Moving from ‘I know’ to ‘I care,’ then finally to ‘I will take action’

A Chinese proverb tells us: “If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.”

There is no doubt that climate change is now upon us. Natural disasters, atmospheric disturbances and violent storms like Supertyphoon “Yolanda” have ravaged different regions of our archipelago one after the other with increasing strength and frequency. Arising from this environmental problem is the issue of long-term planning that the Philippine government should be doing now or should have done a decade ago, in line with the United Nations’ declaration of a Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014).

This declaration resulted in Congress enacting the National Environmental Awareness and Education Act of 2008 (Republic Act No. 9512). Its aim is to encourage people to take pro-environment initiatives based on informed judgment. As the well-known environmentalist David W. Orr wrote: In learning, we have to take a leap from “I know” to “I care,” to “I will take action.”

Environmental literacy encompasses these three elements, especially the third one. However, being environmentally literate would require another competency, that is being scientifically literate. Ecology is the focus of environmental education, where our country’s poor performance in recent international evaluation tests indicates that our youth lack knowledge in that discipline.

That explains why most Filipinos are not aware of climate change and other issues like biodiversity loss and pollution. The garbage problem persists and is always blamed for the flash floods. Despite pro-environment policies and laws—e.g., Ecological Solid Waste Management Act (RA 9003), Clean Air Act (RA 8749), Clean Water Act (RA 9275)—we still have to experience a sound environment offering a better quality of life. Thus, aside from education, we also need political will from our leaders for a strict implementation of these laws.

Perhaps, if our countrymen are environmentally literate they would understand, sympathize and support Naderev “Yeb” Saño, a delegate of the Philippines to the Climate Change Conference in Poland. Saño, whose family hails from Tacloban City, among the worst-hit areas in Yolanda’s path, is appealing to developed countries to cut their carbon emissions as a way of helping mitigate climate change.

Here are some of the solutions that government can consider: (1) to make the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program of the Department of Social Welfare and Development productive, train each member of poor families to become environmentally literate and provide them jobs like guarding forests and waterways; (2) enact a law that will require broadcast and print media to air/print modules of environmental principles that will remind and raise the awareness of people.

Implementing these resolutions would mean addressing environmental problems at the grassroots, making us more resilient and adaptive.

—MOISES NORMAN Z. GARCIA, [email protected]