Railroading, NGO-style

You’ve heard about “midnight” deals surreptitiously signed to land juicy government contracts and other such anomalies. How about an attempt, spearheaded by so-called environmental activists, to cripple an entire agricultural industry by railroading a controversial ban on the basis of a study that the prohibition’s proponents can’t even wait to be reviewed?

The government’s inter-agency committee on the environmental health (IACEH) suddenly postponed a meeting it had scheduled for yesterday for still unknown reasons. During the meeting, a draft resolution banning the practice of spraying fungicides from low-flying airplanes in Mindanao’s banana plantations had been scheduled to be signed—even if the findings of a peer review of a controversial study that prompted the proposed ban had not yet been made public.

I was informed of the sudden decision to indefinitely postpone the meeting as I was writing yesterday’s column on the existence—but delayed non-disclosure—of the peer review report. It turns out that the proponents of the much-maligned Dionisio study on aerial spraying were already prepared to have a ban imposed even if they knew that the review had already been completed.

In fact, minutes of the committee’s previous meetings on the subject of the proposed ban on aerial spraying had already mentioned the peer review, conducted by colleagues of the medical researchers who compiled the Dionisio study at the University of the Philippines-Manila. When last heard from, the representatives of various government agencies that make up IACEH had decided to allow reviews of the study before acting on the proposed ban, which is the prudent way to craft important government policy, after all.

It is to the credit of the committee’s chairman, Health Secretary Francisco Duque, that he has of late been calling for independent reviews of what many have called a fatally flawed study before acting on the ban. In one meeting recently, Duque proposed that the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Health Organization should be requested to conduct their own reviews, to lay to rest speculations that the government was being used as a tool by some NGOs out to destroy the banana-exporting industry through a ban based on a suspicious study funded in part by these so-called activists themselves.

In fact, in yet another IACEH meeting, Duque even asked the representatives of the state agencies in the committee to vote on the ban despite the lack of a review of the study that recommended it. Once again, the representatives showed prudence by voting down the move to approve the resolution, voting 8-3 to wait for reviews of the Dionisio study to be conducted before any official action on the ban is made.

The sudden cancellation of yesterday’s meeting proves that IACEH may have decided that it will not be stampeded into imposing the ban being pushed by the self-proclaimed environmental activists, some of whom worked on the study and who religiously attend the committee’s meetings in the hopes of getting their pet resolution signed. Now, the self-imposed timetable of these anti-spraying lobbyists may have to be pushed back, in the interest of fairness and scientific integrity.

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Of course, as discussed here yesterday, it’s not as if the Dionisio study—which has been criticized for alleged manipulation and outright fabrication of data to paint a picture of the “poisoning” of a small village in Davao del Sur due to aerial spraying —hasn’t been reviewed already. The committee, the activists and even the banana-exporting industry all know about the existence of the UP-Manila review, even if its results haven’t been disclosed yet.

But judging by the sense of urgency being displayed by the proponents of the ban, including the researchers led by Dr. Alan Dionisio who are also based in UP-Manila, the peer review may have confirmed reports of serious data-gathering and analysis errors in the study they conducted three years ago (but revealed only this year) in Sitio Camocaan, Hagonoy, Davao del Sur. If, as Dionisio says, his study will stand up to scrutiny “in all its elements,” then he would have nothing to fear from a review by his own colleagues.

(Dionisio himself, before he was overruled by Duque in one IACEH meeting, was against any peer review of his study, allegedly because he did not intend to publish his results. It was only later, when the heads of the agencies in the committee showed their hesitation to approve the ban on the basis of an unreviewed study that he and the NGO activists acquiesced, even recommending third-party agencies that could conduct an appropriate review, IACEH records show.)

That’s why even Duque’s suggestions that UNEP and WHO revisit Dionisio’s study seem strange at this point, since the already-completed UP-Manila peer review hasn’t even been discussed yet. Besides, sources close to the controversy have said that WHO representatives contacted to conduct the review have wisely told the committee that they need time to study the proposal—time that the ban’s proponents don’t seem to have.

But then, the ban’s prime movers have previously shown that they are not above using less-than-fair methods to push for their cherished ban on aerial spraying. In one meeting in the past, they have attended IACEH meetings in the hopes of getting their resolution approved, even when the committee’s official agenda was supposedly about plans to incinerate peanut butter, of all things.

Still, the people calling for the ban on aerial spraying should be reminded that there are legal, established and transparent ways to get things done. And that if they are really on the side of the truth and the public’s welfare, they shouldn’t resort to underhanded tactics just to get their way. –Jojo Robles, Manila Standard Today