Stepping up protection of our natural wealth

Atty. Gloria Estenzo-Ramos

What gets measured, gets managed” is a business adage attributable to leading management thinker, Peter Drucker. It is not just applicable to business, but to government, NGOs and even aspects of our personal lives.

We all have goals and dreams, but they remain just that if we don’t take steps to reach them and establish indicators as to how we are faring in the journey towards that goal. Tracking your progress enables you to adjust, change strategies or milestones, and recalibrate to attain that goal.

Drucker’s oft-quoted maxim is much needed in our environmental governance system. We are known, to our embarrassment, as a data-deficient country. We make magnificent laws and plans but are quite weak in the implementation. Likewise, we still must galvanize the participation of an informed citizenry to be engaged in decision-making at all levels and move lethargic governments into action.

While we have the legal framework to protect, conserve and manage our natural capital, we are largely at a loss in obtaining updated data on the status of our forests, fisheries, air, water, and even the number of environmental cases being filed, prosecuted, and resolved, to name a few.

Even if the data is available, one must go through a tedious to access them from agencies, despite the state policy of full disclosure. Some resort to filing cases to compel the production of these public documents, which under our Constitution and national laws, we, as citizens, have the right to know, and to be informed and to participate in the decision-making process.

How many of our protected areas have implemented their management plans, and with full stakeholder participation?

The Philippines is known globally as an ecological superpower. How much of our waters and biodiversity have been committed by government to be protected under the various international agreements that we have signed?

We are a signatory to the Paris Agreement where together with 194 countries which committed to reduce atmospheric carbon emissions to below 2 degrees Celsius (above pre-industrial level). How many of the 1,634 local government units have completed their respective local climate change action plans (LLCAP) within 2017 and started the transition to the use of renewable energy?

How come coal, which emissions are the number one global source of pollution and climate change, is still being promoted, at the gross expense of the health of the community and our planet?

How many of our coastal local government units (LGUs) are seriously enforcing their mandates under our fisheries laws, as amended? How many of the LGUs have updated their comprehensive land use plan that already integrates climate change impacts and response?

Some national agencies and local government units, even hire consultants to conduct feasibility studies on certain projects. But, when a new administration, whether national or local, comes in, the study or plan is conveniently disregarded as it is not a priority, with the taxpayers’ money spent for them going down the drain. Meanwhile, the management plan remains as a plan, untouched until a disaster comes along that becomes a wake-up call for many.

Admittedly, our institutions are still quite weak, unlike in more mature governments like the United States, United Kingdom and Germany.

Case in point is the United States where despite pronouncement of the Trump administration to revoke its commitment under the Paris Agreement, the states and cities and even the business sector have committed to do their share in reducing carbon emissions.

Our hope is for our LGUs to step up, in performing their mandates of protecting our natural life support systems, as it is already a devolved function.

With sheer political will, comprehensive planning and active stakeholder participation, they can achieve the goal of protecting the rights of the people to a balanced and healthful ecology, as some exemplary local chief executives have. It is not as if they have no financial resources as they have the Internal Revenue Allotment from the national government, and the power to source out funds including those that they can get from fines and penalties in the implementation of the various laws and local ordinances.

It is not true that Congress can give zero budget to any province as the Constitution mandates fiscal autonomy to LGUs, which cannot be withheld by any President or Congress for that matter. The Local Government Code is a revolutionary Code that gives local autonomy and fiscal autonomy to our local government units. We have a decentralized governance system where LGUs have a guaranteed share of revenues from the Philippine national government. These are meant for LGUs to prioritize basic services including environmental protection and livelihoods of their constituents. Are they doing that?

The Local Government Code, if fully implemented, could have been the stepping stone to healthy ecosystems and perhaps, federalism, where a pre-condition, among many, is matured political institutions.

But, with many LGUs’ failure to do their duty of protecting our natural wealth under a decentralized Local Government Code, and with political dynasties still heavily entrenched, the thrust towards federalism is, as former Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide, Jr. said, a “lethal experiment, fatal leap” that our nation can ill afford — at this time.