Sunday, October 05, 2008 Ramos: World water and climate change
(First of 2 Parts)
LAST September 18 was World Water Monitoring Day and – perhaps intentionally, perhaps coincidentally, but fortuitously just the same – also the opening of the three-day 8th Asia-Pacific Roundtable for Sustainable Consumption and Production (APRSCP) at the Shangri-La Hotel in Mactan, Cebu. Were it not for that Cebu Roundtable, the daunting challenges of world water supply and the effects of climate change, particularly in our Asia-Pacific region, would have received the kind of "business-as-usual" complacency and indifference that has characterized Filipino attitudes to environmental issues. In its pursuit of a better and sustainable future, the APRSCP believes consumption and production practices be given equal importance; this requires an entirely new culture of strategizing plans, crafting technologies, and undertaking local actions.
Only the Manila Bulletin, with its usual factual thoroughness (and one other print broadsheet), called public attention to the significance of these serious concerns. To his credit, Alejandro Roces, well-known educator and environmentalist, on World Water Monitoring Day, opined: "Now, only one-third of Filipino river systems are considered suitable for public water supply. It is estimated that in 2025, water availability will be marginal in most cities, and in eight of the 19 major river basins."
Filipinas as environmental champions
Organized in 1997, the APRSCP is a Philippine-based international NGO which is run and advised by a group of formidable Filipino women headed by its President Olivia LaO Castillo. Working closely with APRSCP are the UN Environment Programme (UNEP); UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia-Pacific (UNESCAP); Asian Development Bank (ADB); and the EU, particularly thru their counterpart agencies in the Asia-Pacific region.
Over the past ten years, this unique organization of concerned global citizens has fostered dialogue among government, industry, and research institutions to address sustainable development problems, and to work out/package/adapt solutions.
At the Cebu Roundtable, aside from APRSCP President and Founding Member Dr. Castillo, were such strongwilled development advocates as former DENR Secretary Elisea Gozun, Cebu Governor Gwen Garcia, Ambassador to Vietnam Laura del Rosario, and former Foreign Secretary Delia Albert, now our Ambassador to Germany, who shared their expertise and experiences with some 300 delegates from various countries and foreign entities. Incidentally, other green Filipino ladies who champion environmental conservation through their own networks include the likes of Gina Lopez, Pia Cayetano, Narda Camacho, Emily Marcelo and Amelita Ramos.
Quoting recent UN surveys, Dr. Castillo reported: "In Asia, major challenges concern the region’s increasing energy consumption leading to rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and environmental degradation, including severe biodiversity loss, deforestation (especially extensive illegal logging), natural resource depletion, desertification, air/water pollution, and poor sanitation. All countries should promote sustainable consumption and production (SCP) patterns, with the developed countries taking the lead, with all countries benefiting from the process. SCP can be seen as the two faces of the same coin in the use of goods and services that respond to basic needs and bring a higher quality of life. It minimizes the use of natural resources (including energy and water), toxic materials and pollutants over the life cycle, so as not to jeopardize the needs of future generations. Materials, water, and energy are the three key elements."
Ongoing/imminent threats to Mother nature and humankind
Guest of Honor/Speaker at the 8th APRSCP was Netherlands Crown Prince HRH Willem-Alexander who serves as Chairman of the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board (UNSGAB) on Water and Sanitation. In Cebu, he warned that the arid/semi-arid and mega-delta zones of Asia and Africa are being hit hard by climate change due to:
(a) Increased risks of floods and droughts; (b) Changing precipitation patterns; (c) Changes in water quantity and quality that affect food availability, access, and stability; and (d) Higher temperatures that degrade water quality and exacerbate various forms of pollution.
