Deep-seated ‘Green Lifestyle’ is for All Who are Really, Deeply, Ready for It!

THE “GREEN LIFESTYLE” is for everyone who is ready for it. Are you among them? Are we? You’d be surprised that most of us still need to be reminded of its complete basics, especially the part that usually gets discussed the least: the Inconvenient Truth about the deepest of the basics: the oneness of all life on Earth, called the “Gaia Phenomenon,” where the planet itself is behaving, according to scientists, like one single organism. All plants and animals together are dynamically interdependent as part of the greater Oneness of All. Without full consciousness of this, the Green Lifestyle is in danger of fizzling out like the hollow fads that Humanity once had.

Well, we all feel we know a thing or two about Green Lifestyle, especially the details of what the “in” things have come to be when it comes down to a thousand things, from capsulized herbs and other health foods, to fashion statements, and the drive to reduce, recycle and reuse solid wastes, to nature-friendly houses and malls and ecologically-sound urban planning and industries.
Some other people are keeping in mind just a few basics, like the predisposition to seek and enjoy harmony with the rest of nature. The Prime Directive they would live by runs something like this: “Thou shalt seek to live a healthy life within healthy living quarters.”
Healthy Living would mean having healthy minds and bodies, with very little or none at all of any remedial or artificial food, with body organs functioning fully with total ease, in contrast to dis-ease. And Healthy Living Quarters would mean having residences and work areas that are looking very vibrant with life precisely because they are really alive, in contrast to the drab “sophistication” of glass, concrete and metal that are all beautifully dead.

Harmony with Nature is nurturing and enjoying our life companions that keep us alive as we seek to keep them alive, in a throbbing web of living interdependence (which we call “symbiosis”). One who is imbued with this sense of harmony with Nature would keep flowering plants alive by enjoying more the sight of flowers rooted alive in nutritious soil than cut flowers that look good in vases after they had been sentenced to die and have actually started dying. One with this sense would never kill plants and animals for whimsical pleasure, not support the enterprise of those who have made a killing many times on such business of killing.

Green Lifestyles, to be sustainable, ought to be deeply rooted in real inner-core character of people claiming to live such lifestyles. Are we included among those qualified to live the Green Lifestyle well beyond being just an influence of the on-again off-again fads?

Let each answer these questions as honestly as personal integrity can make us answer them: Am I more wholesome and appreciative than cynical and destructive? Am I ready to lift my fingers, hands and arms to be of help to my fellow-humans in facing social or even personal problems or am I always ready to offer excuses to dodge responsibility and extra work at every opportunity? Am I true and fair to myself and to my dealings with our fellow-humans?

The Green Lifestyle is for all. It is for the sake and benefit of everyone – the unconscious stakeholders, the conscious but inactive stakeholders, and the conscious and active stakeholders. All consumers are stakeholders in effective environmental conservation, but most are unaware of this, and a big number of those who are aware but prefer to be inactive, prefer to be mere spectators in the crucial struggles precariously approaching the point where environmental destruction becomes absolutely unstoppable due to its momentum.

Cooperatives, by their essence, ought to be teaching everyone else about the imperatives and dynamics of synergism for common interests, like the survival of the human race and of life itself in this planet obviously is. But the cooperatives, still largely ignorant of its synergetic essence, are still unable to perform on this role of social responsibility, many are even unable to even just succeed and survive as cooperatives.

Unfortunately, the people who are really ready for the Green Lifestyle are not ready to consistently dignify and promote it in word and deed upon the essential truths that it carries, to motivate and enable many more people to adopt it and help promote it as well. This implies extra work for the people who get to see the light of wisdom much earlier than others could.

The Green Lifestyle needs and deserves to be vigorously promoted, preferably by good example among many other people. After all, the Green Lifestyle is supposed to be lived together, to be lived in Green Communities. It will later be well-known as the norm in the consistent will, mind-set, and behavior of substantially-evolved humans.

back to list

  Marianette’s Suicide and Our Own Awakening…

WITH SO MUCH corruption swamping us, administration after administration, and lately worsening, we cannot help but have this sinking feeling. Automatic appropriation for our huge foreign debt, like a millstone tied to our collective neck, is making sure we keep sinking…. sinking…. s.i.n.k.i.n.g……

We have been properly warned by friends that the DEBT is a TRAP to enslave the willing. We need to borrow again and again to be able to pay part of our debt. And lately there has just been a new offer. Wow! How kind of them! Let us further be reminded that our leaders borrowed for the most harmful and useless things which now we know add to endangering life in this planet. The mothballed nuclear plant, coal-fired plants, incinerators. They ordered for gas chambers of the global kind. And now we face the consequences in global warming. Yet again, we see our remaining forests, protected areas and bio-diversity sacrificed to mining which the government justifies because we need to raise dollars for our debt obligation…. but of course we know better. To pay, yes. But also to have more cash for our officials to steal.

Automatic appropriation gives government the semblance of being honorable (a good payer front) while it goes about its most important business: borrow-to-steal. All that money callously wasted. Add to that all the money brazenly stolen; all the money thrown around recklessly, gleefully, while millions of Filipinos are needlessly driven to extreme hunger and poverty.
Quietly, little Marianette Amper hangs (herself).

Did we have a hand in her decision??? We can speculate that upscaling our anti-mining protest will somehow delay the stealing frenzy. We can speculate that if we could recover some of the ill gotten wealth from every administration since Marcos, we would have enough to immediately reduce hunger and poverty. We, the people, could try and renegotiate our Debt so it can be converted into asset instead of liability, and we would have resource for all-out development. But all that may just be an illusion. For we know that sinking feeling is partly because we have slowly lost our inner resolve. We have somehow surrendered and accepted a slow-motion suicide. The sinking feeling (suicidal, suicidal!) has weakened us in our innermost being, and chipped away at our moral sensibility and sense of rage and dignity. When they take a coffee break, we are grateful to our torturers. Even if we could have all that money, how do we know it will be properly used this time? And even if it were directly made available to communities and not through our politicians, will things be any different?

For we have come to the point that it is not the government that we need to change. We need to save us from ourselves. For haven’t we become much like Vaclav Havel’s Czechoslovakia?: “the people see nothing wrong about lying to a government that lies to them; see nothing wrong about cheating a government that cheats on them; see nothing wrong in stealing from a government that steals from them.”

