by Michelle Cadiz

Forests play an important role in regulating climate. They have an effect on temperature, humidity and precipitation — not only do they provide shade, but they also release water vapor into the atmosphere through transpiration, which in turn affects the water cycle and produce microclimates that act as buffers to the extremes of global warming. Primarily though, they act as carbon sinks, converting inorganic carbon in the ecosystem to organic carbon in their tissues through photosynthesis.

The ability of forests to absorb carbon has made them a line of defense against climate change. Currently, forests around the world are able to absorb about 2.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually. However, due to deforestation, the size of forested areas all over the world is shrinking. As a result, the ability of forests to act as carbon sinks is also in jeopardy. According to a recent study, the Amazon rainforest is no longer absorbing, but releasing, carbon. Part of this is due to fires that are intentionally set to clear forested areas for agriculture and livestock, but even without the fires, the conclusion is the same. Previous deforestation has led to hotter temperatures, droughts, and greater susceptibility to more deforestation, which increase the carbon emissions from the forest. 

Globally, forests are cleared to create room for agriculture and livestock, and for mining. Human-caused deforestation has led to 46% of all trees around the world being felled. Since the 1960s, over half the tropical forests worldwide have been lost. In 2020 alone, 12.2 million hectares of tropical forests were lost, primarily from places like the Amazon, the Congo, and southeast Asia, making 2020 the third worst year for forest destruction since monitoring began in 2002.

In the Philippines, 75% of forests have been lost since the 1930s. Systematic logging was introduced by the American occupation, and worsened during the Martial Law era. Since then, administrations have drawn up policies and programs for reforestation, but forest cover hasn’t improved since the first Aquino administration. Rather, deforestation has reached an all-time high under the Duterte administration, reaching an average of 10,000 hectares of primary forest lost per year. Present-day deforestation is driven by land-use conversion for agricultural and residential use, as well as clearing for mining. The loss of forests in the country has resulted in worsening effects of natural disasters, such as flooding and landslides.

So what’s to be done?

The main response to deforestation and climate change has been reforestation efforts. Reforestation is seen as the cheapest, most accessible means of carbon capture, or removing carbon from the atmosphere. Some studies have even proposed afforestation — the planting of trees in historically non-forested areas to grow an artificial forest — as a potential solution. 

The Philippines has its own reforestation programs. The National Greening Program (NGP) was introduced during the second Aquino administration and continued by the Duterte administration as the Enhanced National Greening Program (E-NGP). The E-NGP program sought to rehabilitate 1.2 million hectares of forests by 2022, in addition to protecting the existing forests. 

On the surface, this sounds like a step in the right direction. But of course, the devil is in the details.

First of all, the program is planting exotic trees along with native trees. The native trees are planted in protected areas and are not allowed to be cut down, but the exotic, cash-crop trees are planted in “production areas,” where they could be harvested. This puts the very plan of the NGP and E-NGP under scrutiny. Planting exotic cash-crop trees shows that the NGP and E-NGP aren’t being done to help restore forest cover, but rather to plant trees for harvesting. In fact, the NGP was first conceptualized as a “poverty-alleviation” project, which is merely code for the commodification of the trees to be planted.

Planting exotic trees is also bad for the native ececosystem. Exotic trees tend to out-compete native trees, and hinder the growth of native seedlings. Non-native trees are prioritized in reforestation efforts because they grow faster, but they also decompose faster, which accelerates carbon cycling in the ecosystem.

Secondly, logistical issues have been flagged by the Commission of Audit. This includes the lack of surveying, mapping, and planning in reforestation efforts. Additionally, locals have reported that reforestation sites are burned on purpose every year so that another reforestation effort could take place, and the program would continue bringing in income.

But even if the E-NGP (and other reforestation efforts) didn’t have these issues, it wouldn’t be the climate mitigation solution that people want it to be. A study has shown that even if all the farmland in the tropics was reforested — a proposal neither feasible nor fair — carbon in the atmosphere would only drop by about 18 billion tons, which is only about two years’ worth of emissions at current rates. So while tree-planting activities may be all the rage, it’s equally important, if not more important, to preserve existing old-growth forests.

Existing forests have older trees, which are larger and store much more carbon than younger, smaller trees, making them more efficient in carbon capture compared to seedlings used in tree planting activities. In fact, the largest 1% of trees store about 50% of above-ground carbon. This is in addition to other services provided by these forests, such as protecting biodiversity, preventing droughts and wildfires, and producing microclimates.

