GMA made the right choice in Heherson Alvarez

A few appointments made by President Macapagal-Arroyo have met with some jeers. But the announcement that she has created an office for Presidential Adviser on Global Warming and Climate Change is met with understandable cheers. This new office reflects a sea change in the government’s concern about the declining quality of our environment as well as the ecological dangers that we face as a result of more than a century of mismanaging our natural resources, of tolerating poor standards of industrial processing, and the sharp rise in our population and poverty levels.

To head this vital office, the President has chosen Heherson Alvarez, a freedom fighter and a principal public servant, one of the leading pioneers in Philippine environmental advocacy known for his courage and commitment to battle vested interests in the protection of our forests and water bodies. A former senator, congressman, Cabinet member and ambassador, he has been an outstanding policy maker and internationally recognized environment leader by the prestigious US-based Climate Institute. His experience equips him to meet the awesome challenge.

The central task of Alvarez in his new post is to help our people understand that our machines and modern comforts are creating greenhouse gases, which, in turn are wreaking havoc on our climate. The ice melting in the earth’s Polar Regions, the new patterns in rainfall and torrid summers, the super typhoons that inundate many parts of Asia, and the ferocious hurricanes that devastate the Caribbean communities and New Orleans - all these are frightening evidence of our changing climate. Scenes of death, destruction, and loss of livelihood and homes have struck a familiar chord in our consciousness. Many parts of the Philippines will be in a state of very serious emergencies never before experienced because of super typhoons.

In our country, Alvarez has been a powerful voice on the pressing issue of global warming and climate change. Long before these terms entered the public lexicon, he has been using them to warn us that global warming and climate change constitute a “survival issue”. In 1991 before the Rio Earth Summit, Alvarez brought in scientists from the UNEP inter-governmental panel on climate change to brief our nation in Batasan and the Cabinet. In 1995, Alvarez convened the first conference on global warming and climate change in Asia. The conference produced “The Manila Declaration,” which informed the world of the terrible consequences and extreme vulnerability of archipelagic and island countries to sea level rise because of climate change. The Alvarez conference was more than a decade before Gore’s staggering The Inconvenient Truth. For that pioneering global effort he was awarded the International Public Policy Achievement, the first non-Western, and the only one in Asia, to be honored, by the prestigious Washington-based Climate Institute. He was named to be a member of the Advisory Board of the Institute.

It is understandable that there is, in the ranks of Philippine commerce and industry, a strong resistance to environmental campaigns because, more often than not, they call for capital investments that increase the costs of doing business. Persuading companies that good environment leads to better business, Alvarez managed to bring together the country’s three major oil companies in signing the Healthy Air Pact, which removed lead in gasoline and reduced the sulfur content in diesel. He also established the EarthSavers Movement which has been recognized by the UNESCO for its creative communications and educational initiatives on climate change. Alvarez is a founding member of the Global Legislators for a Balanced Environment (GLOBE), a group co-founded by then United States Sen. Al Gore. Alvarez currently sits as a vice president for Southeast Asia of the London-based Advisory Committee on the Protection of the Seas and remains on the advisory board of the prestigious Climate Institute of America.

A bridge of understanding with collective action beyond politics must be forged. Alvarez should be up to this challenge. All sectors of society must be linked in the basic effort of protecting our right to life. The issue of the environment should move beyond the parameters of political campaigning. We all know how crucial the last two minutes of a basketball game are, and in her last two years of governance, President Arroyo can address this issue effectively. Let us be one army in insuring the sustainability of our islands for our children and the next generation. Leaving this legacy is our profound duty — to ourselves as Filipinos and to the larger community of MAN.