The first task is clear. We must, as a people, rooted in our communities, recover the sense of fairness and caring (gandang-loob), and our inner resolve (lakas-loob). Restore our bayanihan spontaneity learned from our balanghai experience. Reclaim reciprocal valuing (tangkilikan) to truly stand for, count on, and be for, one another (para sa isa’t isa). In our respective communities, let us take on the responsibility and act to reduce hunger and poverty, simultaneously doing what we must to contribute to slowing down global warming. Let us design our strategies so they have maximum impact on both goals. Only then can we hope that a new political culture and social order will come to life from the grassroots. Then will the sinking feeling be reversed, the millstone turned into a lifevest.

Recharged and renewed in our kalooban from within our primary balanghai lifeboats, we can take on in solidarity, as homeland and global Filipino community--all the demons of our past, future and present: the colonial baggage, the burden of enslaving Debt, a predator political class with its politics of plunder, a tempting terrorist state, another petty dictator ready to pounce, any other preening heir of the Prince of Lies.
Suffer the little children to play and laugh!!! (Please?)

back to list

  The Greatest Gift

THE ALARM has been sounded. We have a global emergency! Every hand is needed to heal Mother Earth and our self-punishing, un- healthy world order.

In our country, we face another layer of emergency--in our political system. Just as more global warming will bring climate disasters, more of corrupt governance will bring about social collapse: unrelieved inequalities will continue to fuel political instability, which will stymie efforts at sustainable development.

On both emergencies, the cause is clear: the enemy is us. The solution clearly has to come from us, has to be in us. And it is not as if we are clueless. “God so loved the world, He gave His only beloved Son….” with the expectation that we learn to value our humanity and the admonition that we value one-another. The greatest gift, therefore, is the giving of ourselves to one another in synergy with the self-giving of God the Father in His Son.

The solution is in our hands, but only if it is in our hearts.

To remind us of this wisdom, we have only to look at the gifts of the three wise men from the East. Gold, incense and mhyrr.

GOLD points to provident abundance and the en¬sured to sharing by all. Inclusive development, and not just for the corrupt few. KASAGANAHAN ng lahat!

INCENSE points to raising the spirit to communion in the Spirit. To human harmony and peace. Inclusive, lasting peace, not merely mutual deterrence achieved by planning for mutually assured destruction. KATIWASAYAN ng lahat!

MHYRR, (an aromatic oil) points to broken bodies, broken spirit, broken relationships needing to be mended; to shattered lives, fragmenting societies, a battered earth needing to be healed. Inclusive healing, relief and restoring for the well¬-being of all. KAGINHAWAHAN ng lahat!

There are many ways of gifting ourselves and one another with the Magi gifts. And they can come in a 3-in-1 package. Like organic or green lifestyle. It gifts us with well-being (ginhawa), energy, spirit and joy in oneness (tiwasay); abundance shared and enjoyed by all (sagana).

Another would be our communal response to curb global warming. Yet another will be our coming together to create a tangkilikan social order for the Filipino national community and the world.

Mabuhay ang parating na Liwanag!

Joy to the World!

back to list

  Communities’ Climate Change Accountability

THE BALI CONFERENCE on climate change in December of 2007 put out the report of the United Nations scientists’ panel on the issue. It’s disturbing.

The report established the following facts: (1) climate change, with its attendant disasters, is now scientifically established; henceforth there will no longer be any debate about its reality. Urgent action is the only appropriate response. (2) climate change has been caused by the cumulative human action of industrial development and profligate consumption, carried out in utter disregard of the damage to environment; (3) some of the changes caused by man will trigger other changes in nature’s processes, thus intensifying and accelerating climate disasters; (4) we only have 10 years to try and slow down the human causes of climate change, and mitigate the disasters a little.

If these are the facts, one uncertain factor remains: whether the negotiations among nations are successfully hammered out and all the concerned nations do what is expected of them, considering the UN agreements remain “non-binding on governments”. Should, for some selfish reasons, some nations refuse to heed the call for unified action, (and this remains a possibility), then we must prepare ourselves to face the inevitable virulence of the coming climate disasters.

But there is little consolation in having to merely adapt and put in as much heroism to cope with and survive the disasters. The urgent challenge then is for the people of every nation to convince their respective government to concede to a common solution and take responsibility according to the degree of harm each nation contributes, and to make the proper restitution. This would be the greater achievement for all humanity, as it would bring the nations to act on one another’s behalf. After all, aren’t we all one?

And if this should come about, perhaps in the not too distant future the possibility finding solutions to the conflict among nations may have a better chance. We can no longer undo the damage done to the environment in the past; we can only decide to mend our ways. But we all know that the past profligacy did not do damage only to the environment. It created mass poverty across all the underdeveloped nations, and even in areas of developed nations. And so we have this other challenge to face: reducing the inequalities and the incidence of extreme hunger and poverty.

Since the same root cause produced both climate change and mass poverty, it may not be too much to ask that the strategies for restitution also simultaneously bring about some remedy to these two consequences.

If nations agree on protecting the remaining forests of the world, hopefully they will also agree on strategies for inclusive development that ensures to the poor real access to opportunities, rather than simply awaiting the tickle down effect promised by past strategies.

In the case of the Philippines, we used to be the most forested country among the ASEAN. Today we have less than 5% forest cover and logging is allowed to continue. And mining has been allowed close to or right inside protected areas. This clearly borders on insanity in the face of sure climate disasters, and the fact that in 2007 we were the most affected. We not only need to help mitigate climate change; we need a serious disaster preparedness capability. But this would first have to happen at the community level. That we learn to know how much is enough, and how we can act on one another’s behalf, not having to fear anytime, because we have the support of neighbors, such that in the face of disaster we are able to count on concerted neighborhood action.

What we can do along mitigating climate change we have to do as communities. We need to become sustainable communities with sustainable economies to be able to triumph over climate disasters. In what we must do to get government to seriously take the necessary steps we can succeed only if we do so as communities.

Hopefully, the climate challenge drives us to value life and nature more; and beyond that, to reciprocal valuing of one another towards cohering into community. Community wherein people accept accountability for action on climate change, accountability for sustainable development that diminishes inequalities and political instability. Where we accept accountability for everyone, to the last person, especially the poorest.

