The week that was marked the return of the rainy season with afternoon downpours becoming more and more the norm. After a scorching summer, everybody welcomed the respite albeit with a prayer that the twin floods of last year brought about by Typhoon Ondoy and Pepeng don’t happen again.

With global warming continuing as before with the under-whelming failure of the Copenhagen summit last December, it becomes even more urgent that we prepare our communities to the effects of climate change. We should we continue to demand real cutbacks on the emissions of carbon dioxide (and its equivalents) by major emitter countries such as the US, the European Union and Japan. None of them are ready to commit to the drastic reductions in emissions despite everybody agreeing that global warming has to be limited to 2 degrees Celsius.

Last Saturday also marked World Environment Day 2010, an international event that aims to heighten awareness and heighten political and public action on environmental issues. With incoming president Noynoy Aquino set to be proclaimed as of writing this column, how can he as president show that his Yellow could be green enough for the Filipino people?

Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment in a media forum last week held with indigenous people network Kalipunan ng Katutu-bong Mamayang Pilipino (KAMP), fisherfolk federation Pambansang Lakas ng Mamalakaya sa Pilipinas (PAMALAKAYA), environmental research group, Center for Environmental Concerns (CEC Phils.), and scientist group Advocates of Science and Technology for the People (AGHAM) identified concrete challenges for the incoming administration.

Among these are calls to investigate and form a commission that will review past environmental disasters and events. The groups also challenged Aquino to cancel the contracts or permits of environmentally destructive and controversial projects such as those involved in mining and landfills. They also called for a review of anti-environment policies such as the Japanese-Philippine Economic Partnership Agreement (Jpepa), US-RP Visiting Forces Agreement and Mining Act of 1995 that legitimizes the sell out and control of our patrimony to foreign corporations. They also added calls to reverse the Electric Power Industry Reform Act or the EPIRA in order to bring down the prices of electricity.

These actions will be a big step in reversing the policies that liberalize and privatize the country’s natural resources. Aquino can do better by replacing them with laws that reclaim our patrimony and lead to ecological conservation.

Convention on Biological Diversity
Another event to look forward this year is the upcoming review of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as the United Nations declared 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity. The Philippines being a tropical archipelago with extensive rainforests makes it one of the few places in the world with high species diversity and high number of organisms that are endemic to the different islands in the country. As with the Kyoto protocol with regard to climate change, most of the parties to the CBD have agreed to a single legally binding treaty but with a deep difference to the obligations between the consumers and providers of biological resources. The rights of indigenous people and local communities are also at issue.

The Center for Environmental Concerns-Philippines (CEC) had a Mindanao Environmental Song Writing Workshop in time for the June 5 World Environment Day with issues of biodiversity in mind. They held the workshop with PANALIPDAN Southern Min-danao, Tugtugang Bayan cultural group and KATRIBU sectoral group. They aim to have new and fresh songs for the environment that reflect the different environmental issues in Mindanao. Popong Lan-dero, Davao-based artist known for his unique song craftsmanship and indigenous styles was part of the training where 15 young aspiring composers from different grass root communities in Mindanao participated.

Mindanao is faced with intensifying threats by developmental projects such as large-scale mining, dams, massive land and crop conversion. The critical biodi-versity area of the Pulangi River along the tributaries of the Rio Grande in Mindanao is being threatened by the construction of the Pulangi V mega dam. The project is set to submerge more than 30 lumad communities in Bukidnon alone and spell catastrophic damages to the water ecosystem in the Bukidnon and North Cotobato and in Minda-nao as a whole.

These and other issues will highlight the alternative album that the organizers are targeting for release by early next year in time for the 2011 Earth Day.

In a forum held by the CEC held last week, various non-government organizations and peoples organizations have come together to share their plans and concerns with the upcoming treaty discussions.
What came clear was that in discussing the CBD and its national expression in the Philippines was that it should be the welfare of the people and communities that should be paramount for any meaningful treaty to be accomplished.