NOT EVERYTHING in life is measured by money, and not all capital is financial.
Take social capital for instance. In so many ways, it could be more valuable than financial capital.
Think about political capital too. It could even be greater than both financial capital and social capital combined.
I remember the old debate in the academic circles about the real prima donna of the social sciences. Is it economics or political science?
I started with a bias for political science because that was my major, but as I entered the business world, I also saw the importance of economics. It seems that I have turned full circle now, because I now think that political capital is the most important of all, but nonetheless I also think that it should be blended with financial capital and social capital.
We may be a poor country, but we are very rich in natural capital and social capital. The problem is, we are tapping our natural capital in the wrong way, even to the extent of destroying it, and we are not tapping our social capital in the right way.
You may have heard the question of many Filipinos before, asking why there are so many poor and hungry people in a country that is so rich in natural resources and even richer in personal talent. The answer to that question is always the same, and that is the lack of political will. The key to political will of course is political capital.
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Roughly translated, social change also means national transformation and that is what we all want. Perhaps for the first time in recent political history, we have a President who has not only the political will to drive national transformation, he also has the political capital that is needed to make it happen.
Capital is valuable in any form, and even if political capital is all that we have in abundance now, we should now grab the chance to achieve national transformation in the best forms that it could come.
Political capital could translate into financial capital. One example is the National Greening Program (NGP) that could deliver three in one combinations of environment, housing and livelihood projects. Aside from planting trees for reforestation and for profit, it has the potential of building new communities with built-in housing and livelihood components. It could also become an excellent corporate social responsibility (CSR) program for private companies.
In so many ways, ecology and energy actually complement each other. We can grow inputs for sustainable energy. And if we have energy, we can process the harvest of our farms. And if our energy is clean, it will not destroy the environment.
Hopefully, we could grow enough trees in our forests to prevent floods. All these could be done through a good mix of tapping political capital, social capital and financial capital. All these are possible with strong political will, under a strong political leader./PN
