River clean-up brings back past

A CLEAN-UP along Davao River will be spearheaded Monday by Panalipdan and Katribu Patry-List as a belated celebration of the International Day of Action Against Dams and for Rivers, Water and Life on Sunday and the Araw ng Dabaw celebration on Tuesday.

The activity also intends to bring to mind how the Davao River was once the highway of trade and commerce by Davao's indigenous peoples.

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Areas to be covered are the riverbank at Barangay 1-A, 2-A 76 and 74.

Assembly is at the Centennial Park at 9 a.m.

The organizers expect around 100 volunteers to participate.

In its invitation, Panalipdan and Katribu described the activity as solidarity "with peoples and communities around the world who stand up against water and resource privatization and plunder through corporate mega dams, large-scale mining, commercial logging and other pseudo-development projects that result to the destruction and death of our rivers, seas and water resources."

The two groups bewail the fact that so-called development projects are in fact killing the biodiversity of major rivers, drying up watersheds, and depriving farmers, fishers, and indigenous peoples of their lives and livelihood.

"Moreover, the worsening impacts of climate change and man’s abuse of nature, as seen and experienced by Filipinos in the tragedies wrought by Typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng, have awaken a consciousness in most, if not all of us, to be involved and be vigilant in the protection of our water resources, rivers, watersheds, and Mother earth in general," the announcement about the activity reads. (SAE)