Pollutant

ILOILO CITY- The American speaker who I mentioned in the preceding article entitled “Disaster” continued lashing at the “unpreparedness” of people in the countries severely affected by natural disasters. He did this while announcing his credentials being a global expert in disaster risk management for 38 years now.

Right after the foreigner wrapped up his more than 30-minute talk, the lady moderator asked for comments and questions from us-- the audience who have been tightly squeezed inside the congested hall. In a matter of seconds, former Sen. Heherson Alvarez of  Climate Change Commission stood up and announced his admiration to the speaker.

But before his admiration could sink in, his tone immediately twisted to emphatically criticize the first world’s huge emission of carbon dioxide that is primarily responsible for the excessive warming of the earth, melting glaciers and eventually causing the irregular increase of water levels at a global scale.

“You should reduce your emission if you are genuinely concerned of abetting future mega disasters,” was in effect what Alvarez wanted to tell the speaker who seemed to overlook the real causes of the natural tragedies  that hit several places of the world. First world’s carbon emission is placed at 80 percent while 20 percent is shared by second world and third world countries, according to Alvarez's figures.   

This line of Alvarez reminded me of the article I read from the Internationalist magazine while I was still inside prison in 2010. The article, which title I forget now, analyzed which contributed how much to global warming. It argued that it is the first world particularly its giant corporations that are truly responsible in the destruction of the earth’s ecological balance at its present horrendous proportion in pursuit of profit.

With this level of culpability, the first world should lead in the rehabilitation efforts for mother earth, the article further noted.  As response to the challenge,  first world  governments are giving incentives to companies that meet carbon emission standards, among others.

 This effort and other similar regulations are laudable.

But what we need is more than carbon emission regulation. What we need is the protection of the remaining resources we have from being continually exploited  and the restoration of those that have been ravaged in the name of profit.

I wonder if  environmental rehabilitation and protection can go hand in hand with the Capital’s inherent drive for super profits. I learned that  no matter what the costs could be, Capital is innately willing to go as long as huge profit  is assured. 

Disaster

ILOILO CITY--The First Philippine International River Summit in Iloilo City opened with rationale presentation by the organizers of the event led by the Iloilo City Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog shortly before lunch on May 30, 2012 at the Grand Ballroom of Centennial Resort Hotel and Convention Center, this city.

Right after lunch the participants broke up into various groups to listen to a variety of lectures by local and international experts on environmental research,  river management, disaster risk reduction and management (drrm) and others.

I joined the group that preferred the topic on  drrm. One speaker that caught my attention was an American who claimed to have worked on drrm  for almost four decades now. He recalled some natural tragedies that caught international attention which included the tsunami in Indonesia, a flood in Fiji, a flood in Aceh, lahar mudflow in Pampangga, Ondoy, Sendong, etc, etc. “One common denominator in all of these,” he said was that “the people in these areas were not prepared.” 

In the case of the Philippines, he lashed at the ningas cogon attitude of Filipinos to explain the level of preparedness (unpreparedness to be exact) of our people to the challenges of drrm in particular and to climate change in general. He said we are eager to talk about disaster prevention and mitigation and preparedness usually right after a disaster strikes us. But later our eagerness subsides especially when we feel that its possibility of recurrence is not imminent. 

LGUs usually complain that we can not be adequately prepared because of funds constraints. But when calamity strikes, we wonder how we are able to muster a  lot of financial, logistical and moral support for our victims and the rehabilitation of devastated communities which expenses far exceed the resources that could have been allocated for mitigation and preparedness. 

After his talk, I asked myself: are the communities I work with now prepared for disasters like flood, landslide  and earthquake?

The answer to my own question brought me to the  realization that the country does not lack human and material resources to address the challenges of climate change. What we basically lack I think is the will  to combat the worst disaster that has inflicted our national psyche: complacency.