Duterte urged: Include environment in top agenda

Bangon Kalikasan Movement looks forward to how presumptive President-elect Rodrigo Duterte will execute his agenda together with the “best and the brightest” (“Davao job fair: 400 top gov’t posts open,” Front Page, 5/16/16)—especially in this perilous journey for our country and the environment.

Encouraged by Duterte’s blunt ways, allow us to cut to the chase: He and his team—who should not only be the best and the brightest, but also the most patriotic and compassionate, especially with poor Filipinos—should first and foremost fully implement our environment laws as effectively as he has implemented the laws in Davao City.

In his campaign speeches, Duterte repeatedly warned criminals, drug lords and the corrupt: “S-T-O-P. Stop or I’ll kill you.”

Can he say the same to “environment criminals,” the “pushers” and “coddlers” of illegal logging, quarrying, coal-fired power plants, mining and other environmentally destructive activities?

Global warming and climate change, like crime and the drug problem, are intensifying. The scorching heat is killing plants, animals and almost all sources of food. Water is becoming scarce, especially clean water. While a large part of the country suffers from the heat, some parts are experiencing heavy rains and floods. Extreme weather conditions are killing agriculture and our economy. Human health is gravely affected. Poverty will worsen and those who would resort to robbery, theft, drug pushing, murder and the like will only grow in number.

Not even a tough-talking leader can stop an empty stomach from committing crimes. One or two or even a hundred of them may be killed, but there will remain a thousand other hungry stomachs that could turn to crimes to get themselves filled.

Thus, it is vital for Duterte to include environmental protection and conservation in his top 5 agenda. Duterte impressed us when, after his final rally at Luneta, which gathered the biggest crowd among the presidential candidates’ rallies, he and his supporters left the place clean of garbage. Some say, however, that beyond the clean surroundings of Davao City, there are still dumps.

That is another challenge. Dumps all over the country are polluting and destroying our land, water and air resources, and harming public health. The key to managing our wastes is in valuing all our natural and manmade resources so that nothing will be wasted, everything will have its proper place. We know that we have “killed” some dumps and that we have set up instead barangay ecology centers for segregation at source (households and establishments), composting, and recycling.

If we are resource-conscious, our behavior would be reoriented for good, we would have more land space for reforestation and agriculture, clean water to drink, clean air to breathe. We invite the presumptive president-elect of the Philippines to join us in pursuing aggressively the use of renewable sources of energy—solar, wind, water—because air pollution kills.

Mayor-President, can’t we do this in six months to one year? Good luck to you and us, the Filipino people!

—JOEY C. PAPA, president, Bangon Kalikasan Movement, [email protected]