Enormous hope amid challenges

The recent Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey revealed that 94 percent of Filipinos welcome the New Year with enormous hope rather than fear, and if I may add, amid the challenges we face (https://www.sws.org.ph/pr20131230.htm). This confirms what we know—that we are basically an optimistic lot.

It is interesting to observe that in comparison to the Germans (1991 to 2012), and in a poll conducted by SWS from 2000 to 2013, more Filipinos consistently enter the New Year with hope, reaching 92 percent in 2012 with their German counterparts at 42 percent. SWS explained that, “The survey question on hope versus fear about the New Year was patterned after the polls conducted annually by the Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach (IfD Allensbach), often referred to more simply as the ‘Allensbach Institute’ (https://www.ifd-allensbach.de), one of the most well-known and respected opinion and market research institutes in Germany today. Surveys are completed in December each year in the Federal Republic of Germany, until 1989 in West Germany including West Berlin, with maximum 2,000 respondents per survey.” SWS conducted the surveys for free as part of their public service.

With such a hopeful populace, it is not difficult for political authorities to tap the citizens and stakeholders for their active participation, partnership and collaboration in decision-making, especially on matters that affect their future. This necessarily includes their involvement in the long-overdue laying-out of plans for solid waste management, air and water quality management, comprehensive land use, energy, climate change and disaster risk reduction and management.

In a country like ours which is disaster-prone, and the third most highly vulnerable to the wide ranging effects of climate change, with Cebu ranking 8th as the most-landslide prone area in the country, it is a must for local government units (LGUs) and national government agencies (NGAs) to bring in the constituents as participants in all phases of policy-making. It is mandatory on their part to respect the rights of the people and nongovernment organizations and people’s organizations to be engaged at all levels of decision-making—whether political, social or economic.

Barangays are even expressly mandated by the Local Government Code (Code) to mobilize the public to take part in governance through the mechanisms for public participation such as activation of the barangay development councils and the twice-yearly barangay assemblies and the required public consultation under section 26 of the Code in projects where the environment is impacted, natural resources are depleted or climate change is aggravated, among others.

Imagine, for example, if affected barangays of the road-widening project in the South have duly consulted with and listened to the residents of Naga City, San Fernando town and Carcar City and ecology, health and cultural advocates in Cebu on the congressman-initiated project tapping his priority development assistance fund (PDAF) allocation, do you think the century-old trees lining the highway will be allowed to be painted and marked for eventual destruction?

Is the government bent on pushing through with the project, at this stage, despite the declaration by the Supreme Court that the PDAF, as source of the project, is unconstitutional?

Does this project not push us further in harm’s way considering that we need more trees for the polluted air in Cebu to be filtered, lessen the erosion and flooding incidents and their consequences, protect the threatened biodiversity, and help minimize the looming water crisis and the current climate change challenge we all face?

Why can we not have a viable and sustainable road project which does not destroy but would rather nurture our already vastly degraded natural systems?

It is a disappointing that two months after our request, we still await the response of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in Central Visayas for a copy of the Environmental Impacts Statement, Environmental Compliance Certificate and other related documents regarding said project. If DENR is confident of the legality of its decision in allowing the road-widening project to push through, why is it stalling in acceding to a valid request and in respecting the citizens’ right to be informed and to make decisions on courses of actions to make?

Amid the government and other stakeholders’ inaction and the enormous tasks ahead, we are still hopeful that the year 2014 will find the culture of entitlement that characterized political leaders and the previous administration’s dealings with the people to be vanquished. Plans and programs will hopefully be more responsive, emanating from the voices of the grassroots communities and the various sectors. The bottom-up budgeting that the Aquino administration has initiated to alleviate poverty and for the country to comply with the Millennium Development Goals, which include ecological sustainability, by the way, will optimistically instill the participatory mind-set that admired governance champions like the late Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo and former San Francisco Mayor Al Arquillano root for.

But, as always, it takes not government but a hopeful, determined, assertive and courageous citizenry to ensure that we are not excluded from the processes of decision-making on matters that affect all of us. This is what empowerment entails.