Green Journal

The title for this blog came from my boss who forwarded this legal memorandum by Atty. Neri Javier Colmenares on the proposed amendments to the Philippine constitution prepared by the House of Representatives. The original email she got from another friend was entitled "Read and weep". Indeed, Atty. Colmenares' memorandum noted a lot of things to weep about in the proposed amendments, from the scandalous expansion of the powers and terms of office of the President and legislators, to the deletion or revision of specific provisions that aim to ensure transparency and accountability in the various branches and processes of government. I imagine people who sincerely believe in that thing called "participatory governance" having such terrible fits at the thought of hoodlums in Congress mangling the provisions of the present constitution. The proposed provision for the utilization and management of natural resources is a nightmare for many civil society actors who ar...

In a media advocacy training, a friend who is now the business editor of a major broadsheet here in the Philippines described politics as the fleeting world of alignments, positions, and pronouncements. There was this unmistakable contempt in his voice when he stressed that the realm of politics is essentially nothing but ephemeral phenomena which are just too irrelevant to the lives of ordinary people. Now, what has this got to do with policies in NRM? Nothing too direct. I just thought how this fleeting quality of politics in the country is also very apt in describing the NRM policy arena. Actually, this should apply to policies in other sectors as well. But NRM policies are particularly notorious in this regard. A case in point is the recent cancellation of all Community-Based Forestry Management (CBFM) agreements in eight (8) regions in the country by former DENR Secretary Mike Defensor. CBFMA is supposed to be the national strategy in managing the country's remaining forest re...