Citizens’ groups urge Aquino: Green the MTPDP!

CITIZENS groups called on President Benigno Aquino 3rd to integrate environmental sustainability, climate change adaptation and mitigation and disaster risk reduction plans in the overall anti-poverty program of his administration. The “Caucus to Green the Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan [MTPDP]” initiated by the La Liga Policy Institute (La Liga) issued the call during a press conference in Quezon City on Friday, saying that President Aquino could actually make Christmas truly happy for the Filipinos not only this year, but for the next five years, by “greening” the MTPDP. The Caucus to Green the MTPDP includes the following individuals and organizations: Lawyer Elpidio Peria, lawyer Jun Quicho, Alternative Budget Initiative-Environment Cluster (ABI-ENVI), Education for Life Foundation (ELF), Go Organic! Philippines, Haribon Foundation (Haribon), Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities (ICSC), KAAKBAY, La Liga Policy Institute (La Liga), NGOs for Fisheries Reform (NFR), One Organic Movement, Partido Kalikasan (PK), Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement (PRRM) and World Wildlife Fund Phils. (WWF).

The participants to the caucus agree that the President should be able to make a clean break from his predecessor’s tradition of disregarding the carrying capacity of the Philippine environment, the impacts of global warming and climate change, and the havoc that it brings in the event of disasters and calamities that eventually wipe out clean whatever little economic “gains” of the government in one typhoon day, such as Ondoy and Pepeng.

Roland Cabigas, managing director of La Liga said the President’s promise was to make the MTPDP process transparent by allowing meaningful citizens’ participation.

Cabigas said that “while the draft MTPDP chapters on agriculture and environment already includes proposals from La Liga and the Caucus to Green the MTPDP, citizens’ groups must continue to be vigilant to ensure that gains on these chapters will not be overturned or cancelled out in the other chapters of the MTPDP. He also added that the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), which is crafting the MTPDP, should be able to recognize the diversity of Philippine nongovernment organizations for the process to be inclusive and be called a broad citizens’ participation.

“Every Filipino has a stake in the MTPDP. Kailangang makialam ang lahat dito [Everyone should act on this],” Cabigas said, adding that the MTPDP will directly affect the lives of 90 million Filipinos in the next five years under Mr. Aquino’s watch.

As such, the group calls for increased participation and vigilance in the MTPDP process, urging the NEDA to allow more inputs based on citizen groups’ perspectives of the “needs, more than wants” of a favored few.

More importantly, a broad citizens’ participation in the MTPDP process, he said, will ensure that the next MTPDP will be more coherent and consistent with President Aquino’s “daang matuwid” battle cry during the presidential campaign, which saw citizens’ groups rallying behind him.

The group vowed to engage the NEDA and national line agencies by submitting specific recommendations for agriculture and environment and natural resources chapters of the MTPDP entitled Ensuring Environmental and Natural Resources Sustainability to Increase Climate-Resiliency and Adopting Sustainable, Organic and Ecological Agriculture as a Priority Strategy for broad-Based Growth.

The recommendations are product of a series of continuing parallel process by citizens’ groups under the Caucus to Green the MTPDP. –LA LIGA POLICY INSTITUTE, Manila Times