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Kamayan para sa Kalikasan

  215th

monthly

session

 

 J O U R N A L

    THE WEBSITE VERSION  

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71st Issue

January 2008

 
     


 FORUM OVERVIEW (click here)    MAIN NEWS SECTION (right below)   OTHER SECTIONS (click here)

Humanity cannot ignore the alarum bells sounded to jolt us all to change our lifestyles to adopt mitigating and adoptive ways to address the accelerating plunge to having an uninhabitable planet… The ‘business as usual attitude’ has just become a despicable crime!

 FORUM ECHOES           

From December forum session

Organics: Call in
the Consumers!

TWO LEADERS the growing movement for the promotion of organic agriculture in the country teamed up last month to explain the imperatives behind the urgency of their advocacy. The venue for such educational talk was the pre-Christmas session of the monthly Kamayan para sa Kalikasan forum at Kamayan-EDSA last December 21.

full story

 FORUM FOCUS         
Save the White Polar Caps! Don't Wave the White Flag!

 Post-Bali: 'All Hands on

Deck' vs. Global Warming?

CAN THE HUMAN RACE finally get our act together to face the biggest human-made threat to our existence since the time Noah was building his floating zoo? If so, and we all have the reason to hope so, will the recent International Conference on Climate Change held in Bali, Indonesia last December be validly seen to have played a part in such a historic deve­lopment. At the Kamayan para sa Kalikasan forum’s 215th monthly session this January 18, 2008, that conference will be given a rear-view-mirror look by  Filipino delegates and observers, and the heavy workload up ahead for  mitigating and adapting to the effects of global warming.

full story

 

OTHER SECTIONS:

EDITORIAL: 

 

Communities' Climate Change Accountabilities

BOXED FEATURE:

PNCC Statement on Bali Conference

OTHER ITEMS:

January Events set for World Social Forum

FOOTER QUOTE:

     “We gather because the time for equivocation is over. The science is clear. Climate change is happening. The impact is real. The time to act is now.” 

          -   BAN KI-MOON , United Nations Secretary-General, speech at the recent 13th Conference of Parties held in Bali, Indonesia, in December 2007.  

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....

.What's happening to our beautiful land?.

THE CATHOLIC BISHOPS’ Pastoral Letter issued in 1983 is titled with this question, which can now be asked with much more anguish than before. The bishops are now following up. Or so we hope and pray! [(A pamphlet carrying the Letter has hese children on its cover.)

.

  EDITORIAL     

 Communities' Climate Change Accountabilities

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.         [A.V.C.]

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  FORUM FOCUS         

Save the White Polar Caps! Don’t  wave that White Flag!

 

Post-Bali: 'All Hands on

Deck' vs. Global Warming?

CAN THE HUMAN RACE finally get our act together to face the biggest human-made threat to our existence since the time Noah was building his floating zoo? If so, and we all have the reason to hope so, will the recent International Conference on Climate Change held in Bali, Indonesia last December be validly seen to have played a part in such a historic development. At the Kamayan para sa Kalikasan forum’s 215th monthly session this January 18, 2008, that conference will be given a rear-view-mirror look by  Filipino delegates and observers, and the heavy workload up ahead for  mitigating and adapting to the effects of global warming,

   Invited to come, or send their duly-qualified representatives  to join the panel of resource speakers at the forum this Third Friday, 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. are Athena Ballesteros, Greenpeace International, who will also speak for the Philippine Network on Climate Change (PNCC); Marie Marciano, president of Mother Earth Foundation; Atty. Gia Ibay of KLIMA Climate Change Center of the Manila Observatory; and Ma. Gerarda Merilo, representative of the Environment Manage­ment Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.  

Before the Bali conference, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon is-sued a statement underscoring the importance of the conference to seriously address the Climate Change issues instead of denying it as a survival problem and keeping a “business-as-usual” mode. 

 


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  FORUM ECHOES           

Echoes From July Forum  

Organics: Call in the Consumers!

TWO LEADERS of the growing movement for the promotion of organic agriculture in the country teamed up last month to ex­plain the imperatives behind the urgency of their advocacy. The venue for such educational talk was the pre-Christmas session of the monthly Kamayan para sa Kali­kasan forum at Kamayan-EDSA last December 21.

     D
r. Rafael Barrozo and  Pablito M. Villegas, both of the Organic Alliance (OA), empha­sized the importance of promot­ing an organic diet for Filipinos upon health, environmental and economic grounds.

Barrozo, who has been hosting a number of organic-farm­ing-oriented radio programs as­ide from conducting training seminars in Los Baños, Laguna and in Quezon City on the same subject, challenged the forum attendees to grasp the logic of building mutual concern and synergy among the food produ­cers and the consumers. "There is a need for consum­ers to get acquainted with the people who grow and process the food they eat and the materials they use. There is a need for the farmers and food proces­sors to know who will buy what they produce in their farms and factories. There is need for them to really support one each other.”  He said Farmers and processors should grow crops and livestock and process food in accordance with approved methods that are ecological, healthy, humane and fair, and they should at all times avoid genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) and even use any ingredients made from GMOs. He asked consumers demand these of local farmers and producers while supporting them against foreign and non-organic rivals.

 

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  OTHER ITEMS         

January events set for World Social Forum

THE PARTIDO Kalikasan Institute and the Metro Manila formation of the Party have called upon the PK formations in various regions to mount various community-based sustainable develop­ment activities as part of the Philippine  participation  in  the  Global Day of Action, a project of the World Social Forum, which falls on January 26, with a weeklong schedule of pre­paratory activities.  

SLISH Network News reported that on January 25, simultaneous "Communi­ty Actions for Environmental Justice" are set to be mounted jointly and individually by local Partido Kalikasan formations and the grassroots-based groups among WSF participating groups in the coun­try. A People’s Camp is also scheduled for this day to be held at the North Triangle in Barangay Bagong Pag-asa, Quezon City. During this Camp, Green groups may want to organize focused public forum, conferences, trainings and dialogues on our various issues. Already, the ATM (Alyansa Tigil Mina) has committed to organize a forum on mining while Par­tido Kalikasan will organize a peoples' forum on justice and climate change.               


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All are invited. to the  Kamayan para sa Kalikasan Environmental Forum held regularly, since March 1990, on the 3rd Friday every month, 10:30am-2pm at the Kamayan Restaurant along EDSA, Mandaluyong City. It is convened jointly by the Clear Communicators for the Environment (CLEAR) and SanibLakas ng mga Aktibong Lingkod ng Inang Kalikasan (SALIKA), fully sponsored by Kamayan.  

 
   

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