It’s time to account for and value our blessings

Many of us often lament being “poor.” I grew up in a rural town in Central Luzon, which was then at the center of the Huk movement. Despite that, I didn’t develop the thought that my town or the Philippines is poor. I owe that kind of thinking to my late parents.

How I grew up in a town with no electricity, no piped-in water and other necessities is a story to share in the future. One happy result is my developed strong belief that God has blessed our country well—it is NOT poor!

I learned that “poor” is a relative term—the more “poor” we or our natural and man-made environments are, the more relatives we have—being the eldest of 10 children. But the serious idea that I also learned early is that we must value our natural blessings, the natural capital for our country’s development.

More than half a century later for me, we have now officially recognized the need to account for and value our natural capital through the Pencas (Philippine Ecosystem and Natural Capital Accounting System) Act, or Republic Act No. 11995, that President Marcos approved on May 22, 2024.

I will not explain the law and how we may apply it and the actions needed from us because I cannot do so well, given my limited space. What I am sure about is, whether you are a child or a senior citizen, poor or rich, you can have a role in implementing this law. But we need the leaders in you to help initiate positive actions to implement the law because you owe that to yourself and to your Creator.

The Pencas law is the result of efforts initiated in 1991 by various government agencies—the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), followed by the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) with its attached agency Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA)—public and private specialists from various fields with the support of funding agencies (USAID, United Nations, World Bank) to apply the UN System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA). They applied the system through projects that had modest funding to demonstrate how it could be done on some natural resources.

TOWNS (The Outstanding Women in the Nation’s Service) awardee and now four-term Sen. Loren Legarda drafted a bill on natural resource accounting in 2001 so that the system could be applied to more natural resources and areas, with funds and other needed support from both the government and private sectors.

More than a decade after that, the sustainable development committee of the Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) that I was then chairing and several partner organizations featured the concept of accounting for our natural resources, at a webinar on Sept. 25, 2020. We were then celebrating Mana (Maritime and Archipelagic Nation Awareness) Month since September was declared through a Presidential Proclamation as Mana Month or Mana Mo— which in our Filipino language means that our maritime and archipelagic nation, the globally recognized center of marine biodiversity in the world, is our inheritance.

Long road

Our webinar organizing team agreed that, with such rich natural inheritance, we must aim to have a sustainable blue economy and must prioritize accounting for our marine biodiversity. At that webinar, our team members, former Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Dr. Ciel Habito and former Enviroonment Undersecretary lawyer Ipat Luna, provided the economic and policy background that justified our focus on our blue environment.

We heard that Stanford University has a Natural Capital Project that has helped some countries and business enterprises in setting up their natural capital accounting projects. So, we requested Dr. Gretchen Daily, founder and faculty director of that Natural Capital Project and then House Deputy Speaker Loren Legarda to be our keynote speakers for that first webinar, which introduced the use of natural capital accounting. Our webinar title was “Moving forward with our Mana toward a sustainable blue economy.”

Rep. Jose Francisco Benitez had expressed interest in the Blue Economy subject (He has already filed a bill on it that’s going through the legislative process now.). Hence, we requested him to be a reactor at the webinar. We also invited some of our leading local experts who have been working on SEEA and the blue environment—Dr. Marian delos Angeles, Ria Rosales and Maria Corazon Ebarvia, who discussed natural valuation and accounting and the major challenges in applying them to achieve blue economic development.

The first episode of a video series, available from the CAS4U channel on YouTube, provides portions of the presentations during that webinar under the improved name Casa (Climate action and sustainability alliance) of formerly CCSDN (Climate change and sustainable development network).

After that webinar four years ago, we formally organized Casa as a platform for collaboration of various organizations dealing with climate change and sustainable development, with MAP as our partner. With the participation of experts from other sectors like agriculture, accountancy, statistics and other areas, where natural capital accounting and valuation need to be applied, Casa formed a team to work with Legarda to update and finalize her original bill.

It became the Philippine Ecosystem and Natural Capital Accounting System (Pencas) Bill, which she filed at the 18th Congress before leaving the lower house.

Benitez refiled the Pencas Bill at the 19th Congress and then newly elected Sen. Loren Legarda filed it after at the Senate on July 22, 2022, 21 years after she filed the original bill as deputy speaker.

33 years

With the support of her colleagues in the Senate and that of the President, finally, 33 years after the initial efforts of DENR, Neda and PSA, Pencas will now be fully implemented to help us account for and value our blessings with what we hope to be continuing government support at the national and local levels, as well as that of the private sector (business and civil society) and, as needed, technical and funding assistance support from bilateral and multilateral organizations.

Now we know that the making of a law takes much longer than the pregnancy to produce a child and even a grandchild! But we saw it through with the support of all, especially in learning more about our environment that God blessed us with, understanding the basic concepts and the application of Pencas to help us achieve sustainable development, identifying even the hidden gems in our environment, encouraging others to participate in this work where young and old alike can enjoy helpful tasks, and learning to scientifically “count what counts” and “measure what we treasure.”

These are two phrases that I like in the “Sukat ng Kalikasan Framework that the DENR, Neda, PSA and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources jointly developed with some of the authors and contributors coming from our Casa and from their consultants and other organizations. There was also support from the American people through the USAID, the usual leading source of bilateral support for our environmental projects.

I had served USAID for several years in the past as national coordinator for its Philippine Environment Program and as senior adviser and training consultant for business executives for the US-Asean Environment Program. USAID also helped us set up the Business for Sustainable Development (formerly Philippine Business for the Environment).

We thank USAID for their continuing support that I hope will now be matched by our business community in this challenging work to account for and value our blessings. We hope to start by setting up a Pencas Information System that those who want to help may access in both MAP, Casa and the other organizations that I am affiliated with. INQ

The author, an engineer-economist, is convener-chair of Casa, and Board Director of Asian Institute for Journalism & Communication, Asiapro Foundation, Business for Sustainable Development, Philippine Foundation for S&T, SEABED Inc., & South-South Cooperation Council for SD in Colombia.