The Philippines is facing triple emergencies: Climate, environment and transition.
But first, we salute the House of Representatives for unanimously adopting House Resolution 1377 declaring a climate and environmental emergency. Typhoon Rolly tells us that the Pacific Ocean is now spawning stronger and more destructive typhoons due to global warming. Typhoon Ulysses, which flooded whole provinces and cities in Luzon, reminds us of the poor capacity of our balding forests to hold water. Indeed, we are in a climate and environmental emergency.
Japan and other countries of the world have been declaring a climate and environmental emergency, primarily in recognition of what is now uncontestable: Planet Earth is heating. Unmitigated, global warming poses an existential threat to all of humanity. By reckoning of the climate scientists, a rise in global temperature beyond 2.0 degrees from the pre-industrial era will be catastrophic. Arctic and Antarctic ice will melt, sea rise will inundate low-lying islands, coral reefs will die, agricultural crops will wilt, forest fires will break out everywhere, bio-diversity will disappear, etc. Hence, the battlecry of the climatologists in the 2015 Conference of Parties (UN Member States) in Paris: Limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5 degrees.
Global temperature has been rising due to the mounting greenhouse gases polluting the earth’s atmosphere. The greenhouse gases are accounted mainly by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and gas. However, deforestation also contributes to GHG emission, while reforestation helps mitigate global warming and strengthens a country’s adaptive capacity to climate change risks.
Most of the Philippine CSOs welcome House Resolution 1377. The Resolution provides the country extra power in its negotiation with developed countries on how to address global warming and finance mitigation and adaptation programs. The developed Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries (Europe, North America, Japan, etc.) and China happen to be the biggest GHG emitters because their past and present efforts to industrialize and modernize their countries are based on the intensive utilization of fossil fuel and extraction of natural resources.
In contrast, the Philippines is one of the lowest GHG emitters, and yet, it is in the top 5 of the list of countries that are most vulnerable to climate change risks. This is the logic behind the demand of developing countries for the developed countries to contribute more in the global effort to keep global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees (maximum of 2.0 degrees). They owe the world a huge “carbon debt.” The world is suffering from the “climate injustice” inflicted by the developed countries, including China, on the Philippines and other developing countries.
However, the declaration of a climate and environmental emergency should not be used solely for global negotiations on funding for global warming mitigation. They should steel the country’s resolve to address its own climate and environmental concerns. As it is, the Philippines is one country in Asia with a comprehensive set of environmental laws. They include laws promoting forestry protection, clean water, clean air, solid waste management, environmental awareness, renewable energy, organic agriculture, disaster risk reduction and management, rights of indigenous people, green jobs, and so on.
And yet, the continuing degradation of the environment remains unchecked. This is reflected in the failure of the DENR to renew the forests despite the huge budgetary allocations for the ambitious National Greening Program under the Aquino and Duterte administrations. As the President himself mentioned, the government has failed to stop the unscrupulous loggers and miners in cutting trees. To this rogue gallery must be added the local elites engaged in quarrying even in protected and forested areas of the archipelago.
This brings us then to a different type of emergency: The failure of the country to bridge the gap between policy pronouncements on environmental protection and actual fulfillment of the declared environmental targets. Philippine environmental laws, including PDP 2011-2016 of the Aquino administration and PDP 2017-2022 of the Duterte administration, are full of such policy pronouncements and declared protection targets. The goals have remained paper goals, while targets have remained paper targets. Prime examples: Reforestation goal, all-out renewable goal and shift to organic farming.
This gap between rhetorics and practice is partly rooted in the problem of government to address “transition” issues, foremost of which are having a clear “transformation” program and getting the support of critical stakeholders in making the transformation happen. For example, the organic farming law was enacted in 2010 or 10 years ago. And yet, there is very little progress in the propagation of organic farming, which still accounts for only 2 percent or so of the total farming area of the country per estimates by experts from UP Los Baños. Chemical agriculture dependent on chemical inputs rules the countryside.
Shifting from environmentally-degrading practice to earth-friendly one is not easy. This is why experts from the UN Environmental Programme have been asking countries to address “transition” issues, specifically the needed adjustment and transformation programs.
But a transition program can be unjust and can deepen social and economic inequality. Hence, the demand of trade unions and CSOs around the world is the formulation of “just transition” programs. Adjustment and transformation measures should not be unjust to the poor and should not be exclusivistic. Going “green” can lead to a “greed” economy dominated by a few “green” entrepreneurs.
Going green without a clear or just transition can also go awry. This is what has been happening in the case of the jeepney modernization program, which jeepney drivers and small operators are still questioning four years after the program was announced. There is no “just transition” program to ensure that affected drivers can have stable jobs if they get out of the jeepney business or be able to manage financially the shift to modernization.
In addition to the above criticism, Dr. Ted Mendoza of UP Los Baños and the Science Director of the CSO called Community Legal Help, explained other “blind sides” of the jeepney modernization (based on his study, “Blind Sides” of PUV Modernization). First, he asked: Why blame the lowly jeepney for all the pollution when there are over 12 million vehicles (cars, vans, buses, motorbikes and trucks) in the country? Second, why impose an expensive e-jeepney modernization on poor jeepney drivers? Each modern jeepney is now estimated to cost from P2.5 million to P2.6 million. To be able to pay this amount, Mendoza estimated that a jeepney driver must earn P6,899 a day. With loans from the DBP and LBP, the payables get bigger. And with fare hikes strictly regulated by the government, the indebted jeepney driver is not in a position to cover the high cost of shifting to modernization.
Thirdly, Mendoza asks why the numerous requirements on jeepney drivers enrolling under the modernization program? Under DOTR Dept. Order 2017-11, jeepney drivers/operators are asked to surrender their franchise and old jeepney. This is like surrendering a driver’s lifeline. There are other requirements: Membership in a cooperative tasked to do fleet management, having “lay-over garage” with sufficient space, and cooperative training that involves additional expenses.
Dr. Mendoza concluded that shifting to less-emitting modality cannot be avoided. However, he is asking why a top-down approach and arbitrariness in implementing modernization schemes that require more, not less, consultation and dialogue? Clearly, the country has a long way to go before it can master just transition management.