Pedro Walpole

It's the growing season in tropical Asia with early harvests of rice in the lowlands and corn in the uplands. The memory of the two storms that caused area devastation in the Philippines at the beginning of the year has faded and the landscape looks one of abundance.

The extremes in both weather conditions and geological events are gaining more focus, brought about mainly by the massive costs to damaged infrastructure, crop and agricultural productivity losses, and tragically, the number of lives lost and those left homeless. Relief responses are stretched more thinly as disaster occurrences are getting more frequent. Rehabilitation and reconstruction responses are facing design and land allocation challenges. The message is getting home that as human lives are connected, so are economies and so too the apparently distinct activities across the landscape; every ‘development' must bear the cost of environmental balancing.

The economic drive by the national government is increasingly focused on a strategy of short-term natural resource utilization with limited focus on long-term sustainability of these resources. Investment opportunities that rely on the nation's raw natural resources include metallic mineral development, river and stone quarrying, agricultural land expansion, plantations, extensive chemical usage for crop protection and fertilization, local wood supply for domestic consumption, marine and fisheries resources, freshwater usage for industries, tourism, and increased office and housing areas.

Whether you are part of the 50% of the world population now living in cities or the 50% left on the land, the environment through heat and water is pressuring daily life in the best of times. The impact of an El Niño and La Niña event in upland and coastal areas and the communities living in these areas demand a response that goes beyond relief. Extreme rainfall events that trigger landslides, mudflows, massive soil loss and flooding are paralleled by extreme droughts that bring about severe losses in agricultural productivity and elevates seasonal hunger in poverty-stricken areas to extended hunger periods for many more.

In climate change discussions preparing for the UN Framework Convention in Bonn 29th March to 8th April, it is recognized that there is a need to have a focus on community adaptation and effective resource management, not simply mitigation. While feats of engineering boost economies and generally secure urban needs, local efforts on a broad scale have to adapt to, rather than control, the flow of nature. People have been adapting in their efforts to survive. Greater support is needed in this for communities to secure a relation with the land and water during times of stress that these stress times do not have to always become a disaster.

Most Asian countries have a difficulty at the negotiation table. For although the carbon print has to be offset primarily by the industrial giants worldwide, the difficulty of such countries as the Philippines is to know critically the amount of carbon we already offset, while at the same time argue that we face the greater problem of the effects of the global change, given the existing poverty and exposure to impact. We have no bargaining power.

PHOTO GALLERY:

Cagayan de Oro River, having survived by landslide and flood.	New settlers
When the waters go down, people go back to old ways.	The rock fall has become a new pavement.
Community bridges still need repair.	Between bridges a remaining window of opportunity.
Banana chip industry continues.	Scoured new sediments become possible settlement areas.
Rivers are a daily part of life and source of fun.

The work of the Environmental Science for Social Change or ESSC, (www.essc.org.ph), a Jesuit research institution in the Philippines that works with communities and local governments for effective natural resource management, is premised on:

The need to understand the ecological dynamics between people and their immediate environment
The need to develop methods by which this relationship can be nurtured and enhanced for greater human development.

ESSC's work programs are focused on forest cover update and watershed integration, tracking mining, community resource management and culture, developing disaster resilience by broadening the disaster discourse, and capacity building.

The environment continues to function as the nation's resource base for essential products and to support broad-scale development. It is the same environment that supports critical livelihood activities of upland and coastal communities and provides ecological services for the country. As we draw life and extract resources from the environment, there is a critical need to ensure the sustainability of the environment and regeneration of resources through effective management. However, continuing political and social neglect of the core decisions and actions is straining the environment to a much greater extent than the renewal and regeneration occurring.

The vision is to reverse this trend and attain the needed environmental balance and viable growth. And in a context of increasing awareness and information on the impact of climate change in countries such as the Philippines, this vision must be enabled by extreme human intellect and creativity, care and compassion.

22 March 2009

Environmental Science for Social Change (ESSC)
1/F Manila Observatory Building
Ateneo de Manila University Campus
Loyola Heights, 1108 Quezon City
Philippines
Tel +632 926.0452
Fax +632 426.0554
Web www.essc.org.ph