Environmental Month or environmental scam?

Imbri

The Philippine Environmental Month is a good ring to everyone, but does it uphold its true purpose, or is it a total scam under the face of change?

The month of June is declared as the Environment Month in the Philippines to give time and effort to maintain and enhance the country’s environment. This month is relevant due to the unresolved environmental issues that are continued to be ignored despite the celebration. The promising “action” proposed underlies hypocrisy and inconsistency in addressing the root problems.

Solid waste management still proves to be a challenge in the country and is one of the challenges faced nationally. The Philippines produces 15 million tons of garbage every year that contribute to the worsening pollution. This statistic is expected to worsen now that different cities have faced recent solid waste disasters. This says a lot about the situation of waste management here in the country, which is underperforming and incompetent to meet the bare minimum of proper waste management. 

One of these is Davao City, which has its sanitary landfill permanently closed after a fatal landslide. Instead of fixing the city’s crisis on garbage management, Davao City Mayor Baste Duterte blamed the DENR and ordered the city to dump the garbage in front of its office. So much for Mindanao’s hub of progress when the mayor makes his own city a garbage dump.

It makes us wonder if Duterte is aware of the risk to public safety, given that different diseases can emerge from improper disposal of garbage, like Dengue. It also violates environmental regulations and effective waste management under RA 9003, which could have been avoided had Duterte resolved the problem with rationality and cooperation with the DENR instead of acting barbarically and inconsiderately.

Cebu City is also experiencing a crisis in waste management after the Binaliw landfill landslide in January this year. Cebu’s broken waste management has already been a problem for almost a decade, and it will continue to harm people and the environment if negligence continues. Not only can ignorance risk lives, but it can also cause death. 

Cebu thrives on urbanization, but its rapid urbanization, booming population, and weak policy implementation end up killing its own environment. Its failure to implement the Cebu City Ordinance No. 2031 has resulted in a continued full dependence on sanitary landfills. While the waste-to-energy initiative is a possibility, its emissions from incineration, when left unregulated, may do more harm than good.

Solid waste issues are manageable if mitigations are done properly. There should be more funding for implementing Materials Recovery Facilities, as it lessens the garbage intake of sanitary landfills. The cities of Davao and Cebu do not have such facilities due to insufficient funding and the lack of permanent sites on which to build them. Both the national and local governments must address this issue instead of continuing to implement the same old solutions that have proven environmentally ineffective.

Moreover, strengthened laws and more initiatives should be presented in local governments. Marikina City, through the City Ordinance No. 046, ordered households and establishments to segregate their own waste. Its success lies in the government’s strong and consistent implementation, where citizens will be encouraged to follow.

Aside from solid waste management, urban deforestation is also a developing problem in the Philippines. A recent massacre of trees along Quirino Avenue occurred as the SALEX project by the San Miguel Corporation continues to progress. While the agency claimed that not all trees will be cut down, exactly 617 trees have been removed.

The DENR’s shortcomings and negligence are evident, especially when it was the very agency that approved its undertaking.  Even the assigned agencies will and can bend to the elites’ eill, at the expense of the environment, in the name of profit and so-called “development.” Even if DENR obtained a certificate of no objection from the respective barangays, the department does not need a document to understand that such action is abhorrent and disrespectful of our nature.

Urban development is not an excuse for environmental negligence. Those two are not, and never will be, mutually exclusive. A project can promote development while remaining environmentally sustainable. The Philippines is already prone to natural phenomena such as typhoons, especially in flood-prone areas in Metro Manila. Trees play an essential role as a flood control measure. 

In fact, trees along Quirino Avenue were of great help in making the thoroughfare less flood-prone. Now that trees have been cut down in favor of constructing a skyway above it, the project will not only worsen traffic congestion in Metro Manila but also increase the risk of Quirino Avenue being submerged by floods more frequently.

The Philippines has a plethora of laws relating to the preservation of trees. The Natural Greening Program aims to plant 1.5 billion trees within 6 years. In support of this, there is a mandate of replanting 100 trees for every 1 tree removed. Republic Act No. 3517 also aims to preserve trees in public areas, including plazas and along national roads. But with the developments surrounding the SALEX project, clearly, the law had been violated—which points once again to the issue of lackluster implementation, especially by the agency that is tasked with protecting the country’s environment.

The Philippine Environmental Month has its purpose: to protect and preserve the environment and the country’s biodiversity. However, dedicating a single month to preserving nature is not enough; these efforts must continue every day with a genuine commitment to change. The government must not merely rely on temporary solutions; it has to address the root cause of these issues directly. Everyone has a role to play in achieving a balanced environment, but the government has a responsibility to provide genuine reforms and not a parody masquerading as revolutionary action.