All this answers the question of why we should protect our remaining forests. The how is more difficult. Experts say that the only way forests can be conserved is if the government has a strong commitment to protecting forests and will prioritize them over commercial interests. They must also engage and include local communities in the process, as their needs must also be met in the spirit of inclusive sustainable development.

Is that possible in the Philippines? Can we depend on our local and national government to prioritize forest conservation over personal profit? Historically, the answer has been no. But with 2022 elections upcoming, it is possible to vote into office officials who care about the planet over profit. And of course, beyond exercising our right to vote, it is on us, the Filipino people, to demand action and accountability from local, national, and world leaders, and push for a genuine reorientation of our society, for the sake of our continued survival as a species.

This article is part of the Spotlight series by YACAP’s Education Committee which talks about various issues related to climate and climate action.

by Yanna Mallari & Rexie John Mangabat

We Filipinos are always proud to see our country place high on lists — beauty pageants, sports events, you name it. However, the Philippines has recently also been topping global charts we shouldn’t be proud of: in 2020, the Philippines was found to be the fifth largest contributor to marine plastics. Albeit an indication of some progress coming from third to fifth, we still can’t seem to let go of being part of the top ten, producing 1.01 million metric tons of mismanaged plastics annually, and of this 0.28-0.75 MMT/year leak to the oceans. As one of the most vulnerable countries to the impacts of climate change and environmental disasters, pollution only makes our situation worse. So why do we continue to contribute to this issue?

It’s no surprise, really. A report about the top five plastic pollution contributors released a few years ago by the Ocean Conservancy said, “As rapidly developing economies, these countries [China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines] are now passing through a typical stage of economic growth as consumer demand for disposable products grows more rapidly than the waste management infrastructure.” It’s true that plastic has paved the way for economic growth as it caters to the profit-centered business model, enabling the big companies and corporations to continually mass produce unsustainable products and services for a low cost, effecting more affordable prices and higher profit. This then overshadows any other option consumers could have, but all the profits of all the big, polluting companies in the world won’t be able to pay off the enormous debt of consequences down the road if nothing changes. It’s time to switch lanes.

First, why exactly is plastic such a problem? When taught about pollution in schools, it would usually be divided by pollution on land, water, and air, so it should definitely raise concern that the plastic pollution encompasses all these. 

Over 400 million tons of plastic are produced globally each year, and though mostly made for single-use, takes decades to degrade, meaning that they take up towering amounts of space and stay there longer than human lifespans (and keep in mind, all land combined makes up only 29% of the planet). To top that, plastic doesn’t actually “decompose” or degrade in the same way biological products do. It only disintegrates into smaller and smaller pieces called microplastics, which ironically becomes a bigger problem as these invisible contaminants go to our soil and our waters. Wide and varied sources of microplastic are constantly polluting the planet and some research has shown that microplastics in the soil affect soil health and function, and even migration in the food chain. Microplastics and the chemicals along with it eventually also find their way to groundwater when dumped in landfills, and enter into aquatic ecosystems.

Like cancer cells originating and accumulating in one organ then spreading to the next, microplastics, first produced on land mainly as larger pieces of plastic, have been detected in our marine and freshwater ecosystems. Studies estimate there are now 15 to 51 trillion pieces of plastic in the world’s oceans — from the equator to the poles, from Arctic ice sheets to the sea floor. Not one square mile of surface ocean anywhere on Earth seems to be free of plastic pollution as even in the third-deepest point on the planet, Emden Deep, plastic bags were found.

This poses several dangerous threats that ripple into catastrophic waves. One of these obvious threats is on wildlife. Entangling themselves in it, eating it, mistakenly feeding it to their young, aquatic wildlife have suffered immensely from the plastic pollution. Researchers say that by the year 2050, our oceans will have more plastic than fish by weight. In addition to that, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration hassaid that plastic debris kills an estimated 100,000 marine mammals annually. Now put this into perspective: our Earth is 71% water, and of that water, more than 80% is still unexplored. Plastic pollution is so immense that even with so much of the hydrosphere still unknown, the effects of pollution are so prominent even in just the relatively small percentage we were able to study. It’s as if we were only given a keyhole to look through to see what plastic has done to our oceans, and we could already tell how extensive the damage is.

