Celebrating 2021 victories for the environment

As 2021 is about to conclude, we look back on how environmental defenders in the Philippines and around the world are demonstrating that we really can win back a better world even amid the multiple crises of climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and rising authoritarianism.

Court victories uphold “activism not terrorism.” A recent string of court decisions have increasingly underscored that land and environmental defenders should be recognized and respected and not Red-tagged and abused. At least 16 incarcerated defenders—including Manila Bay activists Cora Agovida and Michael Bartolome, the “Lumad School 7” in Cebu, and four indigenous Tumandok leaders in Capiz—were freed upon the quashing of trumped-up charges filed against them. Courts also junked charges against 17 defenders in the Northern Mindanao region, but they have yet to be released from jail.

The latest and biggest development was the Supreme Court decision declaring as unconstitutional the “killer provision” in the anti-terrorism law (ATL) allowing the government to vaguely define human rights defense as constituting terrorism. Sure, military and public officials will most likely continue with their Red-tagging and harassment charges—they have done so even without the ATL. But the best and the brightest human rights lawyers can leverage the SC decision to make it harder for them to do so.

UN declares healthy environment as human right. His fist in the air, a visibly jubilant David Boyd, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, celebrated the UN Human Rights Council’s adoption of Resolution 48/13 officially recognizing the right of people to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.

This landmark decision, which solidifies environmental rights as inalienable and therefore non-negotiable, is founded on the continuing struggles of land and environmental defenders everywhere to challenge governments and businesses undermining these rights. The actions of Filipino environmental defenders contributed to this watershed moment, with various reports helping concretize the urgency to recognize, respect, and protect their work in defending the people’s right to a clean environment.

The world’s first People’s Green New Deal filed. In a time when climate change is increasingly seen as a wholesale human rights assault on the most vulnerable peoples of the world, Filipino environmental defenders worked with the progressive legislators of the Makabayan coalition to file House Resolution No. 2362 or a declaration of a People’s Green New Deal (PGND).

This home-brewed version of the green economic stimulus proposal of United States legislator Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the first GND proposal in Southeast Asia and the first “people’s” version in the world. Its centerpiece is its loss and damage mechanisms aimed at demanding compensation from polluter nations and corporations to finance climate adaptation and green recovery.

The PGND now has a critical urgency as the nation reels from the aftermath of Supertyphoon “Odette.” More than 2 million Filipinos were affected by severe winds, floods, and storm surges. It is high time for the Philippine government to mobilize finance efforts to not only deliver aid, but more importantly to invest in climate resilience and ecological sustainability in its recovery efforts.

The year has been immensely difficult, the challenges oftentimes overwhelming. Let us celebrate these victories big and small, because they were hard-fought and well-deserved. Let us take lessons and inspiration from them, and dig in deep for the challenges ahead in 2022.

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Leon Dulce is the national coordinator of the Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment (Kalikasan PNE), a national grassroots-led environmental campaign center established in 1997.