‘New normal’ waste

The pandemic and its enforced lockdowns have only added to the environmental degradation in the country. Adding to the millions of disposable facemasks thrown away everyday is packaging of just about anything delivered from producers to consumers. Add to that the millions of new syringes and needles that come with the government’s push to vaccinate up to 80 million Filipinos against the ill effects of COVID-19.

Despite these “new normal” aggravations, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) continues to be several steps behind in responding. There seems to be zero initiatives to provide Filipinos with guidance on how to safely dispose of the increasing waste.

The ability to strictly enforce environment compliance edicts is just one of the sore weak points of the current DENR dispensation, something that hopefully will be addressed by a belatedly late administrative order establishing an Environmental Law Enforcement and Protection Service (ELEPS).

The interim measure is expected to give way to a proposed new government agency under the DENR that would have better policing powers. The DENR is hoping that Congress will be able to approve a proposed Environmental Protection and Enforcement Bureau in the next few months... a slim possibility given the upcoming elections and the general aversion of lawmakers to “fatten” up the bureaucracy.

I remember two decades ago when, as part of the management of a major multinational company operating in the Philippines, newly passed environment laws were vigorously pursued at both local and national levels for any new projects. Enforcement was very much evident and anticipated, even feared.

Circular economy and sustainability fallacy

Today, many environment activists decry the inadequacy of the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000 to protect public health and the environment. For one, the two-decades-old law has clearly failed to ensure that solid waste is properly segregated – from the household level up to collection dumps.

Even before the pandemic, the amount of plastic waste has exponentially increased to unmanageable levels, while erratic enforcement of its use and disposal failed to measure up.

The law itself has many blind spots, foremost of which is on how to deal with the growing use – more than disposal or recycling – of plastic in consumer products. Companies that produce and use plastics have always evoked the circular economy and sustainability principle that espouses the benefits of plastic use in modern life.

Truth, though, is far from this utopian view. There are now more phones than people in the world, and the metals and batteries from these will only aggravate the toxic contribution of its plastics in harming the environment and humans.

The circular economy and sustainability tenets are a cowardly surrender by the world’s governments to the strong lobby of businesses that support the belief that progress and growth can only be achieved by supporting increased production and sales of consumer products.

In the expected aftermath of this pandemic, the sustainable circular economy approach is even more vigorously pursued by developed economies despite its failure to curb irresponsible disposal of polluting products, all because of the need to get back to pre-pandemic economic growth levels.

It’s unfair that the third world gets blamed for all the pollution in waterways and oceans, when it is the developed world that abets the production and marketing of polluting consumer products to countries beyond their borders, especially those that have weak or non-existent laws on waste disposal.

Still, our government must come up with better laws to address the engulfing pollution problem caused by a growing population and compounded by increasing personal wealth.

Our environment laws are terribly outdated: the Environment Impact Assessment System was passed in 1978 and badly needs a fresh update to guide stakeholders to mitigate consequences or risks to the environment, or even to proactively deal with them.

Even the Clean Air Act of 1999 and the Clean Water Act of 2004 need to be updated according to new scientific findings and provide the necessary platforms to allow the country to deliver on its various commitments on the environment.

Detailed score card

A detailed and transparent score card is a great way to keep the bureaucracy attuned to its goals and the country’s needs in dealing with the environment. We must have a viable system in place where accomplishments in air, water, and land protection are measured against targets.

These should provide the alarms necessary to support the development of tools, including amendments to or new laws to prevent further degradation of the country’s natural assets.

Recent published independent studies about a reduction once again of the country’s forest cover should have been earlier flagged down by the DENR and promptly dealt with. In 2010, the Global Forest Watch dashboard estimated the Philippines’ natural forest cover at 13.2 million hectares; in a span of a decade, 46.8 thousand hectares has been recorded lost, presumably with the resurgence of illegal logging in recent years.

The same is true with our marine resources, which includes fish population and other sea life. The country’s antiquated Fisheries Code, passed in 1998, has failed to guard against overfishing in recent years, raising calls for a fresh look at existing policies that overly depended on a 1974 community-based approach to protecting and managing marine life.

Not only are municipal fishing communities citing dwindling fish caught in recent years, but also the disappearance of many species. Reports have also been monitoring the degradation of many coral reefs.

Surely, such major findings should prod government to start “looking at the forest, and not just the trees.”

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