But why should it matter to people that it affects wildlife? Well, this is precisely what we mean by catastrophic waves. Earth’s waters are not only a home for its inhabitants, but also a main source of oxygen and food for those on land like us humans. Photosynthetic microorganisms in the ocean produce oxygen, and unfortunately a study by an international team of researchers has shown that ocean plastics interfere with the growth and photosynthetic function of these microorganisms therefore potentially affecting earth’s oxygen supply overall. Moreover, plastics are also affecting the ocean as a source for human food. Numerous studies have shown microplastics entering the food chain in our salt, fish, oysters, mussels, and many others. Ocean plastic pollution has made its way into the food web, directly affecting human health, as well as the health of other terrestrial animals, which we can also end up consuming. More studies are needed to pinpoint exactly how plastic affects plants, but we can only expect the worst. 

As microplastics have entered into our food chain, microplastics have actually also gone into the air we breathe. A study made in the mountains of the French Pyrenees — an area far from civilization — to investigate the amount of microplastics that falls from the air to the ground found that on average, 249 plastic pieces were found per square meter per day. It was also concluded that wind can carry microplastics over far distances, over land and water, further amplifying the effects of plastic pollution. 

Before plastic degrades to microplastics, before plastic is discarded and mismanaged, before plastic is consumed, first, it’s produced. Even at the production stage, plastic already yields great damage on the environment, more specifically on the climate. Most plastic is derived from fossil fuels, and the process of acquiring fossil fuels, as well as producing plastic itself, releases billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases which contribute to the climate crisis. Unfortunately, unless things change, this will only continue to grow in the future as the fossil fuel industry plans to increase plastic production by 40% over the next decade.

Furthermore on plastic and the climate, when plastic waste is mismanaged by poorly-regulated incineration, monumental volumes of greenhouse gases are also emitted. Globally, in this year alone, researchers estimate that the production and incineration of plastic will pump more than 850 million tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. By 2050, those emissions could rise to 2.8 billion tonnes. Because of the greenhouse gas emissions by plastics, the climate further warms, and the sunlight and heat will react with massive amounts of existing plastic waste to break them down and release more greenhouse gases, thus creating a deadly cycle.

How does plastic pollution fare in the Philippines? Well, the Philippines is luxuriously rich in the natural world, meaning we have the potential and resources to be environmentally resilient against this crisis, but it has been greatly hindered by continual mismanagement and continual contribution to plastic pollution which not only affects the wildlife and ecosystems, but also human health and livelihood. The effects of plastic pollution are not just — and never were — hollow words or scientific jargon with numbers. Take, for example, the extreme weather events we faced in 2020 — we are already experiencing the harsh repercussions on a large scale, and it is only growing by the year. To make matters worse, our farmers, fisherfolk, and our indigenous communities, who have all been historically marginalized in our society, have borne the brunt of this crisis for the longest time. And yet, even until now, their calls for reparations and justice have been met with  blind eyes, deaf ears, and closed palms.

So what now? First, be wary of greenwashing or false solutions. Promoting an “eco-friendly” product, donating to “green” causes, and claiming to promote sustainable practices while still investing and practicing environmentally harmful “business-as-usual” ways — these are just some of the many ways greenwashing has taken shape by corporations and companies. Greenwashing measures include, but are not limited to, ecobrick initiatives and recycling projects of companies that still, at the end of the day, actively decide to use and produce plastic products.

Second, be part of the solution. Raise awareness, educate, participate in events, and clamor for change in local and national policies. For example, in the Philippines, the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000 has faced challenges in implementation, despite being recognized as an exceptional law on paper. Despite being over two decades old, Filipinos have not seen a release of a list of Non-Environmentally Acceptable Products and Packaging (NEAPP) by the National Solid Waste Management Commission as mandated by the law. Including single-use plastics in the NEAPP list is one way of mitigating the plastic problem on a national scale.

If you can, you can also shift to sustainable products, support eco-friendly services and stores, and pursue other ways of reducing personal waste.  With these initiatives, start with yourself, your room, your home, your community, your school. The ideas and habits you have and practice may only be the size of one person, but it could ripple to towering and far-reaching waves. However, we must recognize that changing one’s lifestyle and behavior is often dictated by one’s economic situation; in places like the Philippines, a zero-waste way of life can be expensive and inaccessible to many. As such, those who are able to change our individual lifestyles must also call for changes in local and national policy to make eco-friendly lifestyles more accessible.

