EVEN without that warning from an official of the United Nations, the recent typhoon devastation and previous calamities over the years already told us we were, we are and we will always be in harm's way.

Without his saying so, we know we were and are among the nations least prepared to cope with nature's fury that is now fueled by global warming. We are, after all, Third World, as the developed countries labeled us so.

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Climate change has also been a given, long before the road to Copenhagen this December. What we can hope for in that finale of a series of talks is for the powerful, developed countries to finally and effectively reduce their greenhouse gas emissions substantially contributing to global warming.

But even with a new treaty signed, there's reason to doubt such would be fleshed out on the ground so as not to go the way of numerous other pacts. Since they came out of the Rio Summit in 1992, refreshed with anew jargon - sustainable development -, the world's leaders had inked several other agreements anchored on the term.

"Sustainable development" has become a by-word for development workers all over. Often, it's a generality that, like fool's gold, glitters, and on which to anchor and give form to "terminal reports" on projects and programs, even if these were actually undone or, to use the language, not sustainable. Like the treaties, the report itself sometimes turns out to be the accomplishment, the proof of the pudding.

Five years ago, the apparent disunity and disparity between form and substance, between theory and practice, between language and action, triggered a scathing remark from Mikhail Gorbachev.

"Enough is enough (of these deals on sustainable development)," the former leader of the Soviet Union, now head of Green Cross International, strongly advised in his keynote at the World Urban Forum in Barcelona.

On the road to Copenhagen, no less than R.K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, observed in a recent article for Newsweek"

"In recent months, the prospects that states will actually agree to anything in Copenhagen are starting to look worse. Although the Obama administration initially raised hopes by reengaging in the negotiation process, the U.S. Congress has since emerged as a potential spoiler. While the European Union has resolved to reduce emissions 20 percent (from 1990 levels) by 2030, and Japan's newly elected government set an even higher target of 25 percent, the Waxman-Markey bill that passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in June fell well short of this goal. And the Kerry-Boxer bill recently introduced in the U.S.
Senate seems unlikely to be passed any time soon."

To pursue Gorbachev's lament based on experience, a treaty signed by everybody who will be in Copenhagen will be no guarantee the pledge will be transformed into reality.

As Pachauri ended his piece, "the key to changing things lies in making the public aware of the alarming scientific realities of climate change, for that's the only way to create the sort of pressure that can compel leaders in democratic societies to act. Whether such a swing in public opinion can be managed in time for Copenhagen remains to be seen. What is clear is that if a strong agreement is not reached this year, the world will have lost a key opportunity to protect future generations and to ensure the well-being of all species on the planet before it's too late".

The key to awareness is for development workers, be they in government or non-government organizations, to demystify and simplify their language of development, this time to explain climate change. Enough of the gobbledygook that they got used to churning out to tag things that laymen knew or could easily understand until these experts of "civil society" and "good governance" started labeling them.

Villages and communities have their own culture and language of development that development workers need to know, understand and use, instead of the other way around. For one, I don't think there's a term in my father's Ifugao language that approximates "sustainable development" The closest I could come to is "boltan" which means "heritage" or "inheritance" passed on through the generations.

The lack of a translation doesn't mean indigenous peoples had no concept of "sustainable development" before development workers started tagging and defining it for them. Otherwise, the Ifugao rice terraces would not have been built and would not have sustained life over the generations, long before the "Millennium Development Goals" were spelled out.

Up to now, Agenda 21, the document, signed by our adult leaders in Rio, remains over my head. I'm just glad there's a simpler version, written by children who held their own "summit". The children's document, "Rescue Mission: Planet Earth", is easily understandable, even by us adults who sometimes refuse to listen to kids, as did the adults almost refuse to in Rio. It would be good for the U.N. and world leaders to distribute copies of this most valuable book, not only to schools and teachers but also for development workers to use.

My copy was apparently taken without my knowledge and consent. I would deeply appreciate if fellow Cordillerans in the First or New World could mail another. Some have been calling to ask what they could do in the aftermath of the last typhoon. Perhaps they could include in their "Balikbayan"boxes, say, a pair of protective gloves, a skull guard or any gear our volunteer rescuers here could use as they brace for the next calamity. (e- mail:ecowalkmondax@yahoo.com for comments)