In a presscon with FVR before local Cebu media and national news agencies, as reported by Manila Bulletin (September 19), Prince Willem-Alexander announced the Dutch government’s plan to assist 50 million people in Asia and Africa in having access to potable water and sanitation by partnering with multilateral institutions and NGOs, at the same time vowing to closely coordinate with Philippine authorities in the effort to actualize the plan in coming years. He declared: "Water is life. Water is a prerequisite for sustainable development. This is confirmed in economic figures: every dollar invested in water and sanitation results in at least nine dollars worth of productive activity. Water management is part of the genetic system of the Dutch government."
He expressed his special interest in Philippine creativity in architecture and engineering which had served ancient Filipinos well in agricultural pursuits to insure their generational survivability over the centuries. The Dutch Crown Prince also revealed he was greatly impressed by what he saw and heard in Cebu, and promised to come back to the Philippines with his family for a well-deserved vacation, following endless months of backbreaking schedules to push the UN’s environment agenda.
Reinventing consumption and production:
The Marrakech process
To accelerate the shift towards SCP, the 2002 UN World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg called for collective international effort to develop a 10-year framework plan now called the "Marrakech Process" – named after the city where the First International Experts’ Meeting took place in 2003.
Prince Willem-Alexander was most emphatic regarding the potential threats to mankind’s future viability, and said repeatedly: "We should take on every opportunity to prepare ourselves for the future. We must be flexible, creative, and inventive to be able to adapt to our changing environment. In order to give ourselves a little more time, we have to change our way of life to slow down the process of a rapidly changing environment. There is no escape anymore and we quickly have to move to sustainable patterns of consumption and production. Many people are saying that sustainable consumption and production cannot go hand-in-hand with economic growth but, fortunately, there are already plenty of examples in the world showing that such a new paradigm will work by adapting innovative technologies."
The concept of sustainable consumption and production (at family, community, national and multinational levels) thus has acquired a momentum of its own and gained broad international support.
ASEAN’s clean and green vision
In my keynote speech at the 8th APRSCP, I asserted that: "Since Southeast Asia still lives intimately with its land and its surrounding seas, it will be gravely affected by climate change. Already, in many ASEAN states, natural resources and ecosystems are under increasing stress – due to growing population and the encroachment of agricultural land into forests and other ecologically-sensitive areas through wanton slash-and-burn methods."
ASEAN’s 580 million people still depend primarily on their natural resource endowments for their day-to-day subsistence, livelihood, and hopes of progressive development.
In fact, Southeast Asia has the world’s highest rate of deforestation. And, deforestation exacerbates the entire global warming/climate change scenario because of pollution, careless industrialization, urban overcrowding, and watershed erosion.
These environmental problems are not merely complex; they also transcend national boundaries – and therefore call for deeper regional cooperation. A well-known example is the yearly conflagration of Indonesia’s Kalimantan forests, which darkens the skies for hundreds of miles and creates ashfalls as far as Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.
ASEAN’s "Vision 2020" calls for a clean and green Southeast Asia, with fully established mechanisms for sustainable development to protect its environment; conserve its natural resources; and promote the quality of life of its peoples, including the unborn generations.
Badly needed still: Individual actions
and community cooperation
Thanks to the networking initiatives of APRSCP’s assiduous experts and organizers, the Philippines is not being kept in the dark about the latest technological developments in the green sector; however, materializing and implementing actions are still lacking and woefully inadequate. This should begin at home – in the kitchen and dining table. During our regular Sunday family get-together dinners, former First Lady Ming simply but consistently cautions me, our children and grandchildren: "Be sure to consume every bit of food on your plates and drink every drop of water in your glasses; otherwise, leftovers will surely end up as garbage in the Pasig River, Laguna Lake or Manila Bay.
My late Lolo Ayo in Batac, Ilocos Norte, used to warn us his school-age grandkids, while-on-the-job training during vacations in his small farm (under pain of being spanked): "Waste nothing because NAGRIGAT TI AGTALTALON (it is so arduous to be a farmer)!" Of course, we obeyed – and have not forgotten to respect and spread Lolo’s wisdom to this day!
Please send any comments to fvr@rpdev.org. Copies of articles are available at www.rpdev.org.