Simply and inclusively, accept accountability for one another. Our reward for facing the disasters on behalf of one another will be the forming of communities coming together into a union of self-sustaining communities, in place of the brokenness we now endure.
In the coming months of the Kamayan para sa Kalikasan forum we shall try to outline together our community accountabilities for acting on climate change as well as on our collective desire for a better Philippines.

back to list

  Greed and the Common Good

WE ENDED our last issue’s editorial with the promise that we would spell out our community accountabilities on climate change in the context of the hope we hold for a better Philippines. We have this – stakeholdership and community power -- as the underlying motif to whatever specific topic the Kamayan para sa Kalikasan environmental forum zeroes in each month.

The causes of global warming point to human activities much of which is spurred by greed for profit at the expense and abuse of the environment. Lately, the Filipino people have been bombarded with more revelations of corruption and unbridled greed. If greed remains unmoderated much longer, is there hope for climate change mitigation and adaptation programs to be effective?

Responding to the challenge of climate change is clearly for the common good. But it would be a clear mistake to think, even just for a moment, that an effective government-response would prevail over the speculation for commissions from projects on climate mitigation and adaptation. Just as we worry about how our politicians put our country up for sale to foreign interests, where they make sure they are partners, or extract fat commissions, we should worry about the people’s or communities’ still undeveloped capacity to assert collectively what is really for the common good.

The bishops have pointed out the root of our national malaise in the placing of selfish interests before the common good; the sacrifice of the common good to the interests of a few. But there is no way that the greedy will give way to the common good. The people and their communities have to claim what is best for them; and only such act would lead to achieving the common good.

Clearly, the mechanisms for community assertion need first to be in place before we can hope to have public decisions that serve the common good and the national interest.

The climate change issue provides us with the opportunity to act together in our communities. It gives us the chance to set up the mechanisms for addressing the pressing problems of climate change, extreme hunger, poverty and unemployment. With every community (barangay or municipality/city) working on ensuring the common good, we can create the counterforce that will effectively “moderate the greed” of the greedy.

The JPEPA agreement is a seedbed for corruption, and it carries alarming environmental threats. But the vacillation on the substantive issues brings up another layer of reality that is even more troubling. And this is about how our politicians decide.

On many instances we have seen that they cannot be trusted to have the national interest at heart. Achieving the common good assumes that we all look out for one another. For the common good can be attained only through mechanisms for sharing. It has no place for greed. If communities set up the mechanisms to end marginalization and reduce extreme poverty, they will develop the power to be self-reliant and provident. Power to dislodge the greedy.

back to list

  An Ambitious Aim

FOR THE PAST 18 YEARS, we have been talking at the Kamayan para sa Kalikasan monthly environmental forum. We have had a modestly successful track record in initiating concrete action, and spawning more awareness among citizens from various walks of life. We have brought together in 216 monthly sessions (so far) many decision-makers and opinion leaders from various sectors and localities of the country.

Some of these opinion leaders have indeed spread the word about our topics of urgent concern, after having participated or at least listened intently enough to the discussions to be able to share the points with enough self-confidence to their respective spheres of influence after the forum sessions. Like all the others, they also enjoyed the free food served by Kamayan-EDSA every month all these 18 years.

After 18 years of Kamayan para sa Kalikasan forum’s monthly sessions at Kamayan-EDSA, we shall now undertake to add thousands of informal but informative sessions that can be held every day of the month: “kamayan para sa kalikasan” at the family dinner table (if many families still have that habit of talking during meals); “kamayan para sa kalikasan” in the classrooms; “kamayan para sa kalikasan” at breaktime or even during office hours (to be organized, encouraged or even just allowed, by environmentally conscious companies) kamayan para sa kalikasan in the jeepney and tricycle terminals, in the market stalls, in the fishing boats; “kamayan para sa kalikasan” in restaurants of whatever name, “kamayan para sa kalikasan” everywhere!

Each gathering would be one real “kamayan” for coming to talk understand one another, “kamayan” for agreeing on some points, on some plans, “kamayan” to keep talking and sharing information and views, “kamayan” to express our harmony among ourselves and with Mother Nature.
We have to motivate the people to learn well enough to spread further the environmental facts and points, to learn well enough to act individually and together to save the only environment that we (still) have. We have started setting up systems (including a forum manual and a website) to provide these facts and points to all who would join this grand project in natural broadcasting – word of mouth – funded mainly by our individual and collective WILL POWER.

We all have to act to slow down and stop the accelerating environmental destruction, to keep it from reaching the imminent point where it would become irreversible and irreparable. Can we join up to spread that word? Can we join up to make spreading that word part of our active response to this challenge?

Today, March 28th, at our 18th Anniversary session, Kamayan para sa Kalikasan will focus on bringing this forum everywhere. How will we do that? The more important question is how determined are we to do that??? The organizers of the Kamayan para sa Kalikasan believe that enough people will respond honorably to this challenge, at least to pass on the call by spreading the word, in thousands of informal but informative “kamayan” sessions that should follow every session that we hold here at Kamayan-EDSA in the months and years to come.

And, yes, we also very thankfully celebrate today our “debut,” our 18th birthday!

back to list

  Wasting What We’ve Won

WHEN the Communicators League for Environmental Action and Restoration (CLEAR) was born as an organization 18 years ago, and it launched an environmental forum project originally intended mainly for media people to attend, we were up against a problem that really looked too formidable to confront: the mass media decision-makers were predisposed to almost ignore the environment as an important beat for reportorial coverage.

All who have cared for life and Mother Nature, who gradually, and with all those reporters who started CLEAR with us and rose in rank within news organizations, have succeeded in raising environmental accounts in the editors’ hierarchy of newsworthiness. Prime newspaper space and broadcast time now carry environment-focused items.

The formidable problem of the early 1990s has been licked. We have a new problem to confront: Most of the information materials the green organizations and journalists have been able to get published are not really being maximized by the people, not even by their advocates and activists. They are just glad that these items make it to the media. These make them smile.

Only when we finally succeed to make informative and educational discussions frequent and widespread will all these advocates and activists and other people see more value in reading intently all the environmental items they see and hear carried by the mass media.
This challenge is also formidable. But overcoming it is a crucial imperative. And we shall overcome.

back to list

  Dead Rivers and Clogged Lifelines

EARTH DAY in the Philippines focuses on water. At this month’s session of the Kamayan para sa Kalikasan forum, we zero in on clogged waterways, on dead or dying river systems. Clean rivers flowing into the lakes and sea are like the blood stream in our bodies. Clean, running rivers are a source and sign of healthy living; they are also a venue for play, enjoyment and celebration. Dirty, clogged and stagnant ….must mean the loss of all that.

