Climate change in
our backyard
Cebu Daily News
First Posted 10:09:00
05/04/2009
Filed Under: Climate
Change,
Environmental Issues,
Environmental pollution
While the happy Pacquiao fans were watching the fight (I do not
like gory scenes), I was in solitude and grief-stricken. Discovering
that the “mother” sampaguita plant in my “wildlife garden” is gone –
and not because of natural causes – brought pangs of guilt. I have
not been in the garden for sometime. Going in and out of Cebu for
environmental governance activities unfortunately has its costs.
This was one of them.
I was hoping the sturdy sampaguita will
grow and mature in the natural course of things. I promise to devote
more time to nurture nature each day – starting today.
The
pain is temporarily assuaged in seeing the bunch of smaller
sampaguita plants that are starting to bloom. They used to be
branches of the mother sampaguita that, months back, I pruned and
planted near the kitchen. Ah, the butterflies, bees and a host of
insects that just lost their “friend” are not completely
orphaned.
My trepidations are, of course, nothing compared to
the hardships experienced day by day by our marginalized sectors,
including the indigenous peoples. Their survival depends on the
resources that only a healthy ecosystem can offer. But the
fisherfolk and the farmers, ironically, the least polluters compared
to us, stand to be hit immediately and the hardest, as a result of
the wildly changing climate. We, the nature-detached and consuming
urbanites, pretend that we still can exist on a barely functioning
natural world.
Last week, Sibol ng Agham at Teknolohiya
(Sibat) and the Farmers Development Center (Fardec) of Central
Visayas presented the result of the Change Assessment study done in
three Visayan communities: barangay Guba, Cebu City; barangay
Mantiquil, Siaton, Negros Oriental; and barangay Tuboran, Ubay,
Bohol. The study confirmed that the increase in the variability of
rainfall patterns and the change in temperature are negatively
impacting the farmers, their families and the ecosystem.
In
Mantiquil, “farmers can no longer detect the appropriate timing and
mostly fail to do a second crop. This leads to a decrease in crop
production.” Jathropa and cassava encroachment of farmlands
heightens the vulnerability of the farming community to climate
change.
Pest and disease outbreaks are strongly felt in Guba.
“Fungus diseases increases and are visible in almost whole year
round. Vegetables and cutflowers as major crops are seriously
affected, causing 75 percent yield damage.”
Coping on longer
lean months increased the outmigration pattern in Tuboran. Some 25
percent of the female population in the barangay leave their
families to look for work per year in Cebu or Manila.
Food
security and the corresponding socio-economic dislocation, as
impacts of climate change, are staring at us in our own backyard. Do
we still have the heart to look the other way?
Sibat and
Fardec should be commended for doing this research, which would
hopefully spur local government units nationwide to initiate similar
studies in partnership with government agencies and civil society.
We are in the midst of a massive ecological tragedy and
measures to counteract it should be at “war-time speed,” to borrow
the words of Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute.
In his article, “Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?” he
warns that “the biggest threat to global stability is the potential
for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse.
Those crises are brought on by ever worsening environmental
degradation.”
The article specifically mentions the
Philippines. Brown pointed out that “Grain importers are trying to
nail down long-term bilateral trade agreements that would lock up
future grain supplies. The Philippines, no longer able to count on
getting rice from the world market, recently negotiated a three-year
deal with Vietnam for a guaranteed 1.5 million tons of rice each
year.”
How much does the deal cost? Is it the only viable
option? Are we borrowing again and putting our country deeper into
debt? This information from the PNFSP website caught my attention:
“In 2002, the dailies quoted the Department of Agriculture
secretary saying that while the country was spending P10 billion to
import rice, it would cost the government much less – P3 billion to
P5 billion – to get rice farmers to produce the imported volume. The
country is rich in natural resources, and with the reforms in land
ownership and the use of alternative farming methods, there will be
no reason to continue importing rice.
(http://www.pnfsp.org/news/
feature/fardec-gardening-sept+2008)
To
our political leaders: Let us look at the climate crisis straight in
the eye and MOVE. No more quick-fixes, please. Nature has been the
ultimate caregiver for all of us. Yet, we have taken her for
granted, for the longest time. With global warming setting in, don’t
you think it is payback time for us to do our share? The Earth is
ailing – let us all help restore its ecological health because the
ecological time bomb has started ticking in.
* * *
Casino Español Lecture today on Germany’s Basic Law
.
This year, the Federal Republic of Germany celebrates its
60th Anniversary and the 20th Anniversary of the peaceful revolution
that led to German reunification.
The members of the Bench
and the Bar in Cebu are privileged to listen to a University of Bonn
professor, Dr. Rudolf Dolzer, speak today on the German experience
with constitutional democracy.
Dr. Dolzer is a renowned
international law and constitutional law expert. He was a foreign
policy adviser to former chancellor Helmut Kohl, and is the
editor-in-chief of the largest commentary on the German
Constitution.
This event is part of the lecture series of
the Supreme Court on the experience with the German constitution and
the separate constitutional court in Karlsruhe.
The forum is
organized by the University of Cebu (UC), UC College of Law and the
Integrated Bar of the Philippines Cebu City Chapter, and
co-sponsored by the German NGO Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS), an
independent, non-profit German political foundation guided by the
principles of the Christian Democratic Movement. KAS activities
include political education, grants for research and scholarships
for gifted students. |
