Neric Acosta’s ‘show-and-tell’

I’ve been wondering why Neric Acosta failed to make it during his run for the Senate in 2010 when he has all the attributes of a winning candidate: he is extremely articulate and knowledgeable, has a winning smile (with charming dimples framing his mouth), and is truly passionate about his chosen cause: the environment. Why, he’s even an adept dancer!

But I guess it’s his passion and drive to instill in Filipinos awareness of the environment and how our individual behavior contributes to its degradation that explains his loss. He can be the most disastrous dinner guest ever.

For the message Acosta brings is rather gloomy, if not outright depressing. For show-and-tell at the recent Bulong Pulungan at the Sofitel, he presented a slide show that he’s been touring around the country for the past three years (you could call it a low-rent version of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”). The slide show consists of simulations on what could happen in the country’s “vulnerable hotspots” in the event of a major typhoon or similar disaster. And some of those slides—those of the areas around the Pasig River and Laguna Lake, those of Iligan and Cagayan de Oro—have already been brought to awful reality by storms “Ondoy” and “Sendong.”

In his capacity as presidential adviser for environmental protection, it’s Acosta’s job to keep P-Noy on his toes regarding environmental concerns. The President’s learning curve on the environment, says Acosta, “has been a steep J,” meaning P-Noy’s awareness and store of knowledge has risen considerably, motivated no doubt by “the 33 disasters that visited our country in the past year.”

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“We are not entirely helpless,” Acosta assures. True, climate change and its resultant impacts have wrought disasters that have resulted in catastrophic loss of lives. “But we can prepare and carry out measures to prevent deaths and minimize damage,” he says.

Climate change, Acosta adds, is forcing us to re-think what he calls the “Five I’s”: infrastructure, insurance, information, investments and institutions, to better prepare for shifts in weather patterns, areas newly vulnerable to calamities (“Mindanao will no longer be typhoon-free,” Acosta notes), and new environmental challenges. It will take more than just stop-gap measures or feel-good messages, says Acosta. What is needed is nothing less than “re-thinking our relationship with the earth and greater consciousness about our role in preserving and protecting it.”

The presidential adviser quotes a deep-sea diver and environmental champion on what is at stake: “Everyone has a Plan B, Plan C or Plan D should something go wrong. But we have only one planet, we have no Planet B.” Truly, short of building a gigantic space ship to fly us to outer space in the event Earth becomes uninhabitable, we (and our descendants) have nowhere else to go.

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Acosta may wax philosophical about environmental concerns, but when he puts on his other hat as general manager of the Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA), he moves from theory to urgent practice.

Appointed to “clean up the lake,” Acosta faces a huge, daunting challenge. Laguna Lake, which has an area of 95,000 hectares, is the biggest lake in the Philippines and the third largest in Asia. “It is also one of the dirtiest lakes, if not the dirtiest, in our region,” Acosta notes.

Laguna Lake is not only huge, it also plays a vital role in the country’s economy. Sixty percent of Metro Manila’s fresh-water fish supply comes from Laguna Lake, says Acosta, while its shores host 64 towns and cities. Right now, Maynilad Water takes 200 million liters of fresh water a day from the lake to augment Metro Manila’s water supply (after treatment), while Manila Water will soon be taking an equal amount.

The bad news is that Laguna Lake is also Metro Manila’s “toilet,” with both households and industries dumping untreated sewage into the streams and rivers that lead to the lake, and onto the lake itself.

This is why one short-term strategy to address lake pollution is clearing the shores of Laguna Lake of informal settlements (domestic waste makes up to 70 percent of pollutants in the lake), while closing down the “pollutive pipes” that introduce untreated waste water from factories, fast food outlets and commercial establishments.

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Just before the 2010 elections, the previous administration was in the process of finalizing a deal with a Belgian contractor for the dredging of Laguna Lake. Budgeted at a whopping P18.7 billion, the project struck P-Noy as decidedly NOT “daang matuwid” and ordered the cancellation of the project. Claiming breach of contract, the Belgian company has sued the government, and the case is now under arbitration.

Acosta is solidly behind the President on this one. “Naglalaro ng putik (Playing with mud),” is how P-Noy has described the proposal, and Acosta says that before dredging is even attempted “we must first study the lake’s environment and determine what would happen if we begin disturbing the lake bed, which is an ecosystem in itself.”

Also a mini-ecosystem in itself is the new LLDA headquarters now rising on a lot across the street from the Heart Center. True to the leanings of its chairman, the building will be a “green smart building,” using the latest technology and building materials that will reduce energy consumption and thus leave as light a “carbon footprint” as possible. Acosta says the structure should be up before the end of the year.

I trust that by the time the building is up, Acosta will have served his 90-day suspension as a result of a 12-year-old case of alleged misuse of development funds now being heard in the Sandiganbayan. He has quite a mouthful to say on that, too, but that’s for another column.