Today, at this forum, we have the opportunity to get a comprehensive analysis of the sorry state that the Pateros River Basin has degenerated into. From this case we see the monumental neglect, inefficiency and malice that went into the killing of a once life-giving river system. The culprits are numerous, as are the killing instruments.

We all recall that a few months ago the Philippines was in the news because of a dubious honor: two, out of thirty of the dirtiest rivers in the whole world were reported to be found in Bulacan. Many other rivers, some in urban center, are also dead or dying. Years of neglect have turned them into garbage dumps. But the Pateros analysis tells us it is not only garbage that cause the clogging and drying up. Mega-projects, have also brought into the line up of culprits faulty engineering and doubtless, corruption. We have also to add to the list of killing instruments, the callousness, inconsiderateness, sheer inefficiency, conceit and arrogance. Clearly, what has caused the clogging are not just garbage and inappropriate structures, legal and illegal. The causes are attitudes, and acts of betrayal.

Over and above the numerous evil attitudes and accumulated omissions, there is an element that has been obscured. This is the fact that disregard for the natural dynamics of rivers, and their life-supporting function was due to a disregard of others’ needs. The advantage of a few blinded them to what was good for the rest of the community.

The other side of the coin is that no communal claim to clean rivers was present. The river is nobody’s property. No one in particular cared about protecting it or keeping it clean and flowing. Once some people and factories started dumping garbage into it, more followed with impunity. Afterwards nobody minded about the loss of the river.
Now that it has become a menace, some regretful thought is given to it. But it is already late in the day. What would have saved the rivers from deteriorating……?

The demise of the rivers reveal the lack of a communal appreciation for a healthy river system; no collective deep interest in managing the immediate environment where people live for their collective benefit. If we consider at all some form of action to rehabilitate our rivers up to any extent possible, then this missing element has to be set in place, before all other scientific solutions. We cannot hope to revive the rivers without reestablishing the sense of community and collective concern.

But we cannot reclaim community until we learn to value one another.

back to list

  Stubbornness for Suicide

AS WE PREPARED this issue of Kamayan Forum Journal, we also prepared to troop to the Senate building this coming Monday, April 21, for a series of mass actions that would be part of last-ditch efforts to convince that “Upper Chamber” of Congress not to force the country to commit suicide.

We were informed of Malacañang's sustained barrage of lies about the Japan-Philippine Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA), the proposed treaty that the administration negotiated in secret, signed in a hurry, and now wants ratified with no further delay.

Its line: “We cannot afford not to ratify. We can’t afford to be excluded.” Earlier, the JPEPA apologists have been giving the people the logic that we have to sacrifice even out health and environment for the economic gains JPEPA purportedly promises for our country. The wrong premise is that we will have a net gain for the economy from JPEPA.

Later, they claimed that while JPEPA sets tariff rates on Japanese toxic wastes to be dumped here, we can ignore this hazard because our laws ban them from entry. So, why agree to have tariff rates in a treaty?

JPEPA ratification spells no real gains for our country, and it will spell destruction for our economy, environment and whatever little we have for sovereignty. But Arroyo and her minions are stubbornly pushing us all to hara-kiri. We can only wonder how big the bribes are for such stubbornness.

 back to list

  Low-Carbon Economy by Green Communities

THE ECONOMIC activities of mankind have produced carbon dioxide in quantities that pose peril to life on planet earth. This peril comes from an excess of greenhouse gases that are essential in keeping the proper temperature of the earth. Without the protective shield provided by greenhouse gases, the temperature would be extremely cold, making earth uninhabitable. But an excess in greenhouse gases traps more heat than necessary or even “allowable” for life to thrive, which is apparently leading to the other extreme, to a point that is lethal.

The unprecedented increase in the emission of carbon dioxide that started in the industrial age has become more rapid in recent decades. As carbon dioxide is the second largest component of greenhouse gases, after water vapor, the rapid increase of carbon has caused the volume of greenhouse gases to exceed what is normal. We have not yet reached the lethal point. But we are undoubtedly already reaping the consequences of global warming, both the predicted and the unknown. Global warming has triggered climate change and disturbed the balance of the ecosystem.
Whether balance can be restored – if the volume of carbon emission is reduced – is but a hope. Not least because nations may not be able to achieve the needed reduction within the time frame set by scientists. But it is a hope we cannot afford to squander once again.

In the Philippines, can we come up with a collective resolve to henceforth pursue a low-carbon economy? Can Filipinos be united on this matter?

We can be sure there will be two camps: the greedy will stubbornly continue to justify coal-powered plants and incinerators, fossil fuel dependence, chemical fertilizers and logging, because of the huge profits and kickbacks. That being the case, we, who are on the other camp, having chosen to be on the side of the common good, must pursue, double-time, the shift to renewable energy, biofuels, and organic farming, and seriously undertake reforestation. And we need to get the masses and communities to be on the side of wisdom and the common good, acting in solidarity until we can run the merchants of death to near bankruptcy.

While we are working on generating the alternatives, we must effectively and rapidly reduce our carbon emissions. We already have the technologies for the necessary alternatives and for reducing such emissions. Let us use, promote and invest in these technologies.
In our effort to reduce carbon emission from our factories, farms and transport, and work at the transition to a low-carbon economy, should we not engage as allies and partners nature’s oxygen factories, the trees and forests? Excess carbon in the air are drawn into photosynthesis are converted into oxygen.

But this assumes we have enough trees, we protect what remains of our forests and go into intensive planting of rapidly growing trees. We cannot be as effective in reducing greenhouse gases if we have a deficit in trees, a shortfall in carbon–conversion-into-oxygen.

Accumulation of carbon will always continue to be a threat. Better to have an excess in oxygen. So perhaps there should not only be carbon credits (a reward or a swap for reducing carbon emission) but similarly there should be credit for contributing to oxygen surplus.

All these imply that we mobilize our communities for concerted action... on green energy, green fuel, green industries, green agri-business, massive reforestation and urban greening. And ultimately, it will take green families and green communities to pursue and ensure a low-carbon economy.

back to list

  Think of the Laws! Think of the Loss!

LAWS RELATED to the protection of the environment and its proper care have been passed by nation, including the Philippines. Here, the violations and omissions related to these laws are rampant. This has led the Supreme Court to decide to set up special courts to hear and pass judgment on crimes against the environment.

