SOMEONE who sounded like “Earth mother” Odette Alcantara was fuming over the phone. “I am foaming at the mouth here,” she declared, and I could verily picture her doing so. Odette takes her advocacies very seriously, and none more so than that for the environment. And so for her to be “foaming at the mouth” over what has been described as the “desecration” of the Quezon Memorial Circle is entirely within reason —or imagination.
The new administration of the Circle which took over from the board headed by Charito Planas has lately been in a frenzy of construction, building a concrete fence around the area, and uprooting trees and tearing up shrubbery to make way for more concrete structures and paved areas. “And horrors!” exclaims Odette, “a permanent karnabal!”
The past dispensation, it is true, allowed carnivals, complete with booths and amusement rides, in the Circle during the holiday season, for the enjoyment of the public as the Circle was intended to be a “people’s park.” But the Circle was never intended to host a permanent amusement center, open all year round, which seems to be the intent of the current administration.
I remember that when I still sat on the board of the foundation administering the Circle, a member of the Quezon family objected to the opening of any more restaurants or the holding of activities like ballroom dancing and mass calisthenics. The family’s position, he said, was that the place was meant to serve as a “shrine” as it housed the remains of President Manuel Quezon and the Quezon Monument. But it was explained that the “memorial” to President Quezon covers only the inner area of the Circle, while the rest of the Circle was meant to be a park and public site, which could be enjoyed by Quezon City residents.
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To spare the city government the onerous burden of subsidizing the park’s operations, the foundation opened a portion to restaurants, mainly to raise operating funds but also to provide people in the area with places to eat and congregate.
At best, the situation at the time was a compromise, but it was a compromise in favor of keeping the Circle a safe, well-lit, green and hospitable public space where families could go for a little breather and engage in wholesome activities, like dancing and exercising. All without straining the city’s resources.
I don’t know, and neither does Odette Alcantara, what the new administration of the Circle plans for the park now. But judging from the feverish pace of construction and the number of trees and greenery torn up and paved over, preserving this oasis of nature in a city besieged by urban poor blight and unrestricted development doesn’t seem to be part of their blueprint.
Such a shame, since the Circle has long provided the people of Quezon City a respite from the stresses of urban life. The public doesn’t need any more buildings or man-made structures, as there are many of those all around. But a patch of green, with trees, shrubs, flowering bushes and grass in the middle of the city? That is a rarity, a precious resource, that needs to be preserved, not destroyed.
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More people than ever are going hungry every day, with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reporting that 1.02 billion people are going hungry today, an increase of 100 million over the figure last year.
The most recent increase in hunger is not the consequence of poor global harvests, said the FAO, but is caused by the world economic crisis that has resulted in lower incomes and increased unemployment. “This has reduced access to food by the poor,” the FAO said.
“A dangerous mix of the global economic slowdown combined with stubbornly high food prices in many countries has pushed some 100 million more people than last year into chronic hunger and poverty,” said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf. “The silent hunger crisis—affecting one-sixth of all of humanity—poses a serious risk for world peace and security. We urgently need to forge a broad consensus on the total and rapid eradication of hunger in the world and to take the necessary actions.”
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The news of an increase in world hunger is all the more dismaying as it caps a decade of failure following years of progress in eradicating the scourge of global hunger. The FAO said good progress was made in reducing chronic hunger in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, but hunger has been rising slowly but steadily in the past decade. Last year, though, the FAO reduced its estimate of hungry people by around 48 million “due primarily to a better-than-expected global supply.” That good news, though, was swept aside by the global economic crisis.
This year, mainly due to the shocks of the economic crisis combined with often high national food prices, the number of hungry people is expected to grow overall by about 11 percent, FAO projects, drawing on analysis by the US Department of Agriculture.
Almost all of the world’s undernourished live in developing countries. In Asia and the Pacific, an estimated 642 million people are suffering from chronic hunger; in Sub-Saharan Africa, 265 million; in Latin America and the Caribbean, 53 million; in the Near East and North Africa, 42 million; and in the developed countries, 15 million in total.
The economic crisis also comes on the heels of the food and fuel crisis of 2006-08. While food prices in world markets declined over the past months, domestic prices in developing countries came down more slowly. They remained on average 24 percent higher in real terms by the end of 2008 compared to 2006. For poor consumers, who spend up to 60 percent of their incomes on staple foods, this means a strong reduction in their effective purchasing power.