So what now? Fueled by passion, ambitious goals, and support from our community, it’s time to act. Not “act” like  how world leaders have been role-playing, as Greta Thunberg pointed out in the Austrian World Summit 2021, but act with real solutions to be part of change: learning, unlearning and relearning roots to correct the mistakes of the past and to innovate the next step, to change, and to return the balance. Filipinos have a rich and beautiful country, and a wonderful planet, all of which is worth fighting for. In the face of our environmental crisis, it’s time for real leadership, one that is intersectional and intergenerational. After all, for our generation and those that would come after us, there is too much at stake. Let’s make the decision to act today, collectively, as we fight for a better present and future for all.

This article is part of the Spotlight series by YACAP’s Education Committee which talks about various issues related to climate and climate action.

by Ysabella Alcazar & Jon Bonifacio

“The ocean is on fire.”

Was it a joke? Was it just good CGI footage taken out of a disaster movie? No. The ocean was literally on fire because of a ruptured pipeline. Once again, the planet itself has cried out for system change.

Last July 3, 2021, the Gulf of Mexico burst into flames, creating a ring of fire on its surface for five hours due to a ruptured gas pipeline. The video of the incident circulated online and all over the world, viewers were appalled at how it was really happening in real life and how this was not taken out of a sci-fi movie. Some may see it as just another crazy story from 2021, but there’s more to it than that.

The incident — hardly the first environmental disaster brought about by a pipeline — showed how these projects can pose a threat to life and humanity. Oil and gas pipelines make way for the profit-hungry and power-hungry schemes of fossil fuel corporations, and adversely affect the integrity and safety of our land, water, and air.

Two of the most serious types of pipeline incidents include leaks and ruptures, which both impose catastrophic impacts on the environment. And now, these pipeline ruptures that used to be a cautionary tale have come true to life. Over the past decade, pipelines have spilled more than 34 million gallons of oil in the United States alone. Since the 1980s, it has been reported that the pipeline and the oil industry has caused more than 8 billion US dollars worth of financial damages. The human cost, on the other hand, has also been immense: over 500 deaths and more than 2,000 injuries were caused by pipeline accidents in the same time period. Both of these statistics, again, only in the United States; we can only expect a worse situation globally.

One of the worst pipeline accidents ever recorded happened just a few years ago, last December 2016, in western North Dakota where it was estimated that 176,000 gallons of oil leaked in the Belle Fourche pipeline.

During this time, the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline was also taking place. Local residents had opposed the construction of the pipeline given the threat of environmental damage in their community. Moreover, the corporation responsible for the Dakota Access pipeline silenced those who oppose their unethical and dangerous project by filing legal cases against the indigenous and environmental groups resisting the construction. Additionally, a petition by local indigenous communities to shut the Dakota Access pipeline down permanently was denied by US courts earlier this year.

Pemex, the oil company involved in the July 3 incident in the Gulf of Mexico, has stated that, to quote, “there was no oil spill and the immediate actions to control the fire that occurred on the surface of the sea avoided environmental damage.” 

But is that enough? Assurance from a multi-billion dollar oil company that everything is under control with a single article, after seeing the ocean set aflame, will not cut it. It’s also worth noting that Pemex has had several industrial accidents in the past. The pressure must continue for an independent investigation in order to hold the company accountable for the environmental impacts the incident has undoubtedly caused. 

And of course, as the world faces the threats imposed by the current climate crisis, the continued construction of pipelines worldwide just shows how fossil fuel companies are stubbornly holding on to dirty energy. A notable example is the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) being built by Total Energies and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation in Uganda and Tanzania. The massive project spanning hundreds of kilometers poses a threat to the environment, food security, and water security, and threatens to displace more than 10,000 families. The call to defund the project, led by the Stop EACOP alliance, is still ongoing.

Another example would be the Keystone XL pipeline project in North America, which received significant opposition from indigenous peoples and environmental groups. Fortunately, due to the immense pressure from civil society, the permit for the pipeline was revoked earlier this year and the project was subsequently cancelled.

With all this in mind, Filipinos must also similarly oppose new pipeline projects here in our own country, as they would invariably damage local ecosystems, place people’s lives and livelihoods at risk, and commit the country to dirty energy for decades to come. Instead, we must call for a shift towards renewable, sustainable, and more decentralized energy production, which has rapidly become more accessible and affordable in recent years. Moreover, if we wish to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius global temperature increase limit stated in the Paris Agreement, building new oil and gas infrastructure today is not an option. 

