The Department of Environment and Natural Resources is seeking higher fines on environmental offenders.
Illegal loggers, polluters and wildlife poachers and smugglers may soon be facing heavier penalties once the proposal to raise fines for environmental crimes becomes a state policy.
The DENR said it started the process of finding ways to determine the monetary value of lost environmental goods and services as a result of an environmental crime.
The agency, meanwhile, is hosting a two-day consultation workshop called “Ecosystem Resource Valuation in Support to Environmental Law Enforcement” starting today until tomorrow in Quezon City.
Close to 100 environment and law enforcement authorities will gather at the event to draw up a blueprint on how ecological damage assessment values can be used by the courts as a measure of liability in determining the fines and penalties to be slapped against environmental offenders.
DENR Secretary Roy Cimatu expressed optimism the effort would “provide the much-needed policy reforms to bridge the gap between achieving environmental justice and enforcement of environmental laws.”
“It is imperative to impose higher fines for the commission of any violation against the country’s environmental laws if we are to really curb offenses like indiscriminate disposal of garbage, illegal logging, wildlife poaching and smuggling, to name a few,” Cimatu said.
He noted that the consultation workshop was a step forward to having a full accounting of environmental damage as it would provide a mechanism for the determination of accurate compensation cost for the damage resulting from an environmental offense.
“At present, damage from environmental crime cannot be fully accounted for as we have yet to develop a mechanism that would determine the full compensation cost for the damage made,” Cimatu said.
He said the outcome of the activity would surely be a huge contribution to the DENR’s conduct of natural resources damage assessment, especially in the cost-benefit analysis of health, safety and environmental issues.
Among the considerations playing a major part in framing the mechanism are the cost at which the resource would actually sell in the market place at the time when the offense was committed and the cost of restoring, rehabilitating or replacing the affected resource.