PH starts to tiptoe away from coal

One of the few — very few — legitimately praiseworthy policy orientations of the Duterte administration has been its cognizance that the environment is a thing, and that climate-change impact mitigation ought to be actively pursued, so far as the country’s capabilities allow. This has been a refreshing change from the administrations of Gloria Arroyo, who, notwithstanding a couple of positive moves such as the Solid Waste Act and Clean Air Act, was largely ambivalent toward environmental concerns; and Noynoy Aquino, whose policies were, if anything, hostile to the environment.

Not that the Philippines under Duterte has, by any stretch of the imagination, become a model of sustainable management. There is still a long way to go, and for every positive development, it seems there are still five or six appalling problems that are far from being seriously addressed, let alone solved. Even so, the country needs to start somewhere, and the Duterte administration has at least done that, saying the right things and backing some of them up with tangible action. The country’s current leadership may be an utter clown show in other respects (I am exercising a remarkable amount of self-control in not commenting on its disastrous handling of the coronavirus vaccines, for example), but it deserves credit for putting the country on the right track in terms of environmental policy.