Environment group criticizes Lopez

MANILA, Philippines -  Environment Secretary Gina Lopez is failing to distinguish between personal advocacies and her role as the government’s chief environmental manager, leading a developmental environment group to describe her young tenure as a “failed leadership.”

Lopez’s pronouncements clearly exhibit this bias, while her arbitrary orders to close down mines and cancel MPSA signal a breakdown in the rule of law,” Philippine Business for Environmental Stewardship (PBEST) said in a statement.

Lopez has earned the ire of mining firms, local government units, and mining communities after she shut down a slew of operating mines and canceled contracts on environmental grounds after an audit. Both the audit and the subsequent orders have been criticized for what some described as a lack of transparency and failure to adhere to due process.

PBEST said: “The DENR leadership must thus be reminded that it is the rule of law that has allowed the protection of the environment for generations yet to be born. It is the rule of law that established environmentally critical areas and delineated ancestral domains. It is the rule of law that enables the secretary of the DENR to apprehend or penalize those destroying the environment.”

The group said the complex task of managing the environment requires a balancing act among a range of stakeholders, an area where Lopez drastically fails.

“This means a brand of environmental governance that sees the forest in addition to the trees, passionate but not discriminatory,” hitting Lopez’s “fixation on mining as the ultimate villain of mother nature.”

The abuse of a government position has historically resulted in failure and strife, it said. “Laws are put in place to regulate and stabilize all aspects of social life … After all, ours is a government of laws and not of men.”