and carpets of grass bushes, in everything that makes a jungle a jungle.

It is all there for our appreciation and for our very survival, where any inflicted imbalance on, say, the “food chain,” is sure to produce a chain reaction of destruction that would threaten the very survival of the human race and all our close and distant cousins.

This should be glaringly clear to anyone whose eyes are open and whose mind is fully working with common sense. But vicious greed and pathetic apathy have blinded human eyes and abetted the wanton destruction of this bio-diversity. For money.

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  Medical Wastes: Still A ‘Burning Issue’

TWO YEARS minus just a day. That much time has passed since July 17, 2002, when Greenpeace led a colorful yet grim demonstration in the Department of Health compound in Manila to submit a widely-backed petition against the incineration of medical wastes. We now seek to ask—have we gone from bad to worse on this matter? Has the disposal of medical wastes remained simply a “burning issue”?

That petition, addressed to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and submitted through the DOH, was nothing to sneeze at. Calling for the phase-out of existing medical waste incinerators as required by the Clean Air Act it was endorsed by 170 groups and individuals from the Philippines and 44 other countries.

The petitioners included Balik Kalikasan, Buklod Tao Kalikasan, Caritas Manila, Greenpeace Southeast Asia, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), Mother Earth Unlimited, Health Care Without Harm (HCWH), and the National Secretariat for Social Action (NASSA) of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines.

It took issue with the 26 medical waste incinerators procured in 1996 as part of an Austrian aid package and asked DOH to undertake a critical review of the Austrian incinerator loan and work for its repudiation in the interest of public health.

The money intended for loan repayment should be used to set up non-burn waste disposal systems.

That was two years ago, and we are not intending to forget all about it. The DOH said then that the department had no funds to install alternative technologies. But it is supposed to have enough capability to monitor compliance with necessarily-stiff standards for operation of the incinerators, lest enough dioxin will get produced to contaminate the air we all breathe! All people who breathe are stakeholders here.

As Kamayan Forum on-line participant Cora Claudio of the Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication (AIJC), says: “We really need to link environment and health. The number of cancer cases and other dreaded diseases, not only infectious ones, has been increasing much. I don't need statistics to prove that because I now have at least four friends who have (cancer). I think this is due to toxic substances in our environment.”

SALIKA’s newly-elected secretary Ruvie Ann San Pablo points out that, “Toxic medical wastes are very dangerous and hazardous materials that if not properly disposed and monitored can cause serious problems and danger in the environment as well as to humans and animals. Hospital officials, environmentalists and the government health department, as well as the people, should synergize to monitor proper disposal of hospital wastes to ensure the public’s safety.

Government responsibility is underscored by SALIKA auditor George Dadivas: “Government must find and require the safest economical waste disposal, and hospitals must comply or face stiff sanctions and closure.” Claudio wonders aloud “how how hospitals treat and dispose of their medical and hospital waste now.”

We expect the hospitals to cry out for being required to shell out more for safe and reliable disposal systems, while we expect them, too, to quietly or admittedly pass on such extra costs to patients through their bills. And of course we cannot expect DOH to get more funds from the general allocation of the people’s tax money because such resources have long been reserved for priority spending like debt-repayment and military spending.

If we are to push this issue all the way to its most principled extent, we’d join SALIKA vice president Roy Alvarez in asserting that: “In nature there is no waste! Therefore, any kind of waste is against Nature. Toxic waste is a crime against Nature!”

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 ‘SALI KA!’ – to unite a wider base of stakeholders

THE name itself sounds like a call, addressed to everyone who needs enough clean air to breathe, enough clean water to drink, and enough healthy food to eat. In short, a call for all stakeholders in environmental conservation to join up and be counted.

Indeed, the various efforts for environmental conservation really need “all hands on deck.” And considering its synergism-oriented parentage, Sanib-lakas ng Inang Kalikasan is the right mechanism for issuing such a call in earnest.

As a child of SanibLakas Foundation, SALIKA is expected to shun competition or even duplication of efforts with other pro-environment groups, and to focus, instead, on helping attain a stronger synergy in the various conservation efforts.

