The Condition of the Philippine Environment

The Republic of the Philippines is an archipelago of some 7,100 islands and islets, majestic in their splendor. The numerous islands support a broad range of highly productive ecosystems, tropical forests and mountains, mangrove swamps and coral reefs.

Ours is a developing country with a population of almost 85 million Filipinos. The Philippines is a paradise for those who love the sun, beach, surfing and the exotic life at a very low cost. But even in paradise, we endure problems caused by a high incidence of poverty, by industrial expansion, and by rapid population growth. There is considerable abuse of our natural resources -- the destruction of coral reefs, poison and dynamite fishing, slash and burn farming on our mountains, and the pollution of our lakes and rivers. We have been involved in the effort to diminish four major problems of the Philippine environment, the problems of deforestation, air pollution, water pollution, urban waste and garbage.

Deforestation.

At the start of the 20th century the forested area of the Philippines was some 21 million hectares or almost 70 percent of the country's total land area of 30 million hectares. Today our remaining forest cover is below one million hectares. Moreover, on the average, our rate of deforestation was 203,905 hectares annually while our rate of reforestation was only 9,398 hectares. This means that for every tree planted, 21 are cut down. The effects of deforestation have been tragic and devastating. Some 6.5 million tribal Filipinos have lost rich hunting and inland fishing grounds. Species of flora and fauna have been lost forever. Biological diversity has been greatly diminished and there are periodic erosion and floods everywhere.

We responded to this problem in two ways. One was a proposed legislation which will ban commercial logging for 25 years, and this legislation is now being carefully deliberated. Our second response was to introduce "Luntiang Pilipinas" or Greening the Philippines Movement. The goal of this movement is to create a tree park in every city and town plaza with at least 100 trees of forest varieties. Each tree park serves as "lungs" of the community, beautifying the plaza and raising community consciousness about the environment at the same time. The movement has created forest parks in over 1,800 towns and cities, and the number is rising each month.

Smog and Air Pollution

High levels of industrial emission and the increasing number of motor vehicles on our roads have seriously degraded air quality in urban areas. The consequences are rising levels of respiratory and lung ailments in our population, fatigue and poor concentration among adults, and nervous disorders in children.

Our response was the sponsorship of legislation which became the Philippine Clean Air Act of 1998. Among other things, this law provides an air quality management fund, imposes new vehicle emission standards, and provides incentives for pollution abatement and prevention.

Water Pollution.

Forty-eight percent of our water pollution is caused by household wastes, compounded by the lack of an adequate sewerage system. At present, only 7 percent of the settlers in Metro Manila are connected to a sewer system. Sixteen of the Philippines’ major rivers, including five in Metro Manila, are biologically dead during the summer months. The World Bank estimates that in the Philippines, the economic losses caused by water pollution are about $1.3 billion or P62 billion per year.

In this regard, we came up with the Water Crisis Act of 1995 that stipulated the creation of a commission to undertake nationwide consultations on water crisis and recommend measures that will ensure continuous monitoring of water supply and distribution.

As of 2003, 86% of the total population has access to an improved water source, with 79% and 91% access in urban and rural areas, respectively. Citing the World Bank Philippines Environment Monitor 2004, access to sanitation is rising slowly and urban access to piped sewerage in Metro Manila is about 8%.

Waste and Garbage.

Solid waste disposal remains problematic with only 9 of 117 cities and 46 of 1,500 municipalities in the Philippines have solid management programs. In Metropolitan Manila, where some 15 million people work and live, some 6,000 tons of garbage is generated daily. An estimated 24 percent is illegally dumped in vacant lands or thrown into our rivers or waterways. This exacerbates the flooding of streets during the rainy season and the poor sanitation conditions of many communities. In addition, the capacity of garbage landfills has long been exceeded, and there is a need to develop new landfill sites. The annual waste generation is expected to grow by 40% by 2010.

Our response was to author a bill which was enacted as the Integrated Solid Waste Management Act of 2001, the first legislation signed into law by our present President, Her Excellency Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. This law created a structure to provide technology, research, organization and facilities to alleviate the waste problem and reduce health hazards.

