WHAT on Earth’s name (and Heaven’s too) is happening? A cursory survey of front-page headlines or news of late would show that more and more news these days are devoted to, or are largely about, the environment.
Just this week the media spread of environmental news has been staggering, especially the shockingly tragic massive landslide in Baguio at the height of a ferocious typhoon, but this time not simply of rock or soil but raw, seething, wet, pungent solid waste! Tons of plastic, refuse, sundry junk and detritus of a city bursting at its seams, disgorged like volcanic lava on the steep hillsides of Tuba, Benguet. On its deadly path houses are crushed and buried, and several lives tragically lost, while the omnipresent toxic brew of leachate and methane gas unleashed with the rotting refuse pose real and long-term threats to public health and safety.
Recriminations have followed and much brow-beating, too. The Environment department should have doggedly enforced pertinent laws. The local government (present and previous administrations) could have been more judicious and forward-looking instead of being myopic and indifferent to what was a problem staring everyone in the face. The citizens, or local civic groups, should have been more vigilant and demanded that their leaders be more ecologically-conscious. We could all have recycled or sorted our garbage more practically in our homes and offices. All told, we are all to blame – big time – for the mess we see happening before our eyes. In heretofore idyllic Baguio, as in oppressively congested, trash-choked Manila and elsewhere in this asphyxiated archipelago of ours. Indeed, the unceasing harm we do to our surroundings comes back to us with a vengeance.
How could Baguio, the country’s summer capital, the stuff of our childhood vacation dreams, collapse – literally – at the sheer weight of its refuse? How could the scent of pine trees and the memory of fog-draped mornings be replaced now with the jarring imagery of waste and devastation? Or of tenement-like houses and clapboard dwellings clinging precariously to steep mountain terrain, a panorama of blight and squalor, a grating contrast to pine-covered, green ridges of not too many summers past?
When Baguio was designed a century ago, American architect Daniel Burnham imagined a mountain settlement for a population of 30,000. Today, the city groans with a demographic bulge of over 400,000 inhabitants, a 1,000 percent increase beyond its carrying capacity. With this are inevitable challenges of urban planning and land use, transport and communication, pollution and sewage, water supply and energy – and yes, solid waste management.
The Irisan dumpsite in Baguio was a catastrophe waiting to happen. It was going to be a matter of time before something this tragic would happen—not unlike the Pa-yatas, Quezon City dumpsite avalanche that buried over 200 shanties and over a hundred people ten years ago. Loose soil, made increasingly unstable over the years because of deforestation, mining, farming and the proliferation of human settlements, provided the perfect conditions for such a hazard to occur. When rainfall is excessive, as is the case now with climate change-driven typhoons, the risks and vulnerabilities of human communities are heightened.
Alongside reports of the Baguio trashslide have been accounts of boulders rolling down a hillside and destroying homes in a congested area of Olongapo City. Not too long ago a whole section of sloping farmland gave way in Valencia, Bukidnon, causing extensive damage to a whole barangay. In parts of typhoon-hit Bicol, highways are blocked or bridges ruined by occasional landslides and flashfloods. When we think of Southern Leyte we are reminded of the Guinsaogon landslide that devoured a whole village not too long ago. We are seeing more of these “Ondoy” type climatic disturbances—not only here but also in more places around the world.
This week the world was also witness to the unprecedented battering of the United States East Coast with Hurricane Irene. With the warming of the earth’s atmosphere more climactic disturbances like hurricanes will occur with greater frequency and ferocity. With every storm and malady, this is becoming the world’s “new normal.”
How then do we deal with this world gone out of whack? Preparedness and planning are key factors – the whole idea of adaptation. Our new laws on disaster risk reduction and climate change mitigation provide a clearer way out of this “new normal” state of affairs. Climate change is here to stay and countries like ours – along with the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, Nepal, islands in the Pacific, parts of the Indonesian archipelago – are considered the most vulnerable to climate change impacts. It will do us well to have quick response systems in place and a fuller understanding of the risks we face but also of our capacities to be more climate-resilient.
But to do that we need, altogether, a consciousness that embraces the truth that every action we take, every piece of garbage we generate, every unit of energy we use, every liter of water we consume has a corresponding impact on our environment. The calamitous trash-slide in Baguio—as every other disaster, natural or man-made—returns us to that elemental recognition. We are part of nature and the environment; what we do to it we do ultimately to ourselves.
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