Typhoon Vinta and the deaths and devastations it visited on Mindanao remind us that the Philippines is facing two life-crippling environmental problems—extremes in global climate behavior dubbed as climate change, and the general environmental degradation of the archipelago.
The irony is that the Philippines is a low emitter of greenhouse gases—0.3 percent of the world’s total per study by the UN Environmental Program. And yet, it is in the global short list of the most vulnerable to climate changes, which spawn devastating droughts, floods and land instabilities.
This vulnerability is further compounded by the sad state of the country’s environment and natural resources, characterized, among others, by massive deforestation, biodiversity loss, poor solid-waste management and weak implementation of the laws on clean air and clean water.
Another irony is that the Philippines has a relatively comprehensive set of environmental laws, enacted in the course of the last four or five decades.
The Philippines is considered relatively advanced in developing Asia in terms of policy responses to different environmental challenges, ranging from reforestation and biodiversity conservation to air and water-quality maintenance, solid-waste management, renewable-energy development and adoption of mitigation/adaptation measures related to climate change. These legislative responses were crafted partly in response to the clamor for environmental reforms raised by a fairly active environmental movement.
However, there is a wide gap between legislation and implementation of environmental reforms. For example, the reforestation laws dating back to the 1970s have failed to stop the denudation of our forests. In fact, the Philippines has one of the fastest rates of deforestation. Per study by the Ateneo de Manila’s Environmental Science, the national forest cover shrank from 50 percent in the 1950s to only 6 percent in 2010.
This was the reason the Aquino administration launched a multibillion National Greening Program (NGP) with ambitious targets—1.5 billion trees planted in 1.5 million hectares in six years. It is not clear if the NGP targets have been met and if the planted trees are now maturing to provide protection to all the regions of the country.
Also, the overwhelming majority of the local government units have not complied with the law on the closure of open and unsanitary landfills or dump sites. In environmental education, a 2008 law requires its integration at all levels of basic, tertiary and technical-vocational education; and yet, the three educational authorities—Department of Education, Commission on Higher Education and Technical Education and Skills Development Authority—still have to comply with this integration mandate, although they have been carrying out specialized environmental education/training programs.
Clearly, there is an urgent need for greater vigor, coherence and consistency in the implementation of environmental laws and programs. The 20 or so typhoons that regularly wash to our shores every year and alternating El Niño (drought)/La Niña (typhoons) affecting the country underline the urgent need to put environmental renewal and climate-change readiness at the center of development planning for the government. This necessarily requires a green shift in the economy.
Ironically, a shift toward a green/greener economy is the key to a job-full, sustainable development path for the country. Combating climate change and environmental degradation means adopting measures to insure sustainable broad-based development for the country.
Unlike in the 1950s to 1970s, the Philippines cannot afford to use its remaining forests and minerals to export and finance the requirements of agro-industrial development at home—unless it is prepared to commit ecological suicide. The country then was an import-dependent, inward-looking economy. Today, it has a stagnating agro-industrial base unable to compete in the global export market as well as in the liberalized domestic market for varied reasons, primarily the high cost of doing business and the nightmarish absence of needed infrastructures. Only the narrow export sector (electronics assembly, select auto-parts manufacture and banana/pineapple products) and the globally outsourced call-center/business-process outsourcing services are doing well. But, on the whole, the remittances of 10 million or so overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) are what are sustaining the country and the various service industries in the country.
If the idea is to create jobs through industries competing globally on the basis of cheap natural resources, the Philippines is a goner as a nation. If the idea is to compete on the basis on cheap labor, it is also a loser, as it has been losing out to China, Vietnam, South Asia and now Africa.
Going green? This is clearly the way forward for the Philippines. As pointed out by this author in earlier articles, going green has tremendous job and business potentials for the country.
First, millions of jobs can be created by restoring the environment—the renewal and rebuilding of our disappearing forests, eroded watersheds, missing esteros and waterways and threatened ecosystems. The Visayas State University in the Visayas and the Haribon non-governmental organization have perfected the “rainforestation” model, which transforms host communities into forest keepers and trains them to plant climate-resistant tree varieties, mostly of the old types. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) architects of the NGP have adopted this model in the promotion of DENR-community organization partnership in planting trees.
Second, millions of jobs can be created by transforming communities nationwide (from the coastal to the highland) into climate-change ready or climate-change resilient habitats and infrastructures, such as building up dikes and drainage systems, cleaning up rivers and esteros, fortifying houses or settlements against floods and soil erosion, developing concrete barangay pathways and generating alternative fuel. The whole idea is to rebuild communities into ecological and sustainable ones. Local community-development planners should abandon the old relocate-and-transfer approach in favor of an integrated on-site or near-site community-renewal and -rebuilding program involving job and housing creation for the urban and rural poor.
Third, the emerging “green sector” of the economy—hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, etc.—should and must be supported. One challenge that must be addressed by the government is how to help finance community-based or small renewable-energy (RE) projects that are labor-intensive and community-friendly, e.g., series of mini hydro projects or sabo dams. Another challenge is how to connect these RE projects to the grid and buy the energy at fair prices.
A green economic shift also means the greening of the three economic sectors—industry, agriculture and services. The way forward for the globalized but uncompetitive Philippine manufacturing is through an upgrading program requiring higher value-adding but energy-efficient chains of industrial activities. This entails, for example, the transformation of the export-led electronics and auto-assembly plants into generators of higher-value-added products, such as original equipment manufactures, brands and even new global products. For local manufacturing, this means a similar industrial upgrading and adoption of an energy economy supplemented by a fair-trade policy regime (e.g., anti-smuggling).
To sum up, going green is a win-win proposition for the country. But such a shift will not be easy, for this requires “unlearning” by government economic planners of the old paradigm of “trickling down” growth through debt-financed big-ticket infrastructure, focus on the promotion and development of select export products and outright reliance on OFW remittances. Going green—at the national level—also means going beyond superficial green programs like cleaning up of public parks or once-in-a-while dredging of the Pasig River or building “green homes” for the rich and famous. Going green means total mobilization of the country under a green development vision where rich and poor Filipinos have a role to play.