The victims of crimes that are the results of omission or violation of environmental laws are increasing in number, as the violations and the apathy escalate. The injustice is magnified when it is done by public officials since they are duty-bound and expected to observe and cause compliance, and they squander public funds with impunity.

So we challenge the stakeholders: go out of your way and get together with groups and file charges against erring public officials at both local and national government levels.
The victims of environmental disasters that are man-made, such as flooding, cry for justice. In urban centers, the citizens contract diseases due to polluted air and water. In coastal villages the fisherfolk are deprived of good catch due to the destruction of corrals causing depletion of fish stock.

The Lumad are deprived of land where they use to raise their food. The injustice hits the poor more than the non-poor. For the poor depend on the free gifts of nature. They make their living from the environment. Therefore damage to forests, lakes and rivers is injustice done to the poor.
Every environment injustice done today is also a crime against the coming generations. For the environment is a time continuum. How else did global warming catch up with our generation? We always have to ask our selves: what poisons are we leaving in the path of the next generations?

What crimes are we committing to the innocents of the future times? One of the two major factors in the collapse of the civilizations, as discussed in a current best seller by Diamond Jarred reveals, is the abuse of the environment. Ant the Philippines is included in a list of countries at risk.

The injustice is not limited to mankind. It is directly done to mother nature. Nature as a holonic system made up of interdependent subsystems. It is through this that nature creates, replenishes, recovers, heals and self-perpetuates. But too much damage on the nature environment, makes nature's recovery recovery in many instances. Some elements in the environment took centuries to develop. Man destroys in a few days and can devastate even in a day.

Nature and/or the environment provides for the nature and sustenance of all life forms. In being equally available to all, nature practices justice. The sun shines on all, the rains fall on all, the air is available to all without discrimination. Energy and power derive their elements form nature. All these ought to be available to everyone as bequeathed by nature. These were "commonly property", before greedy elite fenced them in and commandeered the commons for their exclusive enjoyment. By depriving the many of the magnanimity of nature, they have made nature become bad in the eyes of the deprived. In this they also have done Nature a great injustice.

In doing violence and injustice to Nature, we do violence and injustice to our own nature as stewards of life and all creation. Worse, we do violence and injustice to our calling to communion with one-another, in the eternity of life. Think about the loss!!! (Heed the laws!)..... Manghinayang nawa ang lahat!

back to list

  Perpetual Forests !!!

NOW WE KNOW. Those forests which greedy people have destroyed were meant to be there forever, for the health of planet Earth. They were part of the planet’s anatomy performing a vital function in the sustenance of life. The consequence of the loss of the greater percentage of the earth’s forests has belatedly surfaced as the frequency and virulence of climate disasters escalate.

The accumulation of greenhouse gases, the bigger percentage of which is CO2 has, over time, been abetted by the absence of forests. Forests are the main consumers of CO2. Forests convert CO2 into fresh oxygen which all living things need. With less of this conversion, the rate of CO2 accumulation naturally accelerated, triggering what we now experience as climate change.

Moreover, forests are the storehouses of water, the other vital component that sustains life. With the loss of forests, the watersheds are no longer the abundant reservoirs they are meant to be. With damaged watersheds, the rivers and lakes dry up. With the scarcity of water, the lands dry up.

Less food can be grown. But when the rains and now more violent storms come, floods and mud slides rampage down denuded mountains, causing harm and devastation in ever greater scales.

The loss of forests brings along another greater loss. The loss of biodiversity. Did past generations not know that by destroying the forest they would be tampering with the balance of the ecosystem, destroying the very foundations of life? Have the warnings come too late? Or they have been there but not heeded. Now, with the climate disasters battering the earth relentlessly, the forests are of enormous importance. They have a perpetual function; they are meant to be left alone.

Is it now too late to remedy the situation? Some say the second forest cover, if given the chance, can slowly bring back the forests. But this will take a very long time and the inclement whether has to be reckoned with. The primal growth with the continuing natural replacement over the centuries can no longer be recreated. Common sense dictates that deforestation worldwide has to stop immediately, so that the remaining forests cover can make whatever contribution it still can.

But the greedy will never heed this call. And the indifferent will never lift a finger for it. For, in truth, something else has been lost to humanity, which is the deeper reason for the loss of the forests. And this is the loss of the sense of responsibility for the common good. It is this sense of responsibility that needs to be restored, or the forests will continue to go. Will the new and coming generations recover this sense of the common good?

Only if we and the next generation restore and accept this responsibility (for the common good) and sustain it in perpetuity. Proof of that is if we and they, after us, devote our energies to recreating perpetual forests. For such forests are clearly part of the common good, just as their loss confronts us and the next generations with common catastrophe. People have to see this clearly if we are to survive as a race. And we have to see it in cases like the Mt. Kanlaon watershed that we do have to save.

back to list

  Stakeholders and Supporters’ Task Forces

ALL THESE YEARS, in the more than 18 years’ history of Kamayan para sa Kalikasan forum, we have been hearing agitations now and then from some participants to “stop the talk and start the action.” We would patiently explain that the forum project is an instrument for coming together for participants to agree on many points, and it is up to the participants among themselves to make plans after the forum on what they think they ought to do.

We would realize that many of those who would criticize loudest on this “all talk, no action” observation would be the least ready to heed calls for action, while many others do not let their impatience distract them and others from listening and participating fully in the discussions for this is what a forum is all about.

Last month, right after the forum session on the aerial spraying of pesticides being perpetrated by banana plantation owners in Davao City, putting in serious jeopardy the health of nearby communities, we did something new -- upon the suggestion of one of the panel speakers and with him becoming the first volunteer member, later coordinator, we formed a task force from among volunteering forum participants to actively support the ongoing struggle of the Davao communities and city government.

This became the first Stakeholders and Supporters’ Task Force (SSTF) directly resulting from a Kamayan Forum session, under the auspices of the forum’s convenors, CLEAR and SALIKA. And it has spun off to become an active component force of the Davao campaign. Proud as we are of this, we will surely form others.

back to list

  Energy from Waste: Wrong Move, Wrong Reason, Wrong Endorsement

THE MONTALBAN Landfill Methane Recovery and Electricity Generation Project in Rodriguez (formerly Montalban), Rizal, was recently inaugurated by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. It is called landfill-gas-to-energy (FFGTE) technology GMA endorsed it as a "model solution" to climate change and renewable energy source.

