Palaro goes green

I APPLAUD Education Secretary Bro. Armin Luistro, FSC, for instilling in young Filipino athletes, officials and coaches a love of clean and green environment by strictly prohibiting the use of plastic and styrofoam or the throwing of garbage in places where it is prohibited during this year’s staging of the Palarong Pambansa in Dapitan City in Zamboanga del Norte on May 8 to 14.

DepEd Memorandum 97 penalizes Palaro violators with a point deduction off their overall team scores for committing “an offense against Mother Earth.” The guilty team loses five points on the first offense off its overall scores; 10 points on its second offense; 15 on the third; and 20 on the fourth.

“On the fifth offense, the secretary, in consultation with the Palarong Pambansa board, shall consider the suspension of the region, team or delegation in the succeeding year of the Palaro,” said Tonisito Umali, DepEd assistant secretary for legal and legislative affairs.

About 10,000 student-athletes, teachers and coaches from 17 regions across the country are participating in the Palaro, one of the oldest sports programs in the Philippines today.

The DepEd decision is not earth-shaking, but it should not be ignored because it is a step in the right direction in the worldwide campaign to protect, rehabilitate and conserve the environment.

“Our planet is slowly dying because of the threat of climate change,” environmentalists say. “One need not be an expert to know and feel it. Simply put, there are many incontrovertible evidence of environmental degradation and abuses.”

Just to illustrate. Even our once-thriving marine resources have been vastly affected.

Many months ago, I wrote about the sad state of local fishing, stating that pretty soon Philippine marine wildlife would slowly die as a result of illegal activities like dynamite fishing, the use of cyanide, bay trawling (pakaladlad in the vernacular) and roller and drift netting.

When I was in Kona, Hawaii, as a member of the Philippine Team that took part in the Hawaii International Billfish Tournament some years back, what caught my eye was the tag-and-release format of the tourney.

As my good friend Ray Pendelton, environmental columnist of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin aptly wrote: “In the end, it was not the conservation-oriented tag-and-release aspect of the HIBT that was the big news. Out of the fish caught during the five-day period, so many were tagged and then released back into the sea, with the hope of their continued life and proliferation of their species.”

Here at home, lawmakers and environment advocates recently launched the “Sagip Gubat” network aimed at pushing for the passage of a proposed bill on the protection and restoration of the country’s dwindling forests.

Said Blas Tabaranza Jr., COO of the environmental group Haribon, at the press launch: “We have been pushing for this for so many years. But this is the first time that we are bringing together other (nongovernment organizations) to lobby for the urgent passage of the Forest Resources Bill.”

The Haribon advocate has also called on President Aquino to certify the bill as urgent mainly because the Chief Executive himself had said that an executive order (EO) would not be enough to protect the Philippines from disasters and climate change. The landmark bill was authored by Ifugao Rep. Teddy Baguilat, Samar Rep. Mel Senen Sarmiento and Iloilo Rep. Arthur Defensor.