FORESIGHT AND GOVERNMENT

FORESIGHT AND GOVERNMENT 

One of the things that we used to be taught in our educational institutions is how to manage and control the environment—how to explore and exploit it so that we could benefit from it greatly. In fact, those who were able to do so –those classmates able to do so were admired for their acumen in profiting from such – like  Henry, not his real name, who was able to make a killing from selling sugar, and Ambo who profited a lot from putting up a fishpond in Laguna Lake.

However, nowadays, making business out of the environment has become a cautious about such endeavors. It is no longer profitable to plant just one crop like sugar over and over again over a piece of land because the nutrients of the soil are not replenished, thus making it barren after some time. Building fishponds in the lake has also been overdone. Fishes run out of oxygen and die; and are prone to be victims of flooding.

So what is happening now in Compostela Valley where mining is the main industry and hundreds have lost their lives due to landslides caused by too much rainwater poured by typhoon Pablo is a similar case of so-called “managing and controlling the environment.” The number of victims is increasing and the incident is sending us an alarming signal: we have failed to listen to Mother Nature. Extraction of minerals was done without foresight except that they would bring income and huge profits. The way hundreds of people had flocked to the Valley although there were already signs of  unsafe grounds shows the desperation of our lowly-educated people for any income that could tide over their families’ needs no matter the danger.

Although we could claim that mining per se is not bad but when profiteers rule the industry rather than those conscientious buyers of minerals, then we can say that we have truly mismanaged the environment. I think that running a mining business is not a matter of drawing income from the land but also having a holistic perspective – who will profit, what will happen to the land after extraction; how will the natural elements react to the change in the contour of the land; how will the people’s living conditions be affected by the extraction.

In other words, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Department of Trade and Industry have a lot of rethinking to do regarding the use (misuse and abuse) of natural resources in order to generate livelihood. What is problematic here is that most of our bureaucrats are ensconced in their offices and generally do not have a hands-on experience of how the people live in those areas. Only when there are issues occurring like a typhoon sweeping the country are there conscious efforts to look into the people’s living conditions.

The Department of Social Work and Development also has to consider the cash transfer program for impoverished communities by industry. Should the staff who go around find unwieldy situations, then their discoveries have to be given greater weight. Social workers generally have a close-up view of the lives of our people and hence their testimonies are more reliable when the people’s conditions are evaluated.

Foresight is a very rare and expensive commodity in our society. Those who give warning signals are either ignored or labeled too idealistic, or worse off their rockers. Usually media critics are lumped together in the latter due to the over-sensitive reactions of certain government officials to the former’s write-ups.

It is high time to raise “foresight” as an important and valid criterion for placing people to their places in government. Candidates and current occupants of appointed and elective positions have to be subjected to this criterion to find out if they have the people’s lives in their hearts and minds. “Lives” means lifetimes, not just temporary or present ones.

In other words, we are looking for officials who know how to think, feel, critique and act on our past, present and future.