Greenpeace kicks off search for ‘greenest’ bet

Environment groups Greenpeace Southeast Asia and Ecological Waste Coalition (EcoWaste) kicked off yesterday their Green Electoral Initiative (GEI) 2007 to search for candidates with the most environment-friendly platforms and urge Filipinos to "vote for a green future."

"The elections are a mere two and a half months away, but the country has yet to see how the environment figures in the agenda of candidates," Greenpeace Southeast Asia campaigns director Von Hernandez said. "For the most part, political realignments, mudslinging, fluff and scandals still dominate the discourse of the current electoral contest, while the environmental issues are given only slight, and sometime not even token treatment."

"For a nation that is regularly confronted with serious environmental threats and increasingly frequent environment-related calamities, it is unthinkable that this issue has not even merited prominence in the current debates," Hernandez said. "With the GEI we are challenging senatorial aspirants to disclose how the welfare of the environment figures, or doesn’t figure, in their political plans."

Under the GEI, the environment organizations will conduct a survey among senatorial candidates regarding their proposed platforms on the environment. The groups will be giving out survey forms or questionnaires to all senatorial candidates, whose response will earn them corresponding points.

Greenpeace and EcoWaste said an "environment panel" was created to review the candidates’ answers to each of the 10 topics covered by the questionnaire.

Each candidate will be asked about their platforms on climate and energy change; water; solid waste; toxic waste trade and the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA); genetically-modified organisms; sustainable and organic agriculture; logging, mining and air pollution.

The survey form also includes a list of each candidate’s "environmental track record" and programs, which he or she intends to initiate if elected to office.

Greenpeace and EcoWaste said that the perfect score for each topic is 10 points that the "greenest candidate" might have a perfect score of 100 points.

The environment groups will give the senatorial candidates until March 31 to return their completed survey forms, then they will assess and rank the candidates and release these rankings to the public before the Earth Day celebrations on April 27.

"These are legitimate election issues that will have direct impact on community health and the environment," EcoWaste coordinator Rei Panaligan said. "As senatorial candidates woo us for votes, it is their responsibility to tell the people their positions and planned actions on these issues."

The GEI 2007 is the second time that environmentalists initiated such a project. The first GEI was launched before the May 2004 elections.– Katherine Adraneda