ASCOT Library Zabali Campus

Chapter 1: forests – Chapter 2: agricultural lands – Chapter 3: coastal and marine resources – Chapter 4: freshwater resources – Chapter 5: urbanization – Chapter 6: dirty industries.

“The emergence of a strong Filipino consciousness for the environment has been long overdue. The alarming rate of degradation of our environment and over-exploitation of our natural resources have resulted in the current dismal state of the Philippine environment. This condition has, in fact, become an important symptom of our social crisis and, likewise, an important factor in the economic life of our nation.
This popular environmental consciousness has naturally been quite varied. For many, it simply means the "Clean and Green" being promoted by government: meaning proper garbage disposal and tree planting. For others it goes beyond garbage recycling and includes such internationally popular issues as toxic and nuclear waste disposal, reforestation, saving endangered species, air pollution, global warming and the like.
A more developed environment consciousness should be able to ground the environment issue into the totality of the Philippine condition, the question being how to give substance to these issues from the Philippine context. We should be able to answer the question regarding the situation of the Philippine environment not in general terms, but in its particularity, and in its totality.
It is not easy to answer this question based only on anecdotal evidence. Because of this, environmental activists are always on the look out for statistical indicators of the state of the Philippine environment which is quite necessary to provide substance and impact to their education, information and advocacy activities. It does not help that many of our government statistics have not been processed for easy understanding and use for the environmental activist, much less the layperson.
Furthermore, it is also not easy to come up with definitive statistical data for an underdeveloped country such as ours. Expectedly, there are many data gaps and in such situations we would have to make do with anecdotal evidence.
Another problem facing many environmental activists is how to provide structure and focus to these varied, seemingly unrelated issues. Failing to do so may result in missing the forest for the trees, either focusing on the secondary or even trivial issues or failing to contextualize specific issues to the overall situation.
This is a matter of providing comprehensive research and analysis that shall define or describe the problem of the Philippine environment in a nutshell. How grave is the situation of the Philippine environment? Is the problem caused simply by the Filipino's lack of concern for our environment? What drives the Filipino to abuse our environment?
Indeed, there is no simple answer to these questions because how a person or an entity impacts on the environment is not determined simply by that person or corporation's environment consciousness, but more so by economic factors.
This book seeks to paint the bigger picture so that we can capsulize the situation, contextualize the various issues and define our path of action. To do so, we started on the overall premise of humanity's action on nature in order to survive and how this is affected by humanity's social interaction. This is further confirmed empirically by the extent and nature of environmental degradation.
The IBON Environment Indicators Project which surveys, collates and sifts through statistical data on the Philippine environment provides basis for this book. This project was made possible through support from the Danish Church Aid, with special thanks to Gulli Jakobsen. The Project Committee included, Mayet Manubay- project head, Don Lopez, Tes Pacaba and Joseph Yu - researchers, and Dr. Noel Duhaylungsod - chief consultant. This book was put together by Ros-B Guzman. - Antonio Tujan Jr.”