Really?? The collective eyebrows of members at Ecological Waste Management (Eco-Waste) Coalition rise perplexed. Eco-Waste reminds us that landfills create enormous volumes of methane, and are thus the most significant anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
Methane is a global warming gas that has 23 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. Because LFGTE systems have inbuilt inefficiencies, they fail to capture all the methane produced and do not necessarily prevent substantial discharge of methane into the atmosphere. So how can landfill-gas-to-energy possibly be a model solution to climate change?

Running the LFGTE facility will require maintaining a certain volume of waste so the required methane output can be sustained. This means continuous dumping of waste in ever larger quantities. Will it now be our civic duty to keep producing garbage? Will they pass an ordinance that will set a quota for communities, with penalty for those who fall short? What happens if the productive use of organic wastes becomes more profitable than merely dumping them? Will there be enough garbage then to feed the facility? Will the Montalban Methanne Power Corporation buy all out garbage? Unlikely, di ba? Honestly, can LFGTE technology be deemed a renewable energy source?

The LFGTE technology feeds on a wasteful pattern of disposing organic materials into dumpsites. These organic materials could be better used by composting them into effective and safe soil nutrients that can help restore depleted farmlands. They would also keep farmers from being dependent on chemical farm products, such as toxic fertilizers. Dumping is both wasteful and destructive.

With the push for the so-called 'energy from waste,' we will see no end to dumping since there is now a purported use for landfills. What happens to our laws requiring segregation and 'zero-waste'? Ibabasura na lang ba natin ang Clean Air Act? Are we not risking global climate disaster in exchange for an unsustainable energy source?

 back to list

THE SAUCE for the gander is the sauce for the goose, and the logic of the law, or at least of jurisprudence that backstops the spirit and letter of the law, ought to have logical consistency to it. This makes us search for logic in a pair of temporary injunctions by two courts operating in the same one country -- ours.

The Court of Appeals was swift in issuing an injunction against the implementation of Davao City's ordinance banning the aerial spraying of pesticides on banana plantations and on people because the banana plantation owners were so inconvenienced by that ban which the communities adversely affected by the spraying had earlier successfully asked City Hall for.

So, while the Appellate Court deliberated on whether the Davao Regional Trial Court had really erred in upholding the city ordinance, the ban had to be ordered lifted, at least temporarily, by the CA. The issuance of injunction had to be swift.

Meanwhile, oppositors of a then-impending massacre of trees in a "buffer zone" of the Mt. Kanlaon protected area sought a TRO from the Bacolod RTC. The court set the hearing -- on whether or not to issue a TRO -- for about four weeks later, allegedly due to paperwork considerations, and about 2,000 trees were killed in the interim by PNOC-EDC seeking to pursue their search for a lot of hot air. That was about half the number of trees the oppositors had wanted to save in the first place.

On the date set, what came out was an announced postponement of the hearing to early September. Without a TRO, the steam hunters could finish off the other half. After the trees shall have been cut, no TRO will be issued because the petition shall have become moot and academic.

Mourn the unrestorable lives of the massacred trees, and prepare to mourn our lives --- we're next.
If you can discern any logic behind the obvious inconsistency, please tell us. We just can't help but be curious.

back to list

  Protecting Our Community and National Patrimony

INHERITANCE is what parents leave to their children when they die. We call this family inheritance. Patrimony, on the other hand, refers to collective inheritance, in a scale beyond family, and thus, what every generation is expected to leave to the next. And this is primarily the assets and resources that nature has provided. Man-made treasures (artifacts and works of art) of a culture also become patrimony, but the natural resources constitute the major stock of patrimony.

Patrimony is not just the material assets handed over. Patrimony takes its meaning and value from the act of care for the inheritors; the act of providing for what they will need. Patrimony is greatly invested with provident concern for the beneficiaries. Patrimony also implies inclusiveness. The patrimonial grant is intended for everyone: it is a birthright, a claim by virtue of simply being born into the community. Unfortunately, for us

Filipinos, we do not have this collective sense of patrimony. We read that our ancestors, the tribal and indigenous peoples had it. But colonization and the leadership and politics it engendered supplanted this consciousness. We have also lost the sense of the “commons” and of responsibility for the common good. Again, the loss is not just about the material assets, but more tragically, loss of our sense of community in the here and now, and in continuity with the past and future generations. We may may claim strong family ties, but our communitarian values have been severely undermined by the colonial experience and the brand of social organizing and governance that followed, and prevails to this day.

How else explain the current condition of our environment? A recent report from a EU study observes that the Philippines had managed, in the period 2000 to 2005, to reduce its forest cover to 24% of total land area….among the smallest in Southeast Asia, second only to Singapore.

The remaining forest cover is one of the smallest among all tropical countries, and even well below the dry Mediterranean countries like Greece and Italy. It is said to be at the level of Saharan countries. Our forest to population ratio is only 0.1 hectare of forest per head, one of the worst in the world. That society and government allowed this depradation to happen, indicates a fatal blindness of the heart, the cause of which is the very same that has earned this country to be ranked as among the most corrupt.

Before we can talk about protecting our patrimony, we must first work on identifying with nature, our Mother Earth, as wanting to nurture all her children. Then we must retrieve the sense of the “commons” by leaving much of nature open to all, including the creatures that are imperiled of extinction, because some people continue to destroy their habitat.

Then we must convince ourselves, and our irresponsible leaders, of the urgency of protecting the environment given the mounting climate disasters. Only then can we recover a sense of the value of patrimony, and authentically feel the need to protect it.

We need to protect community patrimony, related to environment in specific localities. We need to protect national patrimony relative to the integrity of our national territory. But how, when we do not even seem to have the sense of nation? When we fail to see that lumads, Muslim and Christian Filipinos ought to share one and the same patrimony, and be, not several, but…. one nation?

back to list

  Our Sense of The Commons, Our Common Sense

COMMON SENSE dictates to all of us by this time in Human History that we abhor slavery. This was not the situation as recently as just a few centuries ago. Earlier, especially in far-flung colonies of even the most “benevolent” of monarchies, the royalty and aristocracy owning slaves was common sense. The Human has progressed indeed in its quest to validate the word sapiens in the name of the species.

