Deceit and Destruction

DUTERTE’S MOUTH REEKED like Manila Bay in his remark inviting foreigners to see girls sunbathing in Boracay. He made this utterance on his 4th State of the Nation Address (SONA) last July, as he boasted about the restoration of the island to its original condition. Ironically, while Duterte was professing to have addressed environmental issues, a sea of protesters outside the House of Representatives, including environmentalists and environmental defenders, was criticizing Duterte’s environmental programs as ingenuine and anti-people.

Indeed, the voice of the people do not speak lies as what the President does in his every SONA. While he claimed environment to be his top priority, his actions have shown otherwise. His socalled clean-up drives and rehabilitation projects are nothing but deceit to mask all his culpability for the destruction of the country’s environment, and the rights infringed by his actions that led to such serious issues.

Unbeknownst to many is the true scenario in Manila Bay and Boracay that would make one question the authenticity of the rehabilitation. Zooming in first to Boracay, its six-month closure which dislocated thousands of workers did not stop business outfits with the establishment of giant casinos and hotels. Similarly in Manila Bay, despite the ongoing rehabilitation, massive reclamation projects which threaten mangroves, sea grasses and animals remain approved. Fishermen in Bulacan who make their living from the bay also face possible demolition and relocation due to proposals of reclamation. Arguably, if the government is true to its goal, it would ensure that there is no such conflicts and that there is rigorous assessment done before the implementation. But what only became clear here is Duterte’s real intent that is to profiteer from the island and the bay, and not really to restore them.

The bogus rehabilitation schemes of Manila Bay and Boracay are only two of the crimes Duterte has done to the environment and the people. Another glaring evidence of environmental destruction under his administration is the construction of mega-dams that poses severe havoc to our forests. Most pressing is the expedition of the Kaliwa Dam project that would cause irreversible damage to the biodiversity of Sierra Madre on which it will be situated. Moreover, its location is within the ancestral domain of the tribes of Dumagat-Remontados, thus displacing them and forcing them to evacuate. The government justified the need for the new dam to solve the water crisis despite available alternatives, but brushed off the imminent and long-term impact it would create on the ecosystem, and more importantly, the rights of the indigenous people to their land, territory and resources.

Duterte also failed to address the issue of large-scale mining corporations that heavily contribute to the pollution of water

and soil and put at stake communities within their sites. For one, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Mines and Geosciences Bureau permitted an Australian-Canadian mining giant OceanaGold to continue with its operation in Nueva Vizcaya despite several environmental, socioeconomic, and human rights violations that already resulted in the termination of its contract last June 20.

Duterte’s list of sins goes on but what comes at the top is his absolute neglect and deliberate failure in defending the West Philippine Sea (WPS) from China’s intervention, which has already made a huge blow on the country’s marine ecosystem. Last April, the illegal harvesting of giant clams by Chinese fishing vessels grabbed the headlines, alarming scientists on the gravity of its projected effects. This endangered marine species, the cultivation of which was pioneered by the UP Marine Science Institute, provides structure to coral reefs, habitat and nutrient source to various organisms. China has also damaged coral reefs in the WPS amounting to 33 billion pesos annually. All these show how the sale of our local patrimony and Duterte’s subservience to his foreign master surrender the myriad flora and fauna our seas possess, stripping away from us Filipinos our rights to our natural riches.

These offenses of the Duterte regime against the environment reflect whose interest the state safeguards and serves to. The government should ensure protection and sustainability of the environment for the benefit of the majority, but it chooses not to do so. This is because it is bound to capitalist interests which disregard the environment and human rights for the amassment of wealth and generation of profit. It also obeys the dictates of foreign powers which maintain neoliberal economic agenda over nationalistic and pro-people policies. The state will never be reluctant to eliminate those who will hinder its plans, as manifested in the heightened killings of environmental defenders.

We are left to suffer the consequences of the worsening degradation of the environment, and we must not wait until its collapse is already right in front of our faces. Hence, we should all the more intensify our call for the protection of our seas, forests and rivers, for the defense of our national sovereignty, and against the exploitation of our natural resources. More than this, we should also demand a change in the unjust socioeconomic and political system that is the root cause of environmental destruction.

We cannot magically clean Manila Bay overnight, but we can get rid of the trash that makes it stink — no other than President Duterte himself. ●