This would entail working for a vast expansion of the “active stakeholdership mass base,” and building a sub-culture of teamwork, a “symbiosis,” among all players dynamically inter-assisting with one another. Thus, we envision seeing multitudes of SALIKA members becoming exemplary members of various environmental groups, while nurturing a deep sense of bonding all around, on the basis of the “SALIKA Core Principles.”

Such is the SALIKA that we would like to see in the years to come under its new leadership. Good luck po sa lahat!

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  Where are the Voices for the Wilderness?

The kind of media output ranges from a happy news report, with colorful photo, about the discovery of an apparently-endemic flightless bird in one of the Batanes islands, the journalists’ coverage of Task Force Macajalar members barricading against logging trucks, to National Geographic’s regular presentation of every facet of nature the world over. One effect of awareness-raising would be environment-friendly behavior among ever larger groups of people. Thus will arise a green universe of green consensus, preferring green products turned out by green producers and corporations using greeen “ecotechnologies.” This awareness should have come around much earlier, before such great damage could be inflicted on the environment!

Kamayan para sa Kalikasan has much reason to cite in its regular session today on “Truth, Media and the Environment” such long-running radio programs as the weekly Radyo Kalikasan on dwBL, and the daily Kalikasan Vigilante on dzBR, and the Global Family weekly television show on IBC-13, and the community-oriented Balik-Kalikasan. Some years back there was also the weekly Para sa Inang Kalikasan over dwBL. And we view with pleasant anticipation the impact of current efforts to actively involve campus journalists in environmental advocacy. Youthful media practitioners still steeped in the ideals of responsible journalism (not to be mistaken as “playing-safe” journalism) and campus press having been free of environment-unfriendly advertisers.

We also welcome the project of Haribon Foundation, holding a regular environmental forum the day before our very own Kamayan para sa Kalikasan forum every month since about half a year ago. The sets of people attending these fora may indeed be overlapping, but are not identical, therefore proving that together these are reaching more and more people. We would like to see more such regular fora in more cities of the country in the near future. Immediately the green communities across the archipelago are closely linked up, on-line, by email list groups such as the im_green yahoogroup, the Philippines_susdevwatch yahoogroup, and the kamayanforum yahoogroup. These are all vital communication mechanisms for spreading environmental information and education.

But the bigger reach of commercial print and broadcast media still needs “greening,” as the Environmental Broadcast Circle and CLEAR (Communicators’ League for Environmental Action and Restoration) would like it to be. And this has to happen amid an atmosphere of overcommercialized mass media.

Let’s consider this commentary from a member of kamayanforum email list group:

“When you asked the question: ‘Are we being given accurate and adequate information about the environment,’ by media, the answer is definitely ‘No!’ because the media exist not to inform ‘fully, adequately and accurately’ but to make money. It cannot devote much space (or broadcast time) to the subject of environment because to do so will not make money for the media owners. Media exist not because the owners want to promote the cause of the environment, but to make money from advertisers. Thus, while some media devote column inches of print or minutes of broadcast time to environmental matters. they limit such exposures. It is in that limiting that ‘adequacy and accuracy’ are sacrificed. Not only must it sell advertisements, it must sell circulation.”

That last sentence is a telling one. The first part speaks of advertising revenue on which the commercial media survive, but the second part implies that the people have not developed the taste for environment-friendly media fare. This runs into the vicious cycle we also find to explain the dearth of quality in local movies. But the big difference here is that we can all go without good locally-produced entertainment but without effective environmental awareness all out lives hang in peril!

So, we do all that we can on all fronts – educating the people, and those who aspire to lead them, using all the tools we have developed in sharing vital information and education materials among ourselves and with the broader public, gathering the numbers of aware and active children of the earth to reach, through synergy, a certain critical mass. After that, all self-respecting media entities and all communicators would al carry the green message, for translating into environmental awareness and green behavior.

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  Government Does Not Own Our Patrimony!

THE RECENT Sierra Madre tragedy that devastated the towns of Infanta, Real, Nakar, Dinggalan and Umiray in Quezon province was not just a natural calamity. It was more of a heinous crime riding on nature’s periodic display of fury. The mudflow, with its avalanche of logs was due to human acts. The culpability can neither be diminished nor denied. The tragedy recalls the Ormoc incident 10 years ago, with the scale of devastation increased many times over.

