Alma Maria O. Salvador in Business World (Philippines): Tropical storm Sendong (international name: Washi), the last disaster that hit Northern Mindanao, sends a strong signal for the government to include environmental governance as part of its policy agenda.Since the beginning of the Aquino administration’s rule in June 2010, it has vehemently focused much of its efforts on anti-corruption policies. Despite the current administration’s claim to prioritize poverty alleviation, this administration’s focus on anti-corruption has been perceived as seemingly revolving single-mindedly around the prosecution of the former president Arroyo and her cronies.
The government’s under-mobilized response to Sendong’s immediate rescue efforts, lack of preparedness in managing the allocation of food and shelter aid resources, and an insufficient, if not absent, long-term environmental policy planning agenda, have clearly been exposed.
Because of the increasingly devastating impacts of climate change on society and economy compounded by the country’s natural geographic disadvantages, environmental governance should be at the forefront of this administration’s policy’s objectives.
Conditional cash transfers are insufficient to meet Millennium Development Goals if persons, communities, properties and livelihoods are at risk of being wiped out by frequent and intense extreme events such as typhoons and floods. To relegate environmental security in the periphery of governance today is to equally deny the poor of the values of justice and security which this government professes to seek and restore.
The context of the most recent impact of extreme climatic events in our country brings to light the extent of how governance should increasingly be co-defined by a critical perspective on environmental security wherein the referent object is not mainly the state but the people....
Tropical Storm Washi (Sendong) in the Sulu Sea on December 17, 2011, after causing catastrophic damage in Mindanao. From NASA
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