Tuesday, January 15, 2008 Speak out: Environmental courts By Aave Tañon Strait Citizens Movement
WE, members of the Save Tañon Strait Citizens Movement, salute the Supreme Court and Chief Justice Renato Puno for the issuance of the resolution establishing 117 environmental courts in the country. This act is unprecedented and an unquantifiable boost in our determined campaign to promote the rule of law in environmental governance.
The resolution is a re-affirmation of our unceasing belief that in this country, it is the Supreme Court which stands majestic among all institutions in ensuring that the respect for the rule of law is not trampled upon — not even by those tasked to implement our environmental laws.
While the executive branch of the government is engaged in double-speak policy — promoting ecological sustainability in words but not in action and appointing as chairperson of the task force on climate change the secretary of the fossil fuel project-obsessed Department of Energy (DOE) — Chief Justice Puno is one of the few who have spoken out loudly on climate change and its threats to our survival in this planet.
The ecologically destructive and carbon-emitting oil drilling now conducted at the Tañon Strait Protected Seascape by Japex and the DOE stands like a sore thumb in the campaign to respect the law and restore the ecological integrity of our marine ecosystem.
Critical habitat
The oil drilling has no place in a protected seascape and in an era where countries all over the world are desperately looking for renewable sources of energy to reduce the effects of global warming.
The Wildlife Protection Act deems it illegal for any exploration or exploitation in any critical habitat, such as Tañon Strait Protected Seascape. Tañon Strait is not only a critical habitat for dolphins and whales but also an important fishing ground. In fact it is one of the top 10 fishing grounds in the Philippines.
Indeed, the Japex project is a blatant disregard of the provisions of the Constitution and its implementing laws, such as the Fisheries Code, which reiterates the state policy that fisherfolk have the preferential use of municipal waters.
It mocks the integrity of the National Integrated Protected Areas System (for which funds and grants have poured in from multilateral institutions and foreign countries). It reveals our political leaders’ lack of commitment and sense of responsibility before the international community as a contracting state in international conventions, such as the Conventions on Climate Change, Biological Diversity, Agenda 21, Millennium Development Summit, and disrespect for international law principles.
The State, under the 1987 Constitution, guaranteed the protection of “the rights of subsistence fishermen, especially of local communities, to the preferential use of the communal marine and fishing resources, both inland and offshore.” Now, the poor fisherfolk are suddenly displaced from their State-protected fishing grounds by the government agencies that are supposed to protect them and the environment!
Highly degraded
Even the National Government’s Medium-Term Development Plan acknowledges that our coastal and marine ecosystem is highly degraded and that we are considered a hotspot country in biodiversity loss. Oil drilling at the Tañon Strait Protected Seascape would only prove that we do not learn the lessons from our mistakes.
This nation is done with empty rhetoric and the whims and caprices of a few who might have been denied the benefit of wise counsel in understanding that the State-declared policies and principles and our laws are supreme, irrespective of who the holders of the public position might be.
Food security, biodiversity, resource conservation, a healthy and balanced ecology, and human rights are not and will never be negotiable. We hail the Supreme Court’s ecological and constitutional stewardship and for being true to its mandate to protect the rights of the people to life, health and a balanced ecology.