But long after the monarchial clans lost their crowns, something has remained that eludes sapiens logic. It is the Regalian Doctrine of private landownership. That remaining vestige of primitive human arrangements propped up by only by weaponry and brainwashing, has persisted to this day.

Having enjoyed its spoils for decades and even centuries, landowning clans use all the tools available to them to assert stubbornly that they have the “right” to own parcels of Nature because they had bought these. Trace the paper trail of receipts and it gets back to simple grabbing of lands previously held in common by actual residents and tillers. Unless anyone can show a receipt from the Creator, they’ve all been buying stolen property!

Lack of common sense comes from not upholding or even knowing the sense of The Commons.  

back to list

  Investing for Environmental Dividend

AFTER DECADES of environmental advocacy, we have not developed in the Philippines a national constituency of true lovers of the environment who by their lifestyle and behavior are true children of Mother Earth. So we must face the question: “how do we get the action of more than 80 million Filipinos to have positive impact on the environment?”

Since environmental education and appeals to moral res¬ponsibility have so far had little effect, are we willing to try an approach that uses income growth to restore moral capital and simultaneously produce the desired environmental activism among the masses? As these are times of difficulty and multiple crises, would it not be a waste to pass up the opportunity offered by such an approach to social learning and communal mobilization?.

A grand design will have these elements of strategy: Action has to be in groups. Start with economic action that has significant impact on the environment but is undertaken not on account of the environment but of an urgent human need. The satisfaction of that need gets the action done, with accompanying impact on the environment. Impact on the environment may perhaps be even unintended on the part of the doer, but intended in the grand design.

The benefit gained from the first act is expanded by invest¬ing part of the money earned in a venture that is related to an environmental objective, even one close to the first activity that had only indirect impact on the environment (as far as most of the doers are concerned). This second investment action, introduces the doer to an aspect of environmental concern but which is only secondary to the benefits he can expect from the investment.

The resulting incremental benefit makes the doer appreciative, if incidentally, of the environmental element. He may not at this point fully appreciate the value of the environmental impacts made from the two economic activities he has invested in.

On the next opportunity, the doer is invited to invest in a project that is openly an intervention for the environment but which equally offers financial returns just as in the first two instances. At this point it is natural for him to see the value of the investment from both the financial and environmental rewards it will reap. As an investor, he will take pride and great concern for the project’s success. In the meantime, the environmental value of the first two investments, not earlier explained, will now become clear to him. The investor will have become a fully pro-environment citizen.

Four important things are to be noted in this outline of strategy:

(1) The environmental objectives were served by the projects invested in, even if the educational outcome was deliberately designed to follow later and as a matter of consequence, not a precondition.

(2) Meeting the person’s need was the priority, thus proving he is valued, and therefore ethical and moral imperatives were predominant and were actualized, and the environmental sensitivity only gradually instilled by a form of osmosis.

(3) The environmental content focused on the really urgent aspects of environmental catastrophe needing to be ad¬dressed by society today and was thus not cluttered with a lot of details less urgent. Although the environmental urgency is not pressed at the start, (human need and human capital are the major focus) the value of the environmental outcomes as they impact on human need and human capital are ines¬capably grasped without the need for elaborate analysis.

(4) The beneficial experience will exceed any explanation and lead to action. Lamenting environmental damage and finding those who are to blame have not necessarily led to massive action. Economic gains, with environmental dividend will have a better chance.

In summary, we can build the national constituency of an environment-committed citizenry through a social learning process that employs economic strategies deliberately designed to result in predetermined environmental impact and restoration or affirmation of human worth and society’s moral capital. The hard times ought to get us results in less than a year!

(Requests for workshop on details of the strategy accepted through Kamayan Forum and NepaSERV).

back to list

  This Fearsome ‘Eco-Eco Meltdown’

THEY SAY THE ECONOMIC MELTDOWN will aggravate the ecological meltdown that has recently become more intense and rapid, and promises to accelerate even more as funding for environmental programs and projects are likely to be cut down and some important initiatives along renewable energy may become of even lesser priority, if not altogether shelved.”

They say the worsening ecological meltdown (melting polar ice, loss of forests, water and clean air) will make recovery from the economic meltdown more protracted, since nature no longer provides the food and remedies it used to be able to freely and abundantly give. Add the growing heat that hastens desertification and makes growing food more difficult, the calamities of growing scale because of the increased ferocity and frequency of storms, land or mud slides, and floods!

We are told that the times are going to be worse, and may not become better in a long while. So we are being advised to be prepared to adapt to the new conditions brought about by climate change. We must similarly have to adapt to the new conditions brought about by the change in financial climate. But all our efforts to learn to adapt and to device coping mechanisms must be anchored on what wisdom teaches (itinuturo ng katuwiran).

It would be fatal if in our consternation to adapt, we lose sight of the one and the same reason for the eco-eco meltdown, and imagine that creativity, cleverness, technology and money will guarantee success. If we do not replace the one, common cause, we will be risking a third and even more tragic meltdown; that of our humanity. How so?

The reason for massive ecological destruction is greed. The cause of the global financial meltdown is the same: greed. Therefore the all-important question that must precede and ground the concern for adaptation must be: “What do we put forward in the place of greed? What do we sow? What seed?”

Concern for the environment will not suffice. Love of nature will not suffice. Even love of country will not suffice. Because these are not the antithesis of greed. Neither can we hope to convert the greedy; for greed feeds on itself. And it is plain to see, public service is not a remedy. The hope lies in those whose lives are not yet lured and ruled by greed and are willing to nurture the antithesis of greed.

If greed is the insatiable desire to possess and delight in the accumulation of wealth in excess of what one needs or can use, but for the thrill of knowing and being known you have more than the rest, using that wealth to buy power over; then the antithesis will be the insatiable desire to do the opposite: to delight in giving away what one has, resource, intelligence, good will and yes, heart, whatever is in excess of what one needs and can use; and even what one uses and needs...in order to take away the painful deprivation of the hungry, which is deprivation of food and dignity, and to delight in the restoration of justice, by creating the opportunity for the poor and hungry to work for their food and recover their dignity.

If you are among the better-off in life, or qualify as non-poor, then you may want to nurture gratitude, magnanimity, care.

If you are among the poor and hungry you may start with contentment and industriousness, on to self-esteem, to sufficiency, to sharing.

