IT’S frustrating when you hear the President speak before an international crowd crowing about achievements that are nothing but statistics twisted to make it sound good. Like President Benigno C. Aquino telling the 2014 Climate Change Summit in New York yesterday that the Philippines is “treading a climate-smart development pathway.”
“As early as 2008, we have passed a Renewable Energy Act, and are now treading a climate-smart development pathway. We continue to take steps to maintain and even improve our low-emission development strategy and the trajectory of our energy mix, and are hopeful that our fellow developing nations, especially those who have been gaining the economic wherewithal to pursue similar strategies, will tread a path akin to ours,” he said.
GreenPeace Philippine was quick to counter that by reminding all that what the Philippine government has done is actually approve 26 coal-powered plants that will all be operational by 2030 and that what the Philippines need is action, not words.
“The Philippines is not waiting. We are addressing climate change to the maximum with our limited resources. Legislation has been enacted to lessen the impact of disasters by adopting a comprehensive approach to disaster response. We have empowered our forecasting agencies so that they can give timely warnings to vulnerable communities for national and local authorities and residents. We have undertaken multihazard and geohazard mapping which is integral to the effective assessment risk,” the President also said.
If you listen to the President’s speech, you know someone is being taken for a ride, us included. We can just as well call him out on his bluff and make sure that he does what he says the government is doing like an “intensified anti-illegal logging campaign”.
Just last September 13, 2014, a staunch anti-illegal logging advocate, Datu Sandigan Fausto Orasan of the Higaunon tribe in the hinterlands of Cagayan de Oro City was felled by assassins’ bullets. He joins numerous others, mostly tribal leaders, who have been killed because of their stand against logging and mining.
The president also claimed that government is “tagging public expenditure on climate change, to ensure that the appropriate prioritization and allocation of funds is achieved”, and “engaged other stakeholders in developing a disaster risk financing and insurance policy framework that can reduce the impact of disasters on the poorest and most vulnerable Filipinos.”
Having been told that, let’s go check on victims of Sendong, Pablo, Yolanda, and recently Mario to see if, indeed, the impact of disasters on the poorest and most vulnerable has been reduced.
Let’s do away with a government that is good with press releases and speeches while the poor suffer in silence, forever gagged by the conviction that government people are only good at stealing the people’s money. The Philippines has been so good at presenting itself to the international community – in terms of human rights, climate change adaptation, conditional cash transfers, even the Millennium Development Goals. We only need to look into the details to shovel off the trash and get down to the few nuggets of reality.