Crayola 101: A Green Philippines
Environmental activists in this part of the planet don't exactly approve of this color scheme.
According to Kalikasan PNE, if there's any color that Arroyo is turning the Philippines into, it's red: an ugly, bloody and messy red. Scarlet soiled with bloodshed. Red of revolts. Glowing red of a volcano before the big bang. The Philippines is turning into anything but green under Gloria. Frankly, I don't see how her Green Philippines agenda, which is vaguely described as combining " economic opportunity with a concern for the environment" (concern, perhaps. But policy and action? Most definitely not!), can work towards protecting the country's environment and national patrimony for the benefit of the Filipino people.
By "economic opportunity", I assume Arroyo also refers to foreign investments in sectors such as mining, oil exploration, and biofuel production. Therein lies the problem. Foreign and large-scale mining is as environmentally-friendly as a Cold War nuclear bomb and as helpful to the local economy as a band-aid is to a gaping M-16 wound. Offshore oil exploration, as it is being proposed of late, poses a very real danger of exacerbating marine resource degradation at the very, very least.
And biofuels production? I think that this administration jumped into the global green bandwagon without seriously assessing its local impacts on food security and resource extraction. Many also suspect that all those yummy biofuels deals pending with foreign firms could be a pretext to ink more spurious exchanges and to conveniently exempt the haciendas of her landowning relatives and allies from agrarian reform.
For liberalizing these fields (as well as others such as the outsourcing industry) to even more foreign participation, American firms are already patting Gloria on the head. When Gloria said she wanted a 'Green Philippines', perhaps she meant green--as in, dollar-green?
On the issue of foreign mining, here's an excerpt of an article written for www.bulatlat.com:
Her serene face is as furrowed as an ancient valley, but Carlita Cumila, 70 years old, can still remember the time she and her husband settled in the lush slopes of Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya back in 1964.
"We went to Papaya from Kiangan on foot. It took us three days of walking and hiking. My son Gilbert was three months old at that time," she recalls. Dressed simply in a faded floral blouse and black skirt, it seems hard to imagine how Cumila and her son endured the three-day trek through steep mountains and rugged terrain in search of a home.
Cumila and her growing family were among the first settlers in Barangay Papaya, Malabing Valley. It was here where her other seven children after Gilbert were born and raised.
"When we came to Papaya, we were only a few. Only gabi, corn, beans, and rice grew here. There were no fields. But if we stayed in Kiangan, there would have been little, not enough to provide for an education for our children. In my previous home, there was space for only one and a half hectares of rice terraces to till,"she said.
"Here in Papaya you could have four to seven hectares. Here we had enough food," she said.
Cumila has seen their lives prosper since that first day she set foot in Barangay Papaya. Malabing Valley's residents now reap the fruits from a flourishing local citrus industry that started there over a decade ago. A cooperative in the town center stands. Her son Gilbert finished Agricultural Engineering and now gives seminars to people on citrus cultivation.
Cumila, however, now fears for the verdant valley which has nurtured her family for four decades.
Foreign mining companies have recently entered Nueva Vizcaya and are eyeing the wealth beneath its rich soils. And like many other women residents living in Kasibu and its adjacent valleys, Cumila is now preparing to devote her strength to defending her home against the looming threat of large-scale mining.
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