Bigger budgets for biodiversity management

WHAT USED to be known as the Parks and Wildlife Bureau ( PAWB) has been renamed as the Biodiversity Management Bureau (BMB), but it has been retained as an agency under the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

I think that it is a good move to change the name, but what would have been a better move was to increase its budget, considering that it now has a bigger scope of responsibilities.

Although it is difficult to argue that wildlife protection is more important than health, education and national defense for example, it could also be argued that our flora and fauna are part of our national patrimony and our national identity.

What that means is that if we lose these two, we may lose our sense of being a unique people.

Aside from the sentimental side, there is also a practical side to this, because our natural ecosystems are part of our overall food security, because if our environment is destroyed, we may not be able to produce food at all.

Let us not also forget that the destruction of our natural environment has an impact on our climate security.

I know for a fact that in many countries, wildlife protection agencies are able to reverse the numbers of many animals from near extinction to relatively safe levels. Some have even managed to find animals that have been thought to be extinct, but were actually still in the wild.

Can anyone suggest which species we should prioritize?

MANAGING THE SCIENCE OF GENOME SEQUENCING

The good news is, the Philippines has already established a Philippine Genome Center ( PGC). The bad news is, if we can call it that, it is a relatively small research facility under the University of the Philippines ( UP), meaning that it is solely dependent on the budget of UP, and it probably is not getting any other support from the government, other than what UP gets from Congress through the General Appropriations Act (GAA).

Although I might be coming from the left field, I am going to argue that the Philippines can become one of the topnotchers in scientific research in certain fields, even if we have become the “topnotchers” in certain fields such as the slowness of our traffic flows and the volumes of our contributions to the plastic wastes in our oceans.

While some other countries might have become top notches in the positive fields because of their financial capital, we still could compete with them because we do have a wealth of human capital and because of our outstanding scientists, many of whom have been globally recognized for their inventions and innovations.

Even if genome sequencing or DNA sequencing could be a force for good, it could become a force for evil if it is not properly managed. That is the reason why I say that we should already create the policies and the regulatory frameworks to manage this science as early as possible.