Over the weekend, I made a promise to myself to devote the remaining years of my life to three projects.
The first is to strengthen and deepen the work I have already started in 2002, fighting malnutrition among Filipino children 5 years old and under—the Kalusugan ng Bata, Karunungan ng Bayan (K and K) school-feeding program that ceased operations in 2010, and the OMG (“Oh My Gulay!”) campaign in February 2011, which teaches elementary pupils to eat nutritious vegetables and fruits by involving them in planting and maintaining on-campus vegetable and fruit gardens.
After recently reading “Save The Children’s” Cost of Hunger report about the Philippines, I resolved to redouble my efforts at advocating for effective public policy on child nutrition, as the staggering malnutrition cost of the Philippines was P328 billion worth of economic losses in 2013 —equivalent to around 2.83 percent of GDP at the time.
The second project is about saving our seas—which includes advocating for more marine-protected areas and persuading local government officials to proclaim a temporary fishing ban within their overfished municipal waters, among other things.
A recent United Nations Development Program study shows our marine coastal resources provide up to $556 million in goods and services. Our fishing industry employs up to 1.4 million people, and supplies up to 2.6 percent of the world’s supply. In fact, Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez recently announced that the Philippines is now the European Union’s (EU) top supplier of tuna, on account of our inclusion in the EU-Generalized Scheme of Preferences+ scheme. The Philippines boasts a coastline of 36,289 kilometers long. The seas surrounding our 7,000 islands offer the 100 million Filipinos their future safety net, as it has always been in history and culture. Hence, this underscores the urgency of efforts to save our seas today.
The third project is for our senior citizens. A 2015 University of the Philippines Population Institute study projected that the country’s senior population (60 years and above) will double in less than 10 years, from 6.8 percent in 2010 (around 6.2 million) to 10 percent in 2025 (roughly 12 million).
The Commission on Population said in 2015 that, while Filipinos are generally living longer, they are not necessarily healthier—as our senior citizens are only partially reaping the benefit of better health care. They also remain among the poorest sectors of society, as the latest Department of Social Welfare and Development data showed that there were roughly a million senior citizens in poor households across the country in 2011. Such a situation demands urgent action. The three projects cover among the most serious social and economic challenges the country faces today—child malnutrition, mismanagement (if not destruction) of our marine resources and problems brought by our aging population. These are issues that demand the attention of our decision-makers.
In some countries, these areas of vital research are conducted by think tanks and by serious research universities. Unfortunately, think tanks in the Philippines and research universities doing this type of research are rare. Through the Angara Centre for Law and Economics and the UP President Edgardo J. Angara (UP-PEJA) Fellowship, we hope we could fill the gap and assist academics and researchers in pursuing the pressing policy studies.
E-mail: angara.ed@gmail.com.