The recurrence of this tragedy in an even much larger scale is certain if not even imminent, given the arrogance of the culprits and the gloating of government about the imagined benefits from the resumption of mining in a hundred or more sites. The predators’ acts are inviting a round of worse tragedies.

Yet another type of tragedy occurs alongside the loss of lives and property. For the natural forest cover is essential for the integrity of the ecosystem which supports all life. Clean air, adequate water, fertile soil and the coral reefs all depend on sufficient forest cover.

If the predators and government are to have their way, it will not take much time for the remaining forest cover to disappear, and the life support system to deteriorate. There is therefore a prior deprivation of the majority of the common means of living. The patrimony and birthright of the people to a safe environment and a healthy life-support system belongs to all. But this is now being stolen by a few, a clearly unjust reality.

The situation is so bad and seemingly hopeless. To the terror and anguish that the tragedy brought on are added the anger and recrimination, cynicism and frustration; and now he fear of impending catastrophe. The avalanche of negative energies will be like mudflow carrying a rampage of unrighteous acts that will bring about harsher tragedies. We must stop the fear and sense of hopelessness and replace them with “lakas ng loob” to face up to the giant predators.

But on what can we base our “lakas ng loob’? From where do we draw our hope? From the knowledge that the life support system is the patrimony of all, we must summon the strength to claim our birthright and defend the watersheds and the last remaining forest cover. From the realization that the long-term benefits from not logging and not mining at this time is greater and will be shared by all.

We must thus reject the deception being foisted upon us by official policy.

Upon a firm conviction that neither a few nor any administration can rightfully usurp and monopolize gains from our collective patrimony, and even sell out to foreign interests, we must put up a strong nationwide grassroots-based resistance in order to win hope and relief now for ourselves and for future generations. We have to overcome our fear and dispel our despair, while demanding that the predators admit guilt and give recompense for decimated lives and livelihood. And with passionate determination needed for sustained efforts, we all must find ways to make concrete our claim to our patrimony and ways to pay our debts to the coming generations. Let us do all these, motivated by the great national purpose: to ensure well-being (kaginhawahan) for all.

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  Natural Health and Healing: Return to Nature!

AN EXCITING new approach to health and healing – natural health and healing – is gaining adherents with the many beneficial results it continues to achieve, at times bordering on the “miraculous”. Based upon millennia-old traditions of health care and validated by the latest findings of modern science, including such newly emergent fields as psychoneuroimmunology, this new approach presents a radical departure from the conventional framework of mainstream medical and health practice, and alters the way medicine is approached

Although natural health and healing provides a range of options for health care that may even be applied complementary to modern medicine, at its core is a return to nature – making full use of the human being’s natural capacity for self-healing, long neglected by medicine, as well as the vast resources and energies nature offers to attain and maintain health. So, as much as possible, natural healing avoids highly intrusive interventions that obtrude upon and drastically interfere with the natural workings and subtle energy flows of the human system, or that cause the natural functioning of the body’s systems to atrophy from long disuse and foster permanent dependence on synthetic preparations.

Natural health and healing techniques often require greatly reduced expenditure since many of the healing energies provided by nature are free or come cheaply, such as those coming from sunlight, water, and fresh air. While conventional medicine treats diseases with the same healing regimen for all persons having similar symptoms, natural health and healing seeks to heal patients as unique and complex individuals.

Gradually, the medical profession is relearning that we cannot understand disease unless we understand the persons afflicted with the disease. This includes knowing and understanding the circumstances of their lives, and their psycho-emotional profiles and background, and on this basis, finding their unique paths towards health and healing. Medicine then ceases to be a mechanistic specialty and is transformed into a special calling that requires compassion and depth of understanding of the whole person.

In this new paradigm, patients are no longer viewed as unquestioning subjects for passive treatment by medical experts and authorities but as active participants sharing responsibility for their own healing on the basis of informed choice.

Conventional medicine tries to cure the sickness as this already manifests physically. But natural health and healing tries to attain and maintain health and wellness and prevent any ailment. Its focuses on preventing sickness by bolstering the immune system and resorting to practices and states of mind conducive to health and vitality, such as nutritious food and cleansing diet, meditation techniques that foster inner harmony, music and art that massage the soul, adequate rest and sleep, sanitation, and exercise. Attention is turned away from disease and death, towards health and life.

