Greater devastation
The global climate crisis is wreaking greater devastation around the world, especially in the Philippines, where its people are reeling from revelations of massive corruption in flood control projects that involved prominent politicians and heads of corporations.
Results of a Pulse Asia survey conducted from Sept. 27 to 30 found that 97 percent of respondents believe that corruption in government is widespread. Seventy-eight percent believe it is “very widespread,” while 20 percent say it is “somewhat widespread.”
The survey also showed that 90 percent of Filipinos believe there is close collusion between politicians and private contractors.
Deforestation and environmental devastation due to mining activities and land grabbing are areas where corrupt politicians and mining executives work together to deprive people of their lands and forests. Their corrupt projects divert the natural flow of rivers and cut down trees.
The Philippine government claims that, as of 2022, approximately 24 percent of the country’s total land area, or 7.22 million hectares, remains forested. But NGOs and conservation groups like the Center for Sustainability PH claim that only less than 3 percent of the original, old-growth rainforest is still intact.
The government forestry counts secondary growth as forest cover and shows a massive loss of forests: from 17.8 million ha in 1934, today it’s now 7.22 million ha. Among the aforementioned 3 percent are those in remote areas of Palawan, Mindoro and Mindanao.
These and other ancestral lands are under assault by multinational corporations partnered with Philippine firms and those operating with government permits. Despite many protests by the brave environmental defenders, NGOs and church-based groups, many corporations continue ravaging the environment with impunity, protected by private security companies usually made up of former soldiers.
They are assisted by counter-insurgency state troops who are protecting mining corporations and branding defenders of the environment and ancestral lands as terrorists or communist rebels. Their red-tagging gives them license to arrest, detain, torture and even kill these defenders and protesters.
The Philippines has clearly shown little respect for human rights and the Constitution in this matter. The Rule of Law Index of the World Justice Project and the Human Freedom Index both put the Philippines at 99th place out of 142 countries. In East Asia and the Pacific, the country ranks 13th out of 15 nations. These indices highlight the country’s persistent violations of human rights, corruption and criminal justice.
It can be said that many in Congress and the oligarchs run the country like a business enterprise. They control wages, create a poor and hungry workforce, plunder our natural resources for their own gain, and loot the Treasury of trillions of pesos, as the “Floodgate” scandal showed. The nation is like a ship; its leaders, the vessel’s crew; and the Filipino people, its cargo. The captain and his crew are drunk with power and greed as they sail blindly into a looming storm./PN
