Environmental groups last Sunday joined the growing number of oppositors to the proposal to rewrite the 1987 Philippine Constitution.
The groups, which include Nilad, Wild for Wetlands Network, Earth Island Institute-Philippines, Save Freedom Island Movement and the Save Laguna Lake Movement, said the proposed Charter change (Cha-cha) is not only anti-poor but also anti-environment.
At a news conference held at the Arroceros Forest Park in Manila, leaders of these groups said the proposed amendments to the Constitution will only worsen environment plunder.
Nilad, a group named after a mangrove species, was particularly alarmed that, based on the Resolution of Both Houses 8 (RBH8), the proposed provisions under Article XII will have an adverse impact on the environment.
According to the group, Section 2 grants Congress the power to allow foreigners or 100-percent foreign-owned corporations the power to solely exploit our natural resources.
This means that foreign companies will be allowed to do mining, they said.
Foreigners can also own agricultural lands under Section 7 of RHB8.
On the other hand, under Section 3, the State or Regional Legislature can grant and allow private corporations the power to lease more than 1,000 hectares up to 100 years.
Kevin Paul Aguayon, spokesman of Nilad, said even the PDP Laban version will allow the sale or lease of reclaimed coastal areas or forest lands to transnational corporations.
“These proposals are anti-poor and anti-environment. We know what large foreign companies do to the environment. They destroy the environment for profits,” he said.
According to the groups, the proposal also deleted parts of the 1987 Constitution, which provides that “alienable lands of the public domain shall be limited to agricultural lands.”
PDP Laban also deleted provisions in the present Constitution saying that “private corporations or associations may not hold such alienable lands of the public domain except by lease, for a period not exceeding 25 years, renewable for not more than 25 years, and not to exceed 1,000 hectares in area.”
“Allowing foreigners to own land will not only worsen landlessness in the country. It will also displace poor Filipinos from their farming communities and ancestral domains,” he said.
“Allowing foreigners to exploit our natural resources will unleash more development-aggression projects in the rural areas, which could exacerbate the deteriorating condition of the environment. It will pave the way for the unbridled exploitation of ancestral domains and even protected habitats by profit-hungry corporations and their powerful backers in the bureaucracy,” Aguayon added.
He said the proposed Cha-cha amendments “boost the business prospects of mining, logging and other sectors of the extractive industry at the expense of the poor.”
“If President Duterte is really against environmental destruction, he will not support the proposed amendments to the Constitution because these will destroy the environment and lead to biodiversity loss,” he added.
Moreover, Aguayon said land reclamations will endanger the lives of millions of people in coastal areas, noting the adverse effect of land reclamation.
“There are currently 102 land-reclamation projects in the pipeline. These will lead to massive destruction of coastal areas and, in the process, leave our coastal communities defenseless against sea-level rise or storm surge, “ he said.
Nilad added the proposal to broaden the category of “alienable lands” could be intended to allow the selling of reclaimed lands that could lead to a “reclamation surge or boom” by enticing politicians and policy-makers to hasten the process of approving reclamation projects across the country.
There is a pending government blueprint, which features more than 100 reclamation projects all over the country. About one-third of these reclamation proposals are focused on Manila Bay.
“Reclamation is extremely harmful to the environment,” Aguayon stressed.
“If President Duterte is against environmental destruction, he can start by ordering the ban on land reclamation,” he added.
Land reclamation, according to Nilad, destroys wetlands and leads to severely damaged marine environment, which is irreversible.
“It will affect our biodiversity. It will affect the livelihood of thousands of coastal residents and fisherfolk and promote a development model that favors big business instead of enhancing sustainability and climate change-readiness of communities,” he said.