We call out the massive pipeline projects and the corporations who damage our biodiversity, devastate peoples around the world, and actively prevent the necessary global shift to cleaner, more sustainable energy. We must resist and call to defund these types of projects in order to break the dependence on fossil fuels. We must put pressure on those in power to make more responsible choices, call for urgent climate action, and initiate a change in the system into one that places people and planet over profit.

Photo from Twitter

This article is part of the Spotlight series by YACAP’s Education Committee which talks about various issues related to climate and climate action.

by Michelle Cadiz and Jon Bonifacio

We’ve all heard it repeatedly from our president over the past few weeks — there’s nothing we can do about it, China is here to stay. Stay in the Philippines, to be exact, in illegal settlements on a few of our islands and reefs, because our current government can’t seem to bring itself to do anything about it.

It’s no surprise. Chinese boot-licking by the Duterte administration has been the norm for some time now, of course; the excuses just change from time to time. But it doesn’t matter what the reason is; at the end of the day, China’s still the one with free reign in the area, despite widespread condemnation across Philippine society.

But why should a climate group like YACAP care about this? At first glance, it doesn’t seem anywhere related to carbon dioxide emissions or fossil fuels.

Simply put, we should care because this is a climate issue. It’s an issue affecting people today and will continue to affect people in the future if it remains unresolved. With May being the National Month of the Ocean, it’s also important to talk about the different problems we are facing in our waters.

You only have to do a cursory search online to find the missing links between this affront to our sovereignty and the climate. On the surface level, China’s aggression into the West Philippine Sea has led to the destruction of coral reefs in the Kalayaan group of islands. According to science advocacy group Agham, the damage is estimated to cost the Philippines PHP 1.3 trillion a year. More concretely, this has severely impacted the small fisherfolk of Zambales and the surrounding provinces that fish in the Kalayaan group of islands. They have suffered loss of livelihood due to the loss of reef productivity, aggression from the Chinese military occupying the islands, and competition from Chinese fishing operations.

Looking at the long-term goals of China’s occupation of the Kalayaan group of islands, it’s also clear that fossil fuels play a part in the equation. The US Geological Survey estimated that the South China Sea (including parts of the West Philippine Sea) could have as much as 350 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and over 20 billion barrels of oil in its reserves. Whichever country controls the area — and China is claiming a gigantic portion of the South China Sea for itself with its Nine-Dash Line— would be able to conduct deep-sea operations to extract this oil.

Deep-sea operations would have compounded impacts on the environment. Firstly, these operations would directly damage the seafloor ecosystem. Secondly, the ecosystem would be constantly at risk of oil spills in the process. Lastly, this would put more emissions into the atmosphere from extraction operations and from the consumption of the extracted fossil fuels. With China currently the largest carbon emitter today, they cannot be permitted to add literal fuel to their destructive fire.

On a deeper level, China’s incursion into the West Philippine Sea is another example of capitalist-driven colonialism. Imperialist nations have historically invaded and destabilized regions in search for resources, and just as the United States invaded Western Asia in the early 2000s, China is invading the Philippines. Both superpowers claimed they were in the right, the United States by asserting a war against terror, and China by asserting that they have a historic claim on the area. The truth is simple: they were, and are, after oil.

It is the historic and current greed of the imperialist global powers such as China, the United States, and Europe that is the root cause of the climate crisis. They have hoarded resources from the rest of the world during the golden age of empire, and continue to do so through neocolonial methods today. The profit-motivated world system of overproduction that they facilitate has resulted in massive amounts of greenhouse gases over time, and it’s countries like the Philippines that are bearing the brunt of climate change.

We cannot separate the fight for climate justice from the fight for decolonization. The fight for sovereignty, for people and for planet in the West Philippine Sea and elsewhere is just another example of the country’s struggle against modern-day colonialism.

So yes, our government might say that China is here to stay, but only for as long as we, the Filipino people, let it happen. The fight continues to pressure our government into action — though we all know it’s high time for new, better leadership — and to assert our rights as a people in whatever way we can in the face of these affronts to our sovereignty.

This article is part of the Spotlight series by YACAP’s Education Committee which talks about various issues related to climate and climate action.

Updated June 12, 2021