The Philippine Agenda 21

Philippine Agenda 21 is part of the country's response to fulfill its commitments in the historic Earth Summit in 1992, where government and key sectors of society agreed to implement an action agenda for sustainable development, known as the Agenda 21.

The Philippine Agenda 21's concept of development is grounded on both an image and a shared vision of the Filipino society. It recognizes the key actors in sustainable development as the government, business and civil society and the functional differentiation of modern society into three realms--economy (where the key actor is business), polity (where the key actor is government) and culture (where the key actor is civil society). The three realms are interacting, dynamic and complementary components of an integral whole.

Philippine Agenda 21 advocates a fundamental shift in development thinking and approach. It departs from traditional conceptual frameworks that emphasize sector based and macro-concerns.

Philippine Agenda 21 promotes harmony and achieves sustainability by emphasizing:

• a scale of intervention that is primarily area-based; the national and global policy environment builds upon and support area-based initiatives;

• integrated island development approaches where applicable; this recognizes the archipelagic character of the Philippines which includes many small island provinces;

• people and the integrity of nature at the center of development initiatives; this implies the strengthening of roles, relationships and interactions between stakeholders in government, civil society, labor and business; basic sectors have an important role to play in achieving equity and in managing the ecosystems that sustain life.

Philippine Agenda 21 does not duplicate but builds on existing and ongoing initiatives related to sustainable development. Hence, sustainable development in the Philippines is the accumulation of conceptual and operational breakthroughs generated by the Philippine Strategy for Sustainable Development, Social Reform Agenda, Human and Ecological Security, among others. Sustainable development is also a product of the process itself, of engaging various stakeholders and of working in global national and local arenas.

The persistence of serious natural resource depletion and environmental degradation years into the Philippine Agenda 21 means that much remains to be done. The continuing problems are not just due to the delay of the program but due to the fact that environmental problems are resilient and take time to contain. Our government can more effectively implement Philippine Agenda 21 by way of addressing the various issues still at hand.

Sustainable Development

The most common definition of Sustainable Development is: ‘Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’

This definition is further qualified by a common acceptance of there being ‘three pillars of Sustainable Development’. These pillars are identified in the slogan used at the World Summit for Sustainable Development ‘Care and respect for People; Planet and Prosperity (Commercial activities)’. It is recognised that these three pillars are of equal importance – if any one aspect is ignored or given a higher priority than others, the effect will be to unbalance and destabilise all three aspects, because they are inter-connected and interdependent. It is also recognised that these three aspects need to be addressed simultaneously – we cannot address them on a one-at- a-time basis as this would also create an imbalance.

While the above definition and explanation of the three pillars of Sustainable Development is conveniently short and concise, they do not convey or provide an adequate depth of understanding regarding the intellectual, moral and spiritual values that underlie the concept of Sustainable Development.

Firstly, it needs to be understood that Sustainable Development is essentially about ‘a value system‘. It is not a scientific formula that can be intellectually or mechanically applied to a situation. The concept of Sustainable Development is an evolutionary step forward in human consciousness, awareness and behaviour – leading to a more holistic and balanced value system.

To illustrate the evolutionary process of human thinking in very simplistic terms: humanity, at its lowest level of consciousness, operates in a purely survivalist mentality. Once having achieved the ability to survive, humanity moves forward in awareness, seeking to satisfy the desire for comforts and pleasure. Once a level of comfort has been achieved, desire for self-expression and individuality motivate the thinking and behaviour of an individual.

The concept of Sustainable Development invites us all, as individuals, to evolve beyond pure self-gratification and short-term thinking into an awareness and understanding that harm to one will eventually cause harm to all.

It invites the individual to step beyond current norms of thinking and behaviour to become conscious of the absolute interconnectedness and inter-dependence of all things.

Becoming aware that allowing poverty to exist is harmful to all, including the wealthy, and also impacts on the delicate balance of nature on Earth.
Becoming aware that allowing wasteful damage and the destruction of biodiversity and the Earth’s natural resources will have a detrimental effect on human wellbeing and our commercial activities.
Becoming aware that commercial and wealth-generation activities that ignore social and environmental consequences will in the long run be harmful to commerce and industry themselves.