All major religions and philosophical systems are one in teaching that human beings are multidimensional, consisting not only of physical, but also of emotional, mental, psychic, and spiritual dimensions. Many effects and symptoms, therefore, that manifest in the grossest physical or material dimension, have their origin in some deeper dimension or higher, subtler sphere. The same is true with sickness and disease.

Hence, health is now defined (in the global context, by such UN agencies as the World Health Organization) in a comprehensive and holistic way, in terms of physical, physiological, mental, psychological, emotional, and spiritual well-being. This coincides with the current multi-dimensional approach to intelligence: multiple intelligences include not just the conventional components of Intelligence Quotient (I.Q.) of analytical/mathematical intelligence and verbal/linguistic intelligence, but also other intelligences such as body-kinesthetic, spatial/artistic, musical, interpersonal/social, intrapersonal/self-knowledge and self-mastery, naturalistic/environmental, and psychic/spiritual/cosmic. While conventional medicine concerns itself mostly with the physical manifestations of disease which are but effects and symptoms, natural health and healing seeks to look deeper into the deeper causes of disease as these are rooted in the human psyche.

As early as the fourth century B.C., Greek philosopher Aristotle, said: “A change in the state of the soul produces a change in the state of the body.” This upholds what mystics have been saying throughout the ages: that most diseases of the physical body have their roots in the human consciousness: the mind and the inner soul. Now, thousands of years later, this principle is at the core of a radical new approach to the study of human disease, which explores the body-mind-spirit connection and the power of mind over matter.

For a long time, conventional medicine sought only physical explanations for human disease. Much has thus been achieved in studies on: bacteria and viruses that invade the body; biochemical malfunctions in the body systems; chemical toxins that poison the body; the effect of environmental factors such as pollution; the influence of genetics in such congenital diseases as hemophilia; the role of diet, food, and nutrients in human health; and many other useful findings. While adding much to the fund of human knowledge, these studies explained human diseases only in physical terms. Researchers are now studying the relationships among consciousness, psycho-social factors, attitudinal healing, the immune function, contribution of lifestyle and emotions to health, and the relation of illness to stress. Science now documents how feelings can create chemical changes in our body.

In health and healing, as in all life, self-knowledge and self-mastery are of crucial importance. In much the same way that we can control and shape our destiny by our actions today and at each moment, so also can we do much to control and improve our health and well-being.

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  New Modern Cities will be Green Cities!

BRISK business and amenities of convenience generally characterize popular expectations of a modern city. The more modern the city, the volume or degree of each or both of these is expected to soar and so would the regular urbanites’ sense of pride in their metropolitan habitat. But there is one big drawback which has long dawned on the residents of many a modern city and should be fully addressed by urban planners – city living has become hazardous to our health. And we are realizing that if this is the trend of modernity, it’s not really worth aspiring for.

The reasons should have been obvious from the very outset. Brisk business can make the wallets healthy but not our bodies or even our minds. When increased income or even just the increased monetary value of total transactions becomes the primary concern, the mind is increasingly stressed with the obsession to make more and more profit for every measurable stretch of time, and the body is assaulted with all sorts of pollutants from products and by-products of industry and commerce.

This is compounded by the culture of convenience, where many people increasingly avoid “time-wasting” physical exertions like basic walking, eat in a hurry all that preservatives-laced packaged foodstuffs, and have little or no time for washing dishes and utensils or for proper segregation and disposal of wastes. Result: a weakened, even sickly, populace alienated from nature and living among growing mountain heaps of garbage.

A radical reorientation in our concept of cities is coming. More people, including urban planners are sure to see more and more clearly convenient amenities and brisk business can be maintained within mindsets that enjoy more sustainable benefits, better personal and environmental health and basic sanity.

Here are some points of sanity that city planners and lawmakers ought to take into serious consideration:

1. Trees everywhere. The function of many trees breathing closely together is as basic as the provision of electrical services, water supply, and phone lines. Cut them down, to give way to buildings and highways, and you actually cut down the average life expectancy of your city dwellers.

2. Green grassy open spaces with moving water. Let’s face this fact: as buildings are being constructed for people who work to keep alive their home economies and the city’s economies, the quality of human thinking and labor is enhanced by perpetual proximity to the gifts of nature as basic as adequate sunshine, breezes with room to gather and blow, grasses and shrubs to relax our eyes, flowing water to cool the air and provide us with flowing music.

