An academic powerhouse through and through, Ochie became involved in international associations related to environmental work. He served as a consultant in Hiroshima to its Zero Waste projects, and Removal of Oil Pollutants in Seawater and Alternative Water Treatment Technologies. He also became a member of professional societies such as the International Association on Water Quality, the International Humic Substances Society, the Japan Society on Water Environment, the National Research Council of the Philippines and the Chemical Society of the Philippines.
In 1993, Ochie left his teaching job in UPLB to continue his academic pursuits in Japan, staying there for around five years.
Ever resourceful and loyal to his alma mater, he got research grants for UPLB’s scholars while serving as a University professor in Japan. He also witnessed the hardships of fellow Filipino OFWs who had to contend with jobs that were dirty, dangerous, and were underpaid in comparison, and served as Executive Director for a Filipino migrant support center there.
“If you can show me a Filipino who went to Japan to teach Toyota how to make cars—I would say that would be quite impressive. Well, Ochie did something analogously similar: He conducted classes in water, wastewater, and air quality and monitoring to graduate students of Hiroshima University and Kinki University in Japan…In short, Ochie really did his county proud by being recognized as the expert in Japan on matters that Japan does best—like pollution control after Minamata,” contemporary and fellow Rapu-Rapu Commissioner Charles Avila said in his eulogy to Ochie.
Environmental activist and people’s scientist
Ochie returned to the Philippines in the mid-1990s, giving back to the country the scientific expertise he acquired abroad. He served as a Board Member of the Center for Environmental Concerns-Philippines (CEC-Phils) and was instrumental in defining what specific issues the NGO should address.
Ochie also served as a consultant for various government and non-government organizations, formulating new projects such as programs for fortified rice and other foodstuffs. In between breaks in his consultancy work, Ochie continued to give educational discussions and lectures on pressing environmental issues.
His contribution to environmental activism is such that and Kalikasan-Peoples Network for the Environment National Coordinator Clemente Bautista acknowledges Ochie as one of the people who defined their basic principles as environmental activists.
Activist scientists from AGHAM also credit to Ochie the vision of defining the “five concerns that a scientist could work on in order to make science and technology serve the people”: the environment, public utilities, food security and self-sufficiency, scientific and mass culture and national industrialization.
Ochie figured in several big environmental tragedies to befall the Philippines in recent history. Colleagues from Kalikasan-PNE, for instance, attest that he was one of the brains behind the national campaigns against the U.S. military toxic wastes left by U.S. troops in Subic and Clark. To scientifically show the culpability of vacating foreign troops, Ochie initiated landmark toxicity pathway researches that would link the rising incidence of cancers among the local community to the toxic contaminants left by the U.S. military, such as fuels and armaments.
In the wake of the Marinduque mine spill tragedy, Ochie initiated field visits and community education seminars among the people living in the mine’s direct impact areas. At a time when the local community was reeling from demoralization and hopelessness in the face of flagging government support, Ochie and other peoples organizations strove to revive the struggle for environmental justice in the island, CEC-Phils Executive Director Frances Quimpo said.
A hero to the end
Ochie’s last stint as an environmental expert was as former Commissioner to the Rapu-Rapu Fact Finding Commission (RRFC) chaired by Bishop Arturo Bastes. As part of the commission tasked to investigate the two chemical spills incurred by Lafayette Mining Limited in Rapu-Rapu island, Albay, Ochie quickly took the company to task for irresponsible mining practices, easily exposing the Lafayette project as an environmentally-destructive one that should be terminated immediately.
“He was a natural cross-examiner,” fellow Commissioner Atty. Ron Gutierrez says of Ochie. “He really put Lafayette to task and was quick to come up with counter-rebuttals to Lafayette’s lies,” he added.
By that time, Ochie’s health was already turning for the worse. Halfway through Day One of the RRFM’s visit to the Lafayette project site, Ochie had to be brought to the clinic because of difficulty in breathing.
But Ochie continued to contribute his services whenever he could. “[All through March to the present], Ochie worked so hard even as his health gave him so much suffering. He would not cease giving of himself for the people’s cause that so very badly needed his talent, his dedication, all to a degree that can only be called plain heroic,” Avila recalls.
The months that followed after the RRFM released its findings and recommendations were hardly encouraging. The Arroyo government and the DENR ignored the RRFM’s report and recommendations, even granting Lafayette two more test runs.
“Whatever the final decision of the DENR, it is already part of our national historical records and let it be so, that together with his colleagues, Ochie warned the nation and the world about the shortcomings of Lafayette’s strategy to prevent and control Acid Mine Drainage (AMD),” Avila said.
“AMD, as everyone by now knows, has been called mining’s multi-billion-dollar environmental time bomb that can harm the environment and the people’s health for generations to come. Mining areas where AMD has caught on become the equivalent of nuclear waste dumps in the sense that they must be tