THIS WEEK, Davao City plays host to a meeting of eminent representatives from various countries in the Asia-Pacific region comprising the Asia-Pacific Forum on Environment and Development (APFED). The group was established in 2001 at the annual Environment Congress for Asia and the Pacific (Eco-Asia), and through the years has sought to make tangible contributions to the pursuit of sustainable development in the region.
The concept of sustainable development has been around for decades, and has been the subject of countless summits, conferences, seminars and workshops all around the world. In spite of this, too many people still think that protecting the environment gets in the way of pursuing development, and hence there is a distinct tradeoff between the two. But sustainable development advocates have long argued that environment and development could and should go hand-in-hand with each other.
Building a zoo?
Not too long ago, I had occasion to interview key officials of the six countries in the Greater Mekong Subregion, which apart from Thailand and China are mostly still in a relatively underdeveloped state. My mission was to help these countries draw up their national strategies for sustainable development. It turned out that their biggest impediment was the still common view that development was synonymous with economic growth. One planning official candidly told us of a Cabinet discussion wherein the environment minister's concerns over the adverse impacts on biodiversity of certain development projects were roundly dismissed with the sarcastic admonition that the government was trying to build its economy, not build a zoo.
If development is not economic growth, then what is it? The United Nations defines development as the expansion of human choices. Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen has defined it simply as freedom--indeed, the freedom to choose, and the widening of such choice. As such, it goes well beyond making the economy grow by producing more goods and services. It also implies permitting the economy to continue doing so indefinitely into the future. The most popular definition of sustainable development is the one adopted by the Brundtland Commission in 1987: It is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. It is, in other words, development wherein environment and development mutually support each other.
Policy and actions
In its earlier phase, APFED brought together the collective wisdom and experience of its eminent members led by the late former Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto to influence policies and directions coming out of international discussions, and country commitments made therein. This it sought to do by issuing a message to the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg, and submitting a comprehensive report to the Fifth Ministerial Conference on Environment and Development in Asia and the Pacific in 2005. APFED now focuses on fostering policy dialogues, expanding knowledge and encouraging concrete initiatives for sustainable development within countries of the region. The last is done through the annual Ryutaro Hashimoto APFED Awards for Good Practices and the APFED Showcase Program, which grants financial support to innovative initiatives for promoting sustainable development in the region.
One of the winners of the Hashimoto Award this year, and doing the whole country proud, is the municipality of Santo Tomas in Davao del Norte for its Ecological Solid Waste Management Program--making it quite fitting that this year's APFED meeting is taking place in nearby Davao City. Sto. Tomas shares honors with projects from Nepal, Indonesia, Bangladesh, India and China.
Win-win
The APFED meeting will also discuss ways to move the regional action agenda forward on climate change and protection of agro-biodiversity. Former DENR Secretary Bebet Gozun and UP Professor Dr. Perry Ong, both multi-awarded environmentalists, will lead off the APFED discussions on these topics, which have become timely and urgent concerns in the context of surging oil and food prices worldwide. As an archipelagic country composed of more than 7,000 islands, we are particularly vulnerable to climate change, and must take deliberate efforts to mitigate it as well as adapt to it. At the same time, we are also recognized to be among the countries with the richest biodiversity in the world--something that we cannot permit human economic activities to undermine and destroy, as the same biodiversity sustains much of our economic activities for everyone's benefit.
APFED's aim is to highlight that development is in fact served by protecting the environment, and that it is in everyone's interest to ensure that one is not promoted at the expense of the other. In hosting the APFED meeting this year, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the City of Davao seek to demonstrate that the Philippines in general, and Davao City in particular, commit to the pursuit of this win-win approach, and protection of the interests of generations of Filipinos yet to come.
Comments welcome at chabito@ateneo.edu