3. Clean and healthy technologies for production and transportation. Vested interests in perpetuating technologies dependent on fossil fuels will be convinced or forced by an enlightened populace to adopt less lucrative but definitely better technologies for real living.

Humans learn. With real modernity will surely come wisdom!

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  Defensor’s Indefensible Act 

MIKE Defensor’s sudden turnaround on Subic is simply indefensible. Although the issue at hand pertains to whales and dolphins – which many people, ironically including some environmentalists do not consider to be an urgent ecological concern – the implication of this very recent act of the “Palace Boy Wonder” is too broad an interest to ignore – it puts in real jeopardy the entire Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) system and even expresses contempt for the court’s jurisdiction over the “auto¬no¬mous economic enclave” that is the Subic Freeport Zone under the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA).

In a sudden reversal of its position, the DENR lifted earlier this month its week-old Cease and Desist Order (CDO) for the Ocean Adventure Park in Subic even before it had been enforced.

We join the Earth Island Institute-Philippines and other organizations in challenging the reasoning behind the DENR’s action. The Court of Appeals ruled that operating without an ECC is a violation of the law and the DENR was right to issue a CDO in 2001. Given the DENR’s reversal of its very own CDO, it risks being cited in contempt of court, together with Ocean Adventure, and the SBMA which is now coddling the marine park.
More importantly, the DENR’s move to lift the CDO on Ocean Adventure, and allow it to operate without an ECC, goes against the spirit of the

Environmental Impact Statement Process. This distortion of the law would now allow environmentally critical projects to operate without an ECC, and not be in fear of being penalized.

EMB Region III Director Lormelyn Claudio’s statements that they do not think that the project poses any threat to the environment seem to be alluding to the fact that an ECC for Ocean Adventure is ‘done-deal’. This, even though many technical, environmental, and animal welfare issues have been hounding the facility for years.

The DENR’s reversal order poses a clear and present danger for the Philippine environment. For this reason, the largest and most active environmental groups and animal welfare organizations including Philippine Animal Welfare Society (PAWS), Tanggol Kalikasan, Compassion and Responsibility for Animals (CARA), Bangon Kalikasan Movement, Sanib-lakas ng Inang Kalikasan (SALIKA), Center for Environmental Concerns (CEC-Phils), and Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment (KPNE) denounce this latest threat to the environment and will do all we can to stop Ocean Adventure and similar outfits from operating in the country.

Defensor might be thinking that he could pull a fast one on the whales and their advocates, but environmentalists know very well that all these issues are interrelated. And his overall ineptitude at the helm of the DENR has been too glaring to miss.

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  Tell Us It Won’t Be So… and Be Credible!

WHEN then President Fidel V. Ramos was first promoting a Charter Change process during his term, the people were instantly unwilling to go along, sensing a term-extension agenda on the part of “General Tabako.” He tried lamely to convince everyone that all he wanted was to change economic provisions and not alter political arrangements. The logic was that such “economic reform” agenda, to support his “Philippines 2000 dream for the country to become an instant NIC (newly-industrialized country), was less dangerous than a term extension for Ramos.

Not everyone swallowed that line of thinking. At least, we didn’t. We still don’t. We believed then, as we still believe now, that opening the Constitution for any tinkering, even if not really focused on the economic provisions, and much especially if the focus is really on them, would leave our people and the next generations of Filipinos literally squatters on our own homeland, devoid of land for production and residence, and devastatingly marginalized to be mere buyers of dumped foreign goods and mere slavish workers owned by foreign big businesses and tycoons.

