Rest well, Gina Lopez
Today I woke up to the sad news that former Department of the Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Secretary Gina Lopez died from multiple organ failure, a consequence of her terrible battle with brain cancer.
She and I did not serve in President Rodrigo Duterte’s Cabinet at the same time, but I knew her to be a public servant in the truest sense of the word.
That is the extraordinary thing about Gina Lopez: many people may not have had the privilege of meeting her in person, but they will certainly be able to say that they know her because of her work. It is not just that her work was remarkable. It certainly was — but more on that later. It’s also that she put so much of herself in what she did that to know her as a person, you needed to know her work.
There was so much passion in everything that Gina Lopez did. Her critics — and there were a fair few when she decided to take on the mining industry early in her tenure as DENR Secretary — might say that she was too passionate, sometimes at the expense of good sense. As a passionate person myself (who is also mocked by friend and foe alike for being too much sometimes), I think it was a very minor fault, considering the things that she was passionate about.
To say that Gina Lopez was a committed environmental warrior is a massive understatement. She championed the environment for decades, years before we started to feel the effects of climate change and certainly long before it became fashionable. As an advocate, I intimately understand the frustration that comes with this territory: you can slave away for years, taking a few steps forward, only to be knocked back another few. She did amazing work for the Pasig River and the La Mesa Watershed, but as she herself would often point out, there is still so much more to be done — and part of that is maintaining our gains.
She also initiated the
Bantay Bata 163 hotline. It was the first of its kind in the Philippines, and I am sure that hundreds, if not thousands will be able to tell us how much of an impact it made in terms of reporting child abuse. In fact, her work as an advocate of children’s rights underscores something about her character that I hope will be what people remember most about her.
Due to the events of recent years, it is easy to think of her only in the context of her contentious, highly-publicized time as DENR Secretary. I recall an accusation being circulated by a few at the time: that she cared for the environment, but not people. I considered the criticism myopic then, and I consider it myopic and a gross mischaracterization now. You should care about the environment because of how it will affect people, not just you and me, but the generations that will follow who must bear the burden of our choices. I am sure that Gina Lopez — the Bantay Bata founder, the woman who spent decades as a yoga missionary, who spent years living in slums and running children’s homes and schools for the underprivileged — cared about the environment because she cared about people.
May God bless Gina Lopez. Her life was an example, and one that we who are left behind to continue must keep in mind.
“You should care about the environment because of how it will affect people, not just you and me, but the generations that will follow.
“There was so much passion in everything that Gina Lopez did.