But it is critically important to reiterate that if we give priority to one of the three aspects – be it people (poverty alleviation) or planet (conservation) or prosperity (business development) – we will unbalance the whole, with detrimental effect to all. We need to address all three aspects simultaneously – with equal importance attached to each of the three pillars.

In the face of environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity, poverty and ill health, and the increasing cost of doing business as a result of increased social taxes and higher resource costs, the reality of the inter-connectedness and inter-dependence of People, Planet and Prosperity have become abundantly clear. The negative consequences that we see are a direct result of previously imbalanced thinking.

To highlight how different commercial Sustainable Development behaviour is from past patterns of ‘profit at all costs‘, see the article by Dr Eureta Rosenberg, ‘Sustainable Development – Maintaining Profits or Sustaining People and Planet’ in the Sustainable Development section. To gain an insight into the value system that underlies Sustainable Development, see the Topics ‘Deep Ecology and the more detailed ‘Earth Charter’.

Together, these three articles provide a clearer explanation of the intellectual, spiritual and practical value systems of Sustainable Development.Without an in-depth understanding of the value system that underlies the concept of Sustainable Development, and a commensurate change in our thinking and behaviour, no true Sustainable Development can be implemented.

To quote Albert Einstein: ‘The world we have created today has problems which cannot be solved by thinking the way we thought when we created them.’

But with a more evolved understanding of the value system as encapsulated in the simple definition of Sustainable Development, we can indeed improve the way that humanity lives, works and interacts with the diversity of Earth’s human and non-human co-inhabitants.

RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATOR

Although responsibility, like the public interest, is a nebulous, often honorific term, it is a basic democratic ideal, bound up with the of one’s obligation to some external body or standard of behavior. Public administrators, for example, are responsible to the rule-of-law doctrine, which provides a fairly effective standard for judging some administrative decisions. Political responsibility is similarly involved with the idea of government’s control by public opinion, political parties, and the community. Responsibility is also commonly used to denote the obligation of an individual to behave according to certain ethical and technical norms. In public administration, responsibility has often had a negative connotation: we have usually

Responsibility and accountability should be differentiated. Accountability refers to the hierarchical or legal locus of responsibility. Responsibility, on the other hand, has personal, moral connotations and is not necessarily related to formal role, status, or power, although it is probably true that greater power brings greater responsibility. Thus, a department head is accountable for the actions of his entire subordinate, although in the actual fact he is not responsible for their use of the power, which he must delegate to them. This, in part, is the basis upon which President Nixon defended his position regarding the Watergate affair.

On the other hand, in exercising discretion every official is morally responsible for his decisions, although he is often not legally accountable. In practice, responsibility must be shared; it percolates throughout the entire administrative apparatus. Accountability, which concerns the formal relationships among and within the executive, legislative and judicial branches, can never be shared. The bureaucracy is regarded as being accountable to elected representatives and to the courts that apply the rule of law doctrine. Within the executive branch, accountability is sought through a hierarchy of offices and duties that seems to make possible a line of command from the top to bottom. The heads of the various departments must answer to the President as general manager. Bureau, section, and division chiefs are legally accountable in turn to department heads. Upon the President falls the monumental job of coordinating and directing the whole executive branch, under the constitutional mandate that gives him executive power and directs him to insure that the laws are faithfully cited.

This appreciation of accountability, however, is formalistic and misleading. Although senior executives appoint subordinates and thus exercise some control over their character and behavior, in specific cases they exercise little or no control. The President’s control is limited by the vast size and conflicting loyalties of the bureaucracy, as well as by the diffusion of power in our political system. He cannot hope to be aware of, much less supervise, all the activities of the some one hundred agencies for which he is constitutionally accountable. Executives at many levels face similar problem. As a result, legal accountability often becomes a mere façade, like the public interest rhetoric of a regulatory agency commissioner who is in fact the captive of his most vocal clientele group. In such cases, the authority and prestige of the state are bent to the service of private groups, and responsibility to the public and the chief executive becomes tenuous. As we have seen, this situation is encouraged by the size and scope of government, by the whirlpools of power that form in our political system, and by the unofficial representative apparatus provides by private interest groups.