There will be those, especially some members of the Presidential Consultative Commission on Constitutional Change, who would seek to disabuse us of such anxieties. They will try to say, “No, it won’t be so!” Those who naively think they can consequentially oppose provisions that would lead us to the grim scenarios overestimate their significance. Their problem is that they won’t be credible, much less truthful, when they make that claim on the basis of such wishful thinking. It is only the current wielder of Presidential authority that gives these Constitution drafters their mandate, and she has consistently been among the most enthusiastic and most loyal supporters here of the neo-liberal economic paradigm of Globalized Greed and Free Trade that has caused our worst economic crisis ever. And the stern “requests” thrown her way by foreign trading partners and investors have demanded the removal of all legal, even Constitutional, obstacles and “inconveniences” on their free conduct of all sorts of businesses here. For example, a Constitutional provision caused the Supreme Court to invalidate for almost a year the Mining Act of 1995, and the same High Tribunal had to awkwardly reverse itself on its earlier judgment of unconstitutionality without centering this reversal on Constitutional grounds but only on economic reasons. If that provision and similar ones in our current fundamental law were not there in the first place, there would not have been any obstacle, any “inconvenient” hindrance to the full and immediate takeover of our country by foreign business.

If the Philippines is to continue having a Constitution at all, this would not be allowed to inconvenience the foreign traders and investors in any way just to protect the survival interests of Filipinos, the largest minority group of Philippine society.

If the members should bother to try and assuage our real worries on this, their problem would really be one of credibility. While some of the members may rightfully claim to have had honorable and even nationalist track records in the past, some of their colleagues in that body, including leaders of crucial committees, cannot even think of making such claim. The chair of the National Economy and Patrimony Committee, Vicente Paterno, cannot rightfully claim to be an advocate of the Filipino people’s interests, having effectively blocked the Philippine industrialization program of about three decades ago, when he was chairman of the Board of Investments, pleasing only the IMF, World Bank and the Japanese big business and government.

This challenge we now issue to the Commission: Don’t just tell us we’re wrong, prove to us and to everyone else that we’re wrong. And we call upon the Filipino people not to sleepwalk through this process that will soon turn us into full-fledged slaves.

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  Christmas Spirit and Deep Ecology 

CHRISTMAS, as indicated by its very name, is supposed to be centered on Jesus Christ, Son of God who had a very humble birth in a manger in Bethlehem. Contemporary commercialism has succeeded in overprojecting the image of a North Pole-based toymaker and gift-giver, named Santa Claus, to rival that of the “Baby in swaddling clothes,” and has even promoted “X-mas” as an alternative name for the season. Yet that Babe in the Manger has stood His ground, so to speak, among a great many of us, and finding no room in the inns, He found much caring room in our hearts.

The value of the event to the entire Christendom, nay to the Human race itself, largely emanates from our consciousness that three decades later, this God-man would figure in Lent-commemorated events that culminate in an Easter Resurrection, thus saving Humankind from the effects of original sin, or so says the Good Book.

We have insights to add that would be very appropriate to say in an environment-oriented publication like the Kamayan Forum Journal. In the few years that Jesus lived a well-documented public life, He articulated through deeds and parables, as well as in direct explanations made to His disciples, the Christ Consciousness, the profound and living awareness of the Seamless Oneness of All.

To the best of our understanding, our redemption comes from partaking of this all-loving Christ Consciousness and living our own lives accordingly. Christ Consciousness, as lived by that “certified human,” the person that was Jesus, with His Christhood, was what He was referring to as the Way, the Truth and the Life. He said to the apostles before leaving them: “Love one another as I have loved you.”

Now, we all know that “duty loving” does not really make for truly loving. So we can only truly love one another not out of simple obedience to His “Prime Directive” but out of deeply discerning the very basis for such real love to be felt and offered without any effort—because we are all one!

In fact, all good that is done by humans on other humans reflect a certain degree of that recognition of the Oneness of All. Conversely, all evil deeds committed by humans, reflect a certain narrowness of view, a separation of self from others and perceiving only the perpetrators’ own individual self and its narrow extensions – like own family, own clan, own tribe, own religion, own political or ideological party, own race, own gender, etc. etc. – as deserving of respect and actualization, thus justifying the marginalization or even outright annihilation of all others.

We may not be very conscious about this, but the homo sapiens species has not only been committing slow-motion suicide by practices that destroy the natural environment, we have also been practicing human chauvinism, our species is terroristically attacking the rest of the life-forms of this planet! We have been treating our fellow Earthians as mere servants of human need and human greed. Thinking only of ourselves, we forget that all of the rest of the Web of Life have the right to be here. No less than the humans, the trees and the stars have a right to be here! And we should add that everything that we breathe and eat comes from other organisms, ultimately from leaves!

