The future environment starts today

Ike Señeres

WE who are alive today are the children of the generations before us. Out of respect, perhaps we should no longer ask why our parents and grandparents have not done anything to protect and preserve our natural environment, which is the reason why we no longer have the natural environment that they used to have, and they used to see. Before it is too late however, we should ask ourselves what we could still do to protect and preserve what still remains of the natural environment, or perhaps even restore what we could, so that the generations after us, our children and the children of our children would still have a natural environment that they could see and even enjoy.

On the way to a meeting of the Council of the Laity, my driver passed near the river. I was able to observe the condition of a portion of the river. I observed that it was relatively clean, but the water was practically colored green and there were many floating objects. My driver said that no matter how much surface is done by the local government, the colour of the water never really changes, because the riverbed is already full of sludge and dirty mud. I would even say that the river is also silted, but in reality it is really a mix of many problems. My driver also said that no matter how much the surface of the water is cleaned, the residents keep throwing the garbage, and so the cycle continues.

At the meeting of the Council of the Laity, I was supposed to present a plan for the Agape Channel, a Catholic news and public affairs channel that would focus on lifestyle evangelism and witnessing. To my surprise however, I had the chance to listen to harrowing stories of Sandugo members from all over the country. Sandugo is an organization of Indigenous Peoples (IP) who are advocating for the protection of their human rights and the environment. Although they came from many places all over the country, their story was one and the same, that loggers and miners are driving them out of their communities, to pave the way for the destruction of the environment where they are.

Mind you, the Sandugo members were not talking about illegal loggers and miners. Rather, they were talking about loggers who have Integrated Forest Management Agreements (Ifmas) and miners who had Mineral Production Sharing Agreements (MPSAs) signed with the government. In other words, the issue here is not whether they legal or illegal. Rather, the issue here is whether they are breaking the law or not, and whether they are respecting the rights of the local residents or not. Add to that the other question of whether they are destroying the environment or not. How I wish the question would be whether they are protecting the environment or not, but that would be farfetched.

Despite their Ifmas and their MPSAs, we could still say that the signatories to these agreements are illegal loggers and illegal miners because they are still breaking the law, period. By way of extending the logic, we could say that the local officials of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) are accessories to the crime, and could even be considered as illegal loggers and illegal miners themselves. After many stern warnings from President Rodrigo Duterte to stop destroying the environment as a result of illegal practices, the destruction still continues, as if they are already mocking the authority of the President. Surely there must be a whiff of corruption here, not much different from what is happening in the Bureau of Customs (BOC).

During their talks, the Sandugo members said that we should take care of our mountains, rivers, lakes and forest lands because these are not ours, given the fact that we are only stewards of these natural assets. True enough, what they said was consistent with the bible and with other Christian teachings. As a matter of fact, it is also consistent with Laudato Si, the encyclical of Pope Francis about the environment and human ecology. Pope Francis has also spoken about ecological conversion, and that should be a good reason for everyone to start thinking how they could reconcile their faith with the way they would protect and preserve the environment, in both small and big ways.

For those of us who are living in this present generation, we should now begin to ask ourselves what we could do now, what we could do today in order to make sure that in the future, our children and the children of our children would still have water to drink, and clean air to breath. We should not stop there, because we surely would want them to still see and enjoy God’s creation as it was in the beginning. Of course, some of us would argue that much of what God has created has long been gone, but given the powers of human technology that has also come from God, there is no limit to what we could do to restore, rebuild and rehabilitate whatever it is that we have already lost. The future environment starts today.

E-mail: iseneres@yahoo.com