‘Green agenda’ launched

THE environmentalists are launching a recent campaign to popularize a "green agenda" for Misamis Oriental.

Carl Cesar Rebuta, program officer of the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center (LRC), said they are hoping that voters use the agenda as parameter in choosing who to vote in the May 10 elections.

Click here for Election 2010 updates

“And also for candidates to publicly commit to the agenda when they get elected into office,” Rebuta added.

Rebuta said the Misamis Oriental Green Agenda 2010 is being pushed by the same institutions that were behind the campaign against the bio-ethanol plant, which includes the Catholic Church.

Generally, the agenda seeks to enact policies, mobilize resources and set up mechanisms to ensure protection of the province’s coastal, freshwater and forest resources from ruin because of “unsustainable use.”

It also aims to promote clean air, address urban waste management woes and seeks to empower communities in the protection and management of the ecosystems.

The environmental activists urged for the enactment of an environment code for Misamis Oriental and Cagayan de Oro “that would provide the over-arching framework and guidelines for the protection of the city and province’s environment and natural resources.”

This, as they sounded the alarm over the expansion of agricultural activities “in critical upland areas” which they want also to be shielded from extractive activities like mining and logging.

The group also urged an expansion of existing forest cover to achieve the ideal rate of forestland comprising 30 percent of the province’s total land area.

Rebuta noted that the 2010 elections is “the most critical event… the outcome of which will impact our nation and our environment.”

“Good governance is necessary to resolve the environmental crisis. It is about the responsibility of government to advance environmental protection which must also entail active citizens’ participation…,” read the manifesto outlining the agenda.

The green agenda, crafted by a multi-sectoral group led by LRC and the Alternative Law Groups (ALG), lists 20 positions and demands on the most pressing environmental issues facing the province.

“It is always the poor who are vulnerable to the effects of environmental degradation,” Rebuta explained.

The agenda embodies recognition that “a healthy environment is a basic right that should be enjoyed by the present and future generations.”

Major points in the agenda include the call to help contain global warming by supporting transition from fossil fuel-fired power plants to renewable energy sources, and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the province.

The agenda also outlined the enactment of an ordinance instituting measures for harvesting rainwater to help arrest depletion of ground water resources which is the major source of potable water of the province’s urban areas.

The environmental activists want that setup of water harvesting measures be made obligatory by incorporating this provision into the local building code.

The green agenda also called for enhancing the practice of organic agriculture by working for “elimination in the use of synthetic chemical fertilizers, pesticides and genetically modified organisms (GMOs)” in farming.

It recommended that half of the city and province’s budget for agriculture should go to promoting and supporting organic farming, and set a specified number of hectares of its expanse of agricultural lands to be converted into farms employing sustainable agriculture methods.

Rebuta commended Representative Rufus Rodriguez of the second district of Cagayan de Oro for committing to pursue the agenda.

He said it was Rodriguez who filed House Bill 5888 which seeks to mobilize National Government resources to reforest 3,000 hectares of denuded forestlands in the watershed of Cagayan de Oro.

Rebuta also said Rodriguez vowed to craft the legislation on rainwater harvesting.