While humans may have indeed been given dominion over all other creatures on the planet, such dominion can be invoked only by humans who are really conscious of having been created in the image and likeness of the Creator, and are living accordingly. Such people would respectfully and responsibly steward, not mismanage, much less destroy, God’s Creation. Now, how well can a manager manage if he thinks only of his own narrow interests?

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  Active Stakeholdership is key to solve environment problems

THE COLIFORM, plastic and oil pollution of Manila Bay, the decimation of its mangrove forests, coral reefs and sea grass, and consequently, of its swimming marine fauna, has been festering as it has been worsening. This problem has not been alone in its plight, either. Forest denudation and its consequent soil erosion and desertification, chemical pollution in the soil and the river systems, poor implementation of solid and liquid waste management systems are all also worsening at their own disturbing rates and save for air pollution, all other environment problems are on land and they all flow to the sea. They all contribute to the problems of Manila Bay and similar bodies of water all along the long, long coastlines of our archipelago.

Part of the problem lies in the government's criminal irresponsibility, like the forcible dumping of garbage in the shores of Malabon or atop a mountain (!) in Occidental Mindoro. Wanton violation of the Clean Air Act, for example, is in emission-testing systems that allow owners to leave their vehicles alone and present instead their wallets with paper bills that guarantee the issuance of certificates of compliance with emission limits. Then we have the issuance, left and right, of FTA's, TLA's and ECC's not according to any relevant merit but according to under-the-table considerations.

But part of the problem lies in us, the people ourselves, with our preoccupation with a strange god called "convenience." Instead of strictly following the environmental laws, it is temptingly convenient to go around it and get what wo want by the easily bribable officials, contributing our own bribes to their earlier corruption. We tend to look the other way when even a child throws a candy wrapper on the street or when our own neighbors or household helpers burn trash, including plastics and styrofoam, right on the road, in violation of the Clean Air Act. We consider it an option to do the same when the garbage truck comes a few days late. Many of us abhor segregating our waste, and waste the entire caboodle in the process, and blame the government's garbage collection system for our stinking homes and neighborhoods. It's convenient to throw them all together, the dry with the wet, the biodegradable with the non-biodegradable, the hazardous with the benign. We know well that we are paying for the convenience with perils and real menaces to our health and that of our loved-ones, but we can't seem to let go of our love for convenience.
How come environmentally destructive packaging thrives in big numbers and end up mounting on landfills and clogging our waterways to cause septic flooding? Because we enjoy buying foods and goods in these convenient packaging!

We do have all the big and valid reasons for blaming government officials, agencies and instrumentalities for much of our woes. But we cannot consider it really valid to rest contented with just blaming them instead of moving to protect and preserve what we have the legitimate right to protect and self-preservational need to protect and preserve. When our house is on fire, we won't wait for the firemen to come before trying to control the fire ourselves. It is not a matter of having someone or some entity to blame for allowing our house to be fully burned, we simply refuse to be confronted with a burnt house! The Philippine environment is our house on fire. Whatever the firemen do or do not do, we the direct stakeholders in the conservation of that house have to move water buckets and wet blankets immediately and with determination, although it is convenient to just wait for those who have adequate equipment, for those who are duty-bound to do it as paid by our tax money, and then blame them later for our totally burned house. We have to be willing to move out of our convenient comfort zones to save our home. The Philippine environment as a burning home deserve our quick and resolute collective response, although it burns much slower.

Part of our feeling of alienation from our common resources as a nation is that the government has arrogated unto itself control of these as if it were government-owned. Part of our resistance to that claim of government ownership of our commons is dignifying it with passivity and resignation and a little bit of spiteful mischief. This is akin to despoiling our own house after hearing it being claimed by the neighborhood bullies. It is akin to contributing to the further degradation of Manla Bay by turning it into our collective toilet, the biggest one in the world!

What needs to be flushed down the bowl into the septic tank is our attachment to convenience-- the convenience of abdication and passivity as stakeholders, the convenience of waiting for government to move in, expecting to blame it completely after our house completely burns down, and even willing to be homeless as long as we can blame someone else for it.

Let us also throw out the convenient habit of completely ignoring editorials like this one, half-consciously skimming through its paragraphs while talking with other people about totally unrelated topics.

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