Cebu Daily News turns 16 years old today or two years shy of what society would call young adulthood. With every year added comes a greater realization and appreciation of the paper’s role in Cebu’s landscape.
An anniversary calls to mind events that sharpened the paper’s role as a proactive watcher and advocate of environmental issues.
We covered the fate of the whale sharks of Oslob, the century-old rain trees in Naga threatened by a national road-widening project, the mounds of coal ash waste from power plants that later led to scrutiny of the Balili estate, the oil spill in Talisay City that damaged mangroves, the tragedy of flashfloods, forest fires and abuse of fragile water aquifers, and the open secret that eateries in Pasil offer “pawikan” or sea turtle stew.
Even the debate over flyovers, a politically laced controversy, had to be framed as a question of what quality of life Cebuanos want in an urban metropolis choked with traffic, concrete and bad air.
The attention to these stories set off ripples that led to changes, hopefully with the biggest one being a change of perspective in the way we view gifts of nature, which are the source of life itself.
Perhaps we needed a bigger lesson about respect.
After the October earthquake and November’s supertyphoon Yolanda, the extensive damage left in their trail left no doubt that we are not in full control of the world we live in.
Our role as stewards of magnificent, but fragile resources, is now a matter of survival.
With the reality of Climate Change scarring our sense of a normal life, CDN will continue its advocacy to show the connection between the way we tread on the Earth and how we can hope to thrive.
Either we continue to stride on with hard nail boots, kicking aside inconvenient patches of green, or we pause in bare feet to survey first where we are going, and how much we have to destroy to reach our destination.
Rehabilitation and rebuilding communities will remain a major agenda for Cebu in the post-Yolanda era.
We will definitely be there watching, writing, waving the red flag for action.
As Cebu Daily News marches on to its next milestone of an 18th birthday, we thank you, our readers, for supporting our coming of age.
It makes the mission of “journalism that builds communities” all worthwhile.
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