Yesterday, April 22, was a good day. It was Earth Day, which is always a good time to celebrate the beauty of our planet and the urgency to protect what we have been graced with. And this year’s celebration is especially meaningful, with high-level government officials gathering in New York City at the United Nations Headquarters for the signing of the Paris Agreement on climate change.
As I have written before, the world celebrates Earth Day annually. It is now a global ritual to remind us of the importance of caring for our environment. For the Philippines, endowed with rich natural resources and magnificent landscapes and seascapes, it is a necessary reminder. Environmental degradation threatens our country through loss of forest cover and fertile agricultural lands, depleted fish stocks, contaminated water supplies and breathing air, increased vulnerability to natural disasters, and energy insecurity, leading to catastrophic economic and social dislocations. It is not an exaggeration to say that our people will lose income, livelihood, health, and sustenance because of a failure of environmental management. We are losing our last great places because of this failure.
In an earlier column, I reflected on the distinction philosopher Martin Heidegger made between how man viewed nature then, almost with a view towards art and philosophy; and how we view nature—or natural resources—now, as instrumental, exploitable, and often without consideration for sustainability or ecological preservation. We do not need to fear nature, as though it were a vengeful force, and neither can we continue to view Mother Earth in purely utilitarian terms. We need to combine the old and new ways of looking at the environment, learning to understand and respect nature. We need to, as an astrologer might suggest, understand the balance of the elements of nature, and master this balance, as the key to the health, wealth, harmony, and happiness of families, communities, and nations alike.
Pope Francis said as much, in Laudato Sii, now considered one of the most important environmental writings, when he proposed the concept of integral ecology and encouraged us to practice an ecology of daily life.
The greatest challenge of course to living the Laudato Sii ecology, one based on a dual and simultaneous commitment to the poor and the planet, is climate change. This is true globally and for our country. Indeed, for 21 years, the Philippines has vigilantly pursued global efforts to come up with a legally-binding agreement that will guard the current and next generations against climate change. This is a mission I have been honored to have participated in from its inception. It is defined by a collective hope to learn from the loss of lives of and livelihoods that our people experience on a yearly basis.
On Dec.12, 2015, after more than two decades, we finally saw a landmark agreement come to life in the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) in Paris, France. The Philippines is one of the 195 countries that worked hard to come up with a new climate deal that is equitable and ambitious. The agreement mandates both developed and developing countries to do their part in charting a low-carbon development. Nations from all over the world should now do their best to limit global temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius and up until 1.5 degrees Celsius to keep us from suffering from the dangerous impacts of climate change. We are actually quite late in doing so, something made stark to us by the record levels of heat and global temperature that the world and the Philippines has been experiencing in recent weeks.
It is worth highlighting that this crucial endeavor will be done within the context of protecting our human rights and ensuring ecosystem integrity. This is our contribution to the Paris Agreement because it was the Philippines that led efforts and steered alliances to ensure that the agreement would provide guidance on how climate actions could be done properly and sustainably and veers away from making the agreement carbon-centric.
Valuing rights and ecosystems gives the Paris agreement a holistic perspective, one that we need in avoiding “wrong” climate actions. In particular, its preamble states that countries should, “respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights, the right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity.” It also recognized the “importance of the conservation and enhancement, as appropriate, of sinks and reservoirs of the greenhouse gases referred to in the Convention” and “noted the importance of ensuring the integrity of all ecosystems, including oceans, and the protection of biodiversity.”
In yesterday’s event hosted by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Environment Secretary Ramon Paje was expected to sign for the Philippines. Climate Change Commission (CCC) Vice-Chair Secretary Emmanuel de Guzman, with his colleagues Commissioners Noel Gaerlan and Veronica Victorio, will also be there. There were other diplomats and officials too, including CCC legal chief Atty. Railla Puno.
I like that our relevant climate change officials went to New York in full force, with global resolve and political will. The Paris Agreement is imperfect; we must now work hard to improve it even as we finalize the rules for its implementation with the expectation that the Agreement will take effect by 2018 or earlier. Domestically, we must comply with our commitment, subject to support of development partners, to reduce our emissions by 70 percent relative to business-as-usual levels by 2030. We must adopt a mandatory energy mix that caps coal power, build clean and low-emission transportation systems, and effectively protect our forests and ecosystems. Adaptation efforts must also be scaled up so that our people and communities become more resilient.
Senator Grace Poe, in her statement on Earth Day, is right in thanking President Aquino for positioning the Philippine as a leader in climate change. If elected President, Poe has committed to comply with our Paris commitments, pledging: “With political will and with the dreams and hopes of our children in mind, we will spare no efforts in honoring our word.”
In my environmental writing, I frequently quote Rainier Maria Rilke, the great German poet. One he said: “Everything is far and long gone by. I think that the star glittering above me has been dead for a million years. I would like to step out of my heart and go walking beneath the enormous sky. I would like to pray. And surely of all the stars that perished long ago, one still exists. I think that I know which one it is.”
It is my hope, that because we cared and took action, centuries from now, our descendants too would come out and walk beneath the sky and say: our planet still exists. Yesterday, for the first time in the many Earth Days I have celebrated, I felt that maybe we will win this fight.
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