‘Do something to make a different world’

(The writer, a Ramon Magsaysay  awardee who teaches in the UP College of Law, wished his students a merry Christmas with a  warning, a challenge and unusual homework.)

To members of the UP Environmental Law Class ’11-’12:

The world will be very, very different in your time.

“The day would not be too far when all else would be lost, not only for his generation but also for succeeding generations, generations which stand to inherit nothing but a parched (or flooded) earth incapable of sustaining life.” (Children’s case, July 30, 1993, 224 SCRA 792)

How prophetic are the words uttered by a Supreme Court justice in one of the more “useless” cases in the Philippines. (This was a time when justices of the Supreme Court still commanded the highest degree of respect.) The facts and circumstances in the case was a story that was trying to be told almost one generation ago when it was filed in March 1990, almost 22 years ago. It took the Office of the President 21 years to finally heed the call  –- a simple story and humble plea couched in legal language –- and ban logging in our already hardly existent forests. Twenty-one years … by then, by now, it’s too late to save drowning children in Cagayan de Oro and elsewhere.

But perhaps it is the myopic nature of human beings that we fail to see what will eventually happen if we persist on a pattern of behavior. But to those of us who have seen this coming, resulting from our constant abuse of life-sources, at this point we cannot say “I told you so.” The consequences and unspeakable suffering from the floods in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan are too immense and intense to even think of.

But then, we must all realize that this is only the beginning. As you will read from a  CNN article, the Earth you will live in in the next 30 to 50 years will be practically unrecognizable. It will be horrific and horrible, to say the least. Ondoy, Ramon, Sendong, and many more are just “patikim”’. And the statement of the morrow will not be “I told you so.”

No, those of us who have seen this coming will not be here to say that. Nor will anyone ever say that given the horror that your generation and the generation of your children will be facing. The question that you will all ponder in the future is “What did I do when I had the power to do something?”

If there is anything I would like you to go home with after our semester ends in March ’12, it is the need to take action.  Forget about waiting for the government to take action. There is a very strong disconnect between our government leaders –  whose terms of office and political concerns are generally even more myopic  –  and the long-term needs of our people.

For example, what every city or town needs now is  rainwater catchment ponds, large ones, to catch and store the anticipated excessive rainfall in the future and to serve as a hedge for water when it starts running out. We will also need more open space –- not more concrete roads, malls, more parking lots and more buildings –- which we will need for evacuation areas. We will need small boats as rescue vessels, floating hospitals, medicines, toilets, water, food (growing even on the roadsides and on windowsills). And oh, please prepare as many body bags as you can. In Cagayan de Oro, they are running out of coffins.

As you may know, I am probably one of the most idealistic and optimistic person you can find on the planet, and one who dares to take action when no one else will. But, my friends, hope is beginning to dim. The onslaught of the consequences of our accumulated ‘sins’ is kicking us in the face  with full force.  What makes the spirit question the heart’s hope is that the leaders to whom we have entrusted our lives and our future are not really concerned with effective long-term solutions.

In the face of a disaster such as this, they would rather be seen doling out relief goods, making motherhood statements, and generally trying to look good on camera. Today, their most pressing concern, as the year 2011 ends and 2012 begins, is how to raise enough money next year to pay for their campaign in the 2013 elections.

And to the young: Are they too concerned with their cellphones, I-pods and computer games to even think about the kind of future they will have, much less try to do something about it? Will youth be wasted on the young? I certainly hope not.

Thus, I have been trying to open your eyes to the problems that beset the life-sources of this country, and of the world. These life-sources we mistakenly call by a very shallow word as the ‘environment’.  More important, I am trying to show you that you are not helpless, that you can take action in your own way, and that actions cause ripples.

To hell with government. Do not look at them for solutions. More often than not, they are the problem. Your little experience with getting the UP Diliman bureaucracy involved in our edible gardening project is one such example. The run-around you were given just to make them cooperate is only the ‘tip of the ice-drop’. You will meet more difficult and much greater obstacles. On many occasions, you will see how government, supposedly set up to facilitate good works, actually becomes the biggest obstacle to getting anything good done.

One thing you must do. If the UP bureaucracy does not cooperate or just continues to give you the run around, use the power in your hands to make them sit up and listen. You cannot imagine how powerful a letter-complaint is when addressed to the Office of the Ombudsman, the CHED, the Board of Regents, and to the social media. At the very least, it sparks a match under their butts.

The class is not about Environment and the Law. It is about making the goddamned law work. It is also about holding accountable the very people who are supposed to implement the law, but don’t.

By January ’12, we will start the solid waste management audit of the UP Diliman Campus, starting with the College of Law. We will contact the Commission on Audit chairman, a fellow graduate of the UP College of Law, to have one of her auditors join us. We also have the support of the UP  President and the Chancellor. But with or without their support, we will go on with the audit. And any office not in compliance will be given a notice to sue. If non-compliance continues, we start preparing affidavits for administrative, civil, and criminal actions against the heads/deans of the colleges.

Part of your final exam will be to actually file a case against a dean of a UP college, or some other high UP Official, for not complying with the Solid Waste Management Law. I will send a copy of this letter to UP Diliman Chancellor Saloma, a very good man and a dedicated public servant. I leave it to him to give the deans and others a heads-up.

As a more severe form of penalty, we will also post their faces and names on the class Facebook and other media outlets. If UP, the supposed premier university in the country cannot even comply with something so basic as the Solid Waste Management Law, we might as well throw in the towel.

Merry Christmas. Although this is not exactly a happy Christmas message, it is my prayer that you be with your family during the holidays. Being together with them, with or without the material accoutrements of a commercialized Christmas, is all that matters.

In closing, may I share with you a line I recently encountered, one that gives me a little hope. Maybe that is why we teach.

“If you want to plan for one year, plant rice. If you want to plan for ten years, plant a tree. But if you want to plan for a hundred years, plant the seed of an idea in the fertile minds of the young.” – Confucius, paraphrased.