FOR THE LONGEST time, the Philippine government has been insinuating on the urgent need to allocate sufficient funds to ensure effective implementation of programs embarking on environmental protection.
The Philippines has more than enough environmental laws — Republic Act 9729 (Climate Change Act), RA 9275 (Philippine Clean Water Act), RA 7942 (Mining Act of 1995), RA 9003 (Ecological Solid Waste Management Act), the NIPAS Act, and the Renewable Energy Act of 2008, among many others.
However, politics and vested interest — or the sheer lack of political will somehow affected its full implementation.
For one, floods, earthquakes, landslides, heatwave, forest denudation, and high concentration of pollution in rivers, lakes and even the air we breathe, require swift and decisive actions.
The Manila Bay reclamation project, the deteriorating state of the Laguna Lake, the desecration of the Chocolate Hills, and denudation of the Upper Marikina River Basin Protected Landscape, scraping of the Sierra Madre mountain range, are but some of the indicators of the government’s inability to protect what is left of the environment.
Also forming the list is the proliferation of coal mining which continues to decimate efforts to shift to renewable energy.
Interestingly, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and bureaus under its radar, have been reduced to token stewards as the agency heads are beholden to the appointing authority.
Oh yes, politics and vested interest environment protection are intertwined. As such, environmental laws have been decimated into nothing but documents piling up dust in government offices.
In a nationwide survey administered by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, eight in every 10 Filipinos are not happy with the way the government has been addressing environmental concerns. The remaining 20 percent are either unsure or unaware.
What does this mean? More Filipinos have become mindful of the potential impact of an environmental crisis, but the government seems to underestimate its risks and implications — or maybe, they’re compromising public safety for the love of money.
