The mourning after
Ondoy was a nightmare we hope to forever erase from our collective memory, but the grim reminders seem to be everywhere — probably right in your own home. Lives and homes were lost. Some have yet to bury their dead. Some places are still underwater.
You must have received a text message to join the prayer brigade to ward off the impending stronger typhoon Pepeng. Amid these circulating texts and pleas to the good Lord to keep Pepeng from falling to Philippine grounds, Senator Loren Legarda has come up with her own prayer. Loren, a passionate climate change mitigation advocate, chairs two oversight committees with strong powers to redirect reforms towards sustainable agriculture.
Wanna know Loren’s prayer? Well, it goes something like this: “Dear Lord, in addition to the prayers going around — of petitions that you hold Pepeng by your mighty hands — we pray that we learn to protect Mother Nature from now on. That we will each plant and nurture five trees or more a year; that we will reduce, recycle and reuse; and know that you are God.”
The lady solon is a United Nations regional champion for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation in the Asia Pacific and UN Environmental Program laureate in 2001. On the heels of the ravaging effects of the killer typhoon Ondoy, Loren is reconsidering her political plans and instead devoting her time and energy to humanitarian causes.
Early this year, when she sponsored the Climate Change Bill in the Senate, she notes, “There were some thoughts that climate change was a myth, that prognoses of erratic weather and geologic changes are exaggerated and do not warrant government quick response like the passage of the bill.”
The bill still awaits the President’s signature.
But despair not, says Loren, because we could actually do a lot while waiting for the bill to be signed.
Loren, chair of the Congressional Oversight Committee on Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization (COCAFM), calls on the education and training departments to use the National Agriculture and Fisheries Education System (NAFES) to maximize the opportunities in providing our people exactly the education and training that they need to protect and rehabilitate our lowland, upland, and fish farms. She particularly calls on the Bureau of Alternative Learning Systems (BALS) to hire the right teachers — with appropriate qualifications, of course — for remote rural areas and hinterlands and coastal communities. For 2010, BALS has a proposed budget for hiring 3,000 teachers for the purpose. As remote areas could hardly be reached, these should not be the dumping grounds for mediocres but places where first-class minds — inspiring and empowering — should be. She adds that COCAFM will monitor the hiring of these teachers next year. She urges the Department of Education to work closely with the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in revitalizing the NAFES, especially in agriculture and fishery areas where many impoverished farmers and fisherfolk need functional literacy.
On a positive note, Loren is happy that the Agri-Agra Bill has passed the Senate on third reading. The amended Agri-Agra bill is expected to improve lending for the agriculture and agrarian reform borrowers to solve the lack of capital to maximize the potential of our lands and waters for food production. She elaborates, “As chair of the Climate Change Committee in the Senate, I will also ensure that agricultural and fisheries ventures coming from agri and agra lending are sustainable.”
Loren has also been dismayed about the unsatisfactory performance of the extension workers in local government units (LGUs) for years as a result of the incomplete devolution of resources for extension. In her appeal for the passage of the National Extension Bill which is due for interpellation in the Senate, she urged co-legislators: “We have to let go of needed resources that we have been keeping in the national government if we want the LGUs to be effective. Budgets for extension, communal irrigation, demonstration farms — why don’t we give them to the local governments and believe in their capacity for change and development if we only allow them? I challenge my co-legislators, both in the Senate and the House, to let go of resources in the hands of national managers and shepherd them in the hands of local leaders. To those who believe in genuine devolution and even call for federalism, help me in pushing for the passage of this bill that will energize our agriculture and fishery soldiers in the fields.”
Our farmers and fisherfolk need assistance in using the crop varieties that are high-yielding, environmentally safe, and flood-tolerant; in accessing credit; and in the strategic marketing of their products so that they could capture the best price for their produce. “The national government wants to corner resources for these and yet expect a lot from local extension workers,” Loren laments. “What kind of local empowerment is this? If we want God to save us from Pepeng and other calamities, let us listen and listen carefully to what He is telling us. And in these times of natural calamities, the agri and fishery sectors are the most important ones. We have to take care of the people who are producing our food.”
A hearty touché to that.
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