Barely a week from assuming the country’s highest position, President-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. has yet to name his secretary who will manage the country’s environment and natural resources.
Environment Acting Secretary Jim O. Sampulna has already formed a transition team for the next Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) leadership and has assured a smooth turnover of the agency’s programs and projects to the incoming administration.
Ahead of Marcos Jr.’s anointed DENR chief, various groups are already anxious about its leader and what will be Marcos’s marching orders that will define his policy in the next six years.
Fight illegal fishing, restore ocean abundance
Oceana Philippines, an ocean conservation nongovernment organization and its network of stakeholders, was among the first to urge the incoming Marcos administration to continue the fight against illegal commercial fishing, and to strengthen policies to restore ocean abundance.
The group told the Business Mirror via e-mail on June 22 that the new administration should continue the reforms made in the fight against illegal commercial fishing in municipal waters to attain food and nutritional security, and alleviate the worsening poverty in coastal communities all over the country.
“Our municipal waters can be a major source of protein for the Filipino people. But in order to do that, the government must continue to protect our fragile marine habitats and the preferential rights of our artisanal fishers to the municipal waters” and the licenses of violators “must be revoked,” Oceana added.
Oceana Philippines Vice President Gloria Estenzo Ramos pointed out that they wish the next administration “to embed protection and resiliency of our marine and natural ecosystems first and foremost, and fully implement our fisheries and environmental laws, especially the vessel-monitoring mechanisms.”
Eco group’s wish list for BBM
The group EcoWaste Coalition, a waste and pollution watchdog, and its network of environmental groups came up with a wish list for Marcos Jr.
Aileen Lucero said No. 1 on their list is for the issuance of a directive to hasten the phase-out of Nonenvironmentally Acceptable Products and Packaging with single-use plastic as an immediate priority.
The group’s No. 2 wish is for the Marcos administration to hasten government ratification of the Basel Convention Ban Amendment and stop waste importation.
“[Marcos Jr. must] develop a legislative agenda for the environment, with the active participation of rights holders and impacted communities and sectors, to adequately address waste and pollution issues amid a climate emergency,” Lucero told the BusinessMirror via Messenger on June 22.
Third, the new administration must also declare the government‘s commitment to sustainable and socially just-waste policy and programs, and suspend, if not reverse, the planned shift to waste-to-energy incineration and other “false solutions” to the garbage problem, Lucero said.
Lucero added that Mr. Marcos should reiterate the government‘s commitment to toxic polychlorinated biphenyls-free Philippines by 2025.
She added that the government should ensure compliance with all other chemical safety-related targets, including, but not limited to the 2020 phase-out of mercury-added products, and the 2017 and 2019 phase-out of lead-containing decorative and industrial paints.
Lucero pointed out that the new leaders should “stop red-tagging among environmental defenders and start convergence.”
Climate action, justice a must
Asked what they expect from the incoming Marcos administration, Lea Guerrero, country director at Greenpeace Southeast Asia Philippines, said with the country being among the most vulnerable to climate impacts, action and justice must be Marcos Jr.’s top priority.
Guerrero admitted that Marcos Jr. comes to office at a crucial time when the world only has a few more years to keep global temperature rise within the 1.5 degrees Celsius in order to prevent the worst impacts of climate change.
“Concretely, this means he must prioritize dropping all nuclear plans,” Guerrero told the BusinessMirror via Messenger on June 22.
“Nuclear [power] is the most dangerous and most expensive way to generate electricity. It will put Filipino families at risk and will not solve the climate crisis,” she added.
Stop fossil fuel expansion
She said stopping the further expansion of fossil fuels, including fossil gas, means canceling all fossil gas projects in construction and in the pipeline, upholding the coal moratorium to cancel all projects in the pipeline, as well as dropping plans of exploration.
She added that the Commission on Human Rights final report on the National Inquiry on Climate Change has given basis for the Philippine government to ensure Carbon Majors are compelled to undertake human rights due diligence and are held accountable for failure to remediate human rights abuses arising from their business operations.
“If he is sincere in his pronouncements on climate action and promoting renewable energy, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. must drop all plans for nuclear energy and fossil gas,” Guerrero said.
“The key to a healthy environment is a healthy democracy,» she said.
To promote this, she said the new president must support people’s participation in governance, strengthen democratic institutions, and advance and protect justice and human rights.
Preparing for the worst
Meanwhile, a skeptical Leon Dulce, national coordinator of Kalikasan-People’s Network for the Environment, said they are preparing for the worst from the Marcos administration.
“We know their bottom lines are mega infrastructure, dirty energy and extractive projects to feed their edifice complex, and we know they will employ massive disinformation tactics to ‘greenwash’ over the destruction,” Dulce said via Messenger on June 21.
According to Dulce, the network, along with its network of environmental groups, “will hit the ground running on day one of the new administration with demands to reimpose a moratorium on mining applications and a national ban on open-pit mining.»
Overhaul EIS system
Dulce said they will demand a full overhaul of the Environmental Impact Statement system, which he said has been deliberately weakened by bureaucrats in the DENR to make it easier to railroad the implementation of destructive big-business projects.
“We will demand decisive action over land-use conflicts with critical watersheds, such as the Masungi Georeserve in Rizal, and the Environmentally Critical Areas Network of Palawan,“ Dulce pointed out.
„We will accept nothing less than an accomplished, independent scientist or environmental lawyer who has extensive field and community experience as Environment secretary in Marcos Jr.’s cabinet,” he added.
Dulce explained that the next environment chief should serve as a check and balance to the various big business interests in the Cabinet.
Image credits: Wikimedia CC BY SA-4.0