For a People-based and Stable Environment Regime

BY TONY CRUZADA

THE NEW ADMINISTRATION of President Benigno S. Aquino III had campaigned and won on a people-based platform. The chief executive proclaimed himself upon inauguration that he was going to be the servant of the people and that we, the people, are going to be his boss. Earlier, he said the people were his source of strength. But how much can he possibly stretch the sense of these words so they would surely go beyond the rhetorics of populism and ultimately rebound to the interests of the people, to the people’s deliverance and survival and that of the Commons they have had to depend on?

As of now, the people are yet unassurred that the Aquino administration would take their side when it comes to environmental policies as these oftentimes conflict with the views of the economic rulers, namely the big multinational corporations as they have come to be consolidated and championed by powerful institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization. The paradigms, programs and policies being imposed by these entities on the Philippine economy are debt-driven, import dependent and export-oriented to the clear detriment of any slim chance the country could ever attain a sustainable economic upturn.

These programs and policies have been enshrined in the Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP) by the super-powerful National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), whose word outweighs the voices of all the other government executive instrumentalities, combined.

Justifying its essentially-suicidal prescriptions as absolutely necessary and our “only hope” in trying to win the war on poverty, NEDA has only succeeded in pushing us deeper in debt, desperation and destitution, ultra-dependent on other economies even for our staple food, and exporting our own people for short stretches of survival. All these years they have been giving us figures to paint a rosy picture on the graphs and charts but adequated safe and nutritious food does not appear on the dining tables of the average Filipinos, who have had to suffer, to boot, polluted air, polluted water and poisoned and denuded land.

How can President Noynoy accomplish any of these if the powerful foreign and local business interests are going to apply effecive pressure on the DENR and other government entities not to enforce legal and even Constitutional mandates on the effective protection of the environment?

To be sure, President Aquino’s initial signs of being starkly different from the predispositions and personal styles of his predecessors go a long way in building popular credibility of his earnestness, but at the end of it all, probably long before, the people have to be shown real substantial changes in governance that would be felt in the gut. On the environment front, for example, the all-out open mining policy has to be stopped. The import of poisoned food and food crops like genetically-modified organisms of GMOs has to be stopped. For a change, DENR has to start being consistently on the side of the local communities and their natural habitats. Really, it’s more difficult work than banning “wang-wang” sirens of abusive politicians and cops.

With its structural dilemma, and many of the laws allowing lawbreakers to invoke unclarities and loopholes in them, the DENR and other agencies are allowed to feign “excusable” incompetence and budgetary problems instead of having to admit out and out anti-people predispositions and also corruption to explain their dismal overall performance. Can President Aguino really make them work energetically to protect the people and the environment? No, they would probably prefer to repel the people’s complaints and inquiries with the typical “talagang ganyan!” line and may even occassionally offer to weep with us during the worst incidents of actually-preventable calamities.

To take a firmer hold on governance, specifically on the environment front, there really has to be a clear National Environment Plan, adequately insulated from the environmentally-destructive prescriptions of NEDA, to disallow premediated confusions and footdragging on environmental programs and policies and this has to be pursued with passion. Aquino cannot afford to do any less.

Ultimately, the ratings of the new government will sink or swim with this passion. WE therefore support the resolution of the recent Annual Assembly of the World Environment Day – Philippines Network to have a stongly pro-environment National Environment Plan drafted and promulgated that few much closer to the mandates of Philippine Agenda 21 than to NEDA’s MTPDP.

This is the more important matter than who the President would appoint to stably lead the DENR. It’s not a matter of personalities –Noynoy Aquino’s or Mon Paje’s.

About the Author:
Tony Cruzada is the Editor of Kamayan para sa Kalikasan Forum which meets every third Friday of the month to discuss about delicate issues about the environment.  Visit their Website @ http://kamayanforum.8m.net/

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