Gina’s gift

Rhona Canoy .

SO… The news of Ms. Gina Lopez’s passing, although not a surprise, was greeted with a lot of sadness because of what she stood for, for each of us and as a community. Her love for the environment and for its protection was the mission to which she dedicated the last many years of her life, taking priority even over her life-threatening illness.

That thousands of people are showing such empathy and sympathy over her passing confuses me. Yes, she was a true Amazon for our environment, ecology, for our poorer communities. Yes, she was unceasing and unrelenting in the fervor with which she fought such a valiant battle. Yes, she was at the forefront of the catastrophes which needed to be brought to our immediate attention. The mining atrocities in Surigao, pervasive air and water pollution, the landslides in Benguet, Cebu, and other provinces, the marine disaster which was Boracay–all these did not escape her focus and her wrath. But where were we?

All these ecological evils still persist. And we continue to remain passive and oblivious to the immensity of the work that lies ahead to fix things. We protest that we are required to segregate our garbage. We still habitually throw our trash anywhere and everywhere. Our public utility vehicles still keep spewing noxious fumes into the air, and our traffic and LTO enforcers still turn a blind eye to these offenses. Our auto repair shops and garages still keep dumping dirty engine oil into the ground, mindless of the effect this will have on our water tables deep down in the ground. Our industrial farms still keep contaminating the earth with chemicals to protect their crops.

We are good at complaining. We always have been. What we have yet to learn is to partner our complaints with affirmative action. My mama always said, “Don’t bring me your complaints if you don’t have a suggestion for how to fix it.” Words which were, and are, a call to action. Ms. Gina was good at that. There was always action–if she couldn’t fix it, she made sure that those who could knew about it. Now, if the powers that be turned a deaf ear, then that was beyond her abilities. But it didn’t stop her from trying.

Her concern for all these issues was not because she was directly affected by them. She could well have chosen a life of leisure and luxury. But that was not her style. We, on the other hand, spend all our leisure time appreciating all that she did, and waste more time on more frivolous personal pursuits. It doesn’t occur to us to plant a few trees on the land we live on. Nor does it occur to us to worry about what quarrying and strip mining will do to us when the next typhoon or heavy rains come. Until, of course, we are inundated by flood waters which have no regard for our lives and belongings.

By 2525, there will be around eight billion people living on this spinning rock we absent-mindedly call home. That’s only less than six years from now. We are more concerned about who wants to be the next president  of our miserable little country. If we were to look at the Philippines from Ma’am Gina’s eyes, many of our close to 110 million people are crammed into small over-populated pockets which lack the resources to sustain our needs for water and clean air. And that’s only one tiny country in the world. Which is only one tiny planet in our solar system.

Our ecological problems are greater than who is going to be president in 2022. But we continue to turn a blind eye to the seriousness of the situation. Must we wait for the next supertyphoon, the next disastrous landslide, the next marine catastrophe before we even begin to slowly wake up to the seriousness of our condition?

Gina Lopez lived a life worth admiring, worth emulating. And she is leaving us with a legacy which, if we had any ecological and environmental sense, we should fight for and continue. For the betterment of us all. Thanks, Ma’am Gina. I hope the green fields and mountains of heaven are welcoming you home with open arms.