THE TRANSITION to renewable energy is necessary. But not every project carrying the label “renewable” is automatically environmentally responsible. That distinction matters greatly in Panay Island.
Proposed wind-energy projects cover portions of Ibajay, Aklan and Pandan, Antique that fall within the Central Panay Mountain Range and the habitat of the endangered Dulungan or Rufous-headed Hornbill and other fauna and flora species endemic to Panay.
This presents government with an unavoidable question: Should forests and critical wildlife habitats be sacrificed in the name of saving the environment?
Wind power is cleaner than fossil-fuel generation. Renewable energy is indispensable to addressing climate change and strengthening the country’s energy security. Panay should welcome responsible investments that move the country toward cleaner sources of electricity.
But renewable energy should not be given an environmental blank check.
The Central Panay Mountain Range is not vacant land waiting to be economically utilized. It is Panay’s ecological backbone and main watershed, stretching across Aklan, Antique, Capiz and Iloilo. Its forests hold carbon, protect water resources and provide habitat for wildlife.
Among the species depending on those forests, aside from the Dulungan, are the Visayan spotted deer and Visayan warty pig, both critically endangered and could face extinction, too. For the Dulungan itseif, more than 95 percent of its remaining global population is concentrated in Central Panay, while only an estimated 1,000 to 3,000 mature individuals remain. It is already extinct in Guimaras and functionally extinct in Negros.
These numbers should transform the way renewable-energy projects within the mountain range are evaluated.
The issue is not whether Panay should choose endangered fauna over electricity. That is a false choice.
The real challenge is whether government and developers are willing to locate and design renewable-energy projects intelligently enough that producing clean power does not require destroying intact ecosystems.
Haribon Foundation, the first and oldest environmental conservation organization in the country, puts the principle plainly: “We should not destroy critical habitats that hold carbon and provide us with water to produce clean power.” It argues that genuine climate solutions should protect biodiversity by locating clean-energy projects on already degraded lands or near existing urban areas.
That should become more than an environmental group’s appeal. It should guide government policy.
Before renewable-energy projects are approved in ecologically sensitive portions of Panay, authorities must rigorously examine alternative sites, cumulative environmental impacts and the fragmentation of wildlife habitat. Developers should be required to demonstrate not merely that their projects produce renewable energy, but that they are being placed where ecological damage can be minimized.
Because there is a bitter irony in cutting into a carbon-storing forest to fight carbon emissions.
There is an even greater contradiction in threatening biodiversity to build infrastructure advertised as environmentally friendly.
The Dulungan itself illustrates what could be lost. Known as a “Farmer of the Forest,” the hornbill disperses seeds and helps regenerate Panay’s forests. Its dependence on mature forests also makes its presence an indicator of a healthy, functioning ecosystem.
Destroy enough of that habitat and Panay does not merely lose birds. It weakens the forest itself – the very natural system that stores carbon, protects watersheds and helps communities withstand environmental pressures. Climate change demands urgent action, but urgency must not become an excuse for poor environmental judgment.
Panay needs renewable energy. It also needs its remaining forests. The two objectives are not incompatible if government plans wisely, developers accept environmental limits, and projects are steered toward degraded and lower-impact locations whenever feasible.
Renewable energy should replace environmental destruction, not create another form of it. A wind turbine may generate clean electricity. But if putting it there requires sacrificing an irreplaceable forest, we must have the courage to ask whether that particular project, in that particular place, can truly be called green.
We cannot destroy one defense against climate change merely to build another.
