The climate change scapegoat
[Atty. Ron Salo contributed this guest column through Ric Saludo] built along overflowing rivers, and landslides from denuded slopes bury whole villages? Is climate change to blame when authorities fail to provide training and logistics for rapid evacuation, rescue and relief, despite repeated warnings of climatic calamity?
Take the Compostela Valley tragedy, which left more than many dozens dead or missing. By no stretch of imagination can its killer landslides be attributed to climate change. It was simply a tragedy waiting to happen as officials, both national and local, had long foreseen. While experts warned the people of the dangers of landslides, no other measures were undertaken to ensure community safety, and to ensure that small miners complied with environmental and safety standards.
Sendong’s flash floods and landslides sent mud and logs crashing on people, leaving more than 1,000 dead and 280,000 homeless in Northern Mindanao. The nation and the world saw the mud and logs with our eyes and in video footage, yet many officials and media blamed the inundation on climate change, arguing that the region was hardly visited by typhoons (in fact there were killer floods in 2009). But what about the unmitigated logging that stripped Mindanao mountainsides bare of waterholding trees?
Who could ever forget Ondoy and Pepeng in 2009 which killed a thousand, caused $4 billion in losses and damage, and placed 12 million people underwater? That tragedy was also blamed on climate change. Sure, the unusual amount of Luzon rainfall in late 2009 was caused by climate change, but many of the disastrous effects of the rains were certainly not.
The raging waters in and around Metro Manila were caused by, among others, clogged and poor drainage systems, lack of city planning, blockage of natural waterways by illegal structures, garbage and informal settlers dotting rivers, creeks and canals of the metropolis.
It is welcome news that the President ordered an investigation into the Sendong and Compostela Valley tragedies in order to pinpoint culpabilities among officials, to hold accountable those officials negligent in ensuring the safety of our people in mining areas, as well as illegal loggers and lax environmental enforcers. Now let’s please have these investigation reports soon and not forget them as soon as public attention fades.
To repeat: the real culprit in these tragedies is not climate change as some would want us to believe, but the negligence and corruption of environmental enforcers and the greed of nature’s despoilers, rendering inept our environment, mining and zoning laws.
Let us come to our senses and acknowledge that our greatest environmental enemy is not climate change, but our own negligence and lack of appreciation of calamity’s real causes. Indeed, now that we know the impact of climate change, then we have only ourselves to blame if we fail to do what is necessary in preventing, mitigating and responding to the tragedies brought by our collective excesses. Atty. Ron P. Salo took his Masters in International Law at University College London (with Merit) on a British Chevening Scholarship.