Green drive, sustainable future

Manny V. Pangilinan, MVP to many of us, is one whose eye is fixed into the future. Not only tomorrow as an unknown abstraction, but a sustainable future.

Many speak about sustainability in many spheres and, yes, they substantiate every advocacy with concrete efforts – and, chances are, with palpable results.

And yet MVP, indisputably enough, the leader of the country’s largest business conglomerate, has shown the many faces of a sustainable future in all his involvements.

The photo splashed all over the pages of our broadsheets showed MVP – donning comfy t-shirt and matching rubber shoes – bent over to plant a tree sapling on the occasion of his birthday.  The sapling planting ceremony was held at the Sindalan Interchange, Mexico, Pampanga.  It was a gesture that should trigger the planting of 20,000 trees along a portion of the 74-km North Luzon Expressway (NLEX).

The 20,000 trees came in 67 varieties. Why 67? Marlene Ochoa of NLEX gave me a background: On the day MVP, Metro Pacific Tollways Corporation chair,  planted the first tree on the expressway, he was celebrating  his six decades and seven years on this earth.

An expressway of concrete and asphalt lined with trees assure all of us of refreshing journeys. The smoke issuing from car and bus  engines is somehow neutralized by the clean air brought about by trees on the roadside.

Our efforts to preserve clean air on the road has been bolstered by the “Greening the NLEX” campaign of the concessionaire and manager of the expressway.

I was told that, earlier efforts by NLEX have resulted in planting 35,000 trees already alongside the expressway. That’s why the expressway, gleaming like silver at daytime, is increasingly lined with greenery on every side.

Trees are a reassuring sight, not only for refreshing journeys, but also for assuring us a sustainable tomorrow. We all know that trees have a “watershed effect” that, therefore, prevents erosion. On mountains, a carpet of trees take hold of the water that otherwise would surge down mountains that cause floods.

MVP’s heart is in the right place. In the “doing well” and “doing good” departments, MVP leads the way.

Doing well is when you run your business well, turn out a profit each year, and so assure the long-term viability of your business enterprise. A Jesuit author once made a surprising statement, saying: “Business is a sacred calling.” He explained that if there is no business, no one will build a car as an extension of human legs, airplanes to enable man to fly, ships for man to travel by water faster than the fastest fish.

In the “doing well” department, MVP assures us of a sustainable future with his involvement in telecommunications, presiding over the largest phone company and the largest cellphone business. He has achieved for us what John Naisbitt mentioned in his “Megatrends” book that, contrary to others’ views, high technology enhances human connection. Naisbitt volunteered a now memorable phrase — “hi-tech, hi-touch.” 

As many now know, MVP is also in supplying water to a thirsty metropolis, making sure electric power lights up homes and runs factories, and buying and managing hospitals that have become standards for excellent medical and health care — to name a few. The imprint of excellence in these MVP involvements is there for everyone to see.

 There  is caring and healing in the hospitals he runs, spurning “corporate distance,” and making service a “heart-to-heart” matter.

Yes, his flagship telecommunications group has made hi-tech means serve hi-touch ends.

The high technology corporate statesman, MVP, presides over firms that allow humanity to reassert himself.

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With the  anti-Reproductive Health sector’s arguments  in the Supreme Court about the  unconstitutionality of the Reproductive Health Law  getting  ample media coverage, it is well that we listen to a lawyer’s view on the law’s promotion of women’s right to make decisions about their bodies.   

“It is appalling how those who oppose the RH Law disregard women in the equation of reproduction and relegate them as mere receptacles who have no say whether  to get pregnant or not, with or  without coercion. Catholic dogma or otherwise, this is discrimination against women as not having women priests is discrimination against women.”

This view is that of Atty. Clara Rita A. Padilla,  founder and executive director of EnGenderRights.  EnGenderRights does research, international and national policy advocacy, trainings and impact litigation on issues related to gender, gender-based violence, reproductive rights, sexual orientation and gender identity.

According to Attorney Padilla, those who are against the RH Law “claim to speak for all Filipino Catholics and Christians and even Muslims, unmindful that many Filipinos differentiate religious institutional dogma from their faith and their conscience and that many  Filipinos – Catholics, Christians, Muslims or of other beliefs – who consistently use modern contraceptives believe in the scientific and medical findings on the safety and efficacy of modern contraceptives as well as the precautions on contraindications and possible side effects.”

But, Padilla says, “Conscientious objections seeking to deny access to contraceptives are actually religious refusals that violate religious freedom. These religious refusals do not stand in court. In the United States, a California Court ruled that a hospital could be held liable for failing to provide a rape survivor with information about and access to emergency contraception that can prevent pregnancies resulting from rape.”

 Padilla cites a 2001 case decided by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), where the court ruled that the two pharmacy owners who lost in the domestic court suit filed against them for refusing to provide oral  contraceptive pills to customers, cannot claim violation of their right to freedom of religion “since the main sphere protected by the freedom of thought, conscience and religion is that of personal convictions and religious beliefs or matters of individual consciences such as acts of worship forming part of the practice of religion. The ECHR held that the pharmacists cannot give precedence to their religious beliefs and impose them on others as justification for their refusal to sell contraceptives.”

Writes Padilla: “If the Philippine government does not provide access to free contraceptives, many poor Filipino women will continue to have unintended pregnancies, die from pregnancy and childbirth complications, and get pregnant at an early age and stop schooling.

“Blind adherence to dogma that translates to religious refusals in the provision of access to contraceptive information, supplies and services has grave consequences on women’s right to life and health. Without pain of any penalty, reproductive rights violations will surely be prevalent.”  

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