These qualities will create a different global warming that could bring about the happy meltdown of greed. For ultimately, it is the rescue of our humanity (pagkatao) that we all must all accomplish.

back to list

  Bio-Diversity as Patrimony

BIO-DIVERSITY! Life is exceedingly diverse. Life thrives on diversity. Life counts on diversity for sustainability. If diversity is diminished, life is diminished. If diversity deteriorates, life will deteriorate. If bio-diversity is lost, all life will be eventually lost.

Global warming and climate change will bring a¬out immense difficulties for all life; for they pose a great threat to biodiversity.
But it is human greed that has long assaulted biodiversity directly by relentless destruction of forests which are the foundation of biodiversity. Now the added harm of climate change, caused by man-made greenhouse gasses released in large volumes into the atmosphere, has multiplied the harm and threat to biodiversity.

Shouldn’t we be alarmed at all these self-destructive action? Are we to remain indifferent to the consequences of our actions that clearly are suicidal in the cosmic scale…. dragging the entire planet earth to destruction? And lest we forget… all of humanity? Are we to feel resigned because we feel helpless, fighting a loosing battle against unmoderated greed of a few? Because, after all, we all eventually must die?

But how about future generations? Do we just leave them to the mercy of a world greatly diminished, progressively deteriorating and grown more dangerous and barren as the consequences of climate change intensify and bio-diversity further crumbles?
If we care for our children, and our children’s children and the generations after them, then we must act now!

While much has been damaged, what remains can be saved, restored to health and original abundance. We must recover the sense of patrimony, of the need and obligation to hand down to future generations a culture and social order that values and protects the abundance and magnanimity of Creation.

Every child born into this world has a claim – as a birthright – to be cared for and reared in provident abundance guaranteed by nature’s bio-diversity. If so, every generation has the responsibility to honor this birthright by assiduously conserving biodiversity. Because of its tropical location the Philippines is one of the most bio-diverse spots on the planet Earth. As patrimony, it must be our endowment to future generations of Filipinos and wealth to share with all other nations.

back to list

   A nobler Use for the BNPP

OFFICIAL INVESTIGATIONS and scientific studies done on the BNPP all declare that it is not safe to operate the plant; that the danger it poses is much, much greater than whatever benefits is sought. And with the new international protocol on nuclear plants which sets stringent standards, there is no way the BNPP can be reopened and operated.

So, no further time should be wasted in new studies and legislative action . Only one thing remains to be done: to determine what possible alternative use could there possibly be? Outright, the answer to this question points in the direction of clean, renewable energy. IN fact, a proposal to convert the BNPP into a facility for Natural Gas has long been forwarded. But, given that Luzon is already over loaded in terms of power generation, adding more seems unnecessary. Better to spend on facilities in the other regions where there is energy lack.

But the BNPP facility is there and is wasting away. What then might be the most significant use that may be proposed? To answer this question, one must consider that the BNPP is not merely a heavily flawed facility unfit and unusable as a nuclear plant. It is above all a product of fraud, and the biggest squandering by the dictatorship. Its primary value, in its deficiency, is the evidence of moral turpitude. Worse than the bid for wrong technology (renewable will always be superior), is the affront on the nation by the dictatorship. As an affront on humanity itself, dictatorship was not just a local blight. The fight against dictatorship, like the fight against slavery and apartheid, must be taken up as a universal task of all the peoples of the world.

Therefore the greatest potential for BNPP is to have it converted into an international monument of peoples’ fight against dictatorship anywhere in the world. An international campaign in this direction would be a meaningful initiative, which the Filipino people, in particular the Filipino youth, should take up. A monument, but also a center of social learning about the prevention of a folly ( a monumental irresponsibility) that ranks among the historical threats to humanity in the magnitude of the holocaust, Hiroshima.

Secondly, the present interest in its commissioning has underscored the immoderate greed of the elite that ought to strongly convince us that social inequity will worsen unless a parallel economy of the common citizenry that is not dependent on the economy of the rich is installed. And the BNPP conversion could have this as an important dimension. Any wealth creating program involving the BNPP should be closed off from encroachment by the rich and reserved for the masses. Thus would it be a center for the initiation of an alternative economy. If energy is created it should constitute effective competition to the established power monopoly, offering service at a lower price. This can only be done if ownership is vastly widespread and deliberately excludes control by the rich and the corrupt.

Thirdly, the converted BNPP should be an international center for high level research on renewable energy of many forms, and meant for the poor of the world. The conversion should be a worldwide initiative to protect human rights, promote economic rights and a safe, nurturing and sustainable environment.

back to list

  Youth Need to be Catalysts for Environmental Action…

ALARM over global warming is so much a delayed reaction. As early as about two decades ago, when the THE FUTURE IS ALREADY HERE! That’s a consolation when it is said in the sense of hope that is inherent in views of the future. And what’s more, the past is still here! This makes sense when we think of our history of the people making up our nation, the Philippines. Kamayan para sa Kalikasan forum was just starting, concern over the degradation of the environment was already raised by scientists and environmental activists. More recently, notice has been served that unless the volume of carbon emission were significantly reduced, climate change would become irreversible! And we no longer have ten years. Which is why “adaptation” has entered the environmental agenda. As if to admit that we are not likely to succeed in meeting the deadline voluntarily.

Delay, neglect and greed have brought the world precariously close to the tipping point.

Today we already experience global warming, the early consequences of climate change. But global warming will usher in other changes that can only bring about more disasters and sufferings in ever greater magnitude and intensity. If within the coming decade the nations fail to make the necessary action, from hereon, life on this earth will inevitably be tougher and more difficult.

Is this the future the youth must face?

Doubtless it is extremely unfair on the part of earlier generations to have brought upon the coming generations this frightening condition. But no amount of regret on the part of the older generation can turn back the piling up of on-rushing consequences of climate change.

Can the youth in this and coming generations make a contribution in this last decade …to possible climate change mitigation? Only if the action is worldwide, massive, sustained at great intensity in the decade 2010 to 2020.

Only if done as ONE ACTION by all the youth of the world, and all the children born in this decade.

Parents will have to help the children, acting on their behalf. This should make for more compelling action from adults. It is the action of youth and the children that may yet save our one earth, teaching us to share one life, as one world! .

back to list

   …and for Nation-building

THE FUTURE IS ALREADY HERE! That’s a consolation when it is said in the sense of hope that is inherent in views of the future. And what’s more, the past is still here! This makes sense when we think of our history of the people making up our nation, the Philippines.