Western ideals don't apply on harsh Philippine realities

A group of lawyers, apparently with environmental concerns in their hearts, are threatening to sue Environment Secretary Michael Defensor for allegedly ignoring a law that now makes open dumpsites in the country illegal.

According the lawyers, there are around 700 such dumpsites all over the country and these should have been closed when Republic Act 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act swung into effect in 2000.

Apparently, Defensor has not done so, say the lawyers. But even if no lawyer stood up to tell us that, we know he has not. And there are probably two reasons why he has not. One is that he has been very busy defending the president. Two is that he could not, even if he wanted to.

First, the first reason. Every Filipino who has a tv set, or listens to radio, or reads newspapers, knows that Defensor spends more time parrying off criticisms against President Arroyo than he does doing his job as environment secretary.

Indeed, one wonders why Defensor finds it absolutely necessary to be the one to defend the president when there are enough men of cabinet rank who probably can do a better job at it than he does. Maybe it has got something to do with his name. Whatever.

Anyway, let us go to the second reason why Defensor has apparently not done his job as he is supposed to do in the matter of open dumpsites. He has not closed even one of about 700 open dumpsites operating illegally in the country, eh?

Well, this is not actually in defense of Defensor. But while lawyers see the continued operation of open dumpsites as illegal, the simple but more practical-thinking folk see the operation of dumpsites as something that should not be purely a matter for the law to decide.

Has any of the lawyers considered, for instance, the far greater environmental disaster that were to occur if Defensor suddenly, this very minute, became a stickler for regulations and ordered the immediate closure of the 700 or so dumpsites all over the country?

Take the issue to a smaller scale, like Cebu City. There is a Cebu City ordinance that disallows the collection of garbage that is not segregated. Like the law against open dumpsites, we agree with the noble purpose of this ordinance. But are both practical?

The trouble with many of our laws, or even ordinances, is that they are dictated by Western influences and patterned after modern world practices, and never mind if they are, in fact, destined for application in places with harsh Third World realities.

Take segregation of garbage. Nobody disagrees with its ultimate wisdom. But in a choice between wisdom and hunger, you know which wins out in the end in the slums of the Philippines, where once you pay for one meal in a day, there is just nothing left to buy a trash bag.

So, what do we do with that? The government does not pick up the garbage because it is not segregated? Fine. Those who could not afford the plastic trash bags to segregate will just as easily chuck the garbage anywhere.

Go around Cebu City and you will find entire stretches of sidewalks littered with trash because the sticklers for regulation, wanting to follow the "no segregation-no collection" ordinance, did just that, leave the trash where it is, uncollected.

Now, are the culprits who left the trash on the sidewalks being caught? You bet they are not, and not for any lack of initiative or enthusiasm on the part of law enforcers. Nobody is getting caught because the culprits have no addresses. The trash came from somewhere else.

What we learned is that some have, in fact, been fined and penalized. But are they the real culprits? In all likelihood, the garbage was simply dumped in front of their gates and they were unfairly made to pay for offenses they did not commit.

Now back to open dumpsites. Fine, close these smelly and unsanitary hellholes. But where do we throw the trash? Even if we find scapegoats to slap silly with fines and penalties, we are still left with no alternative sites. In the end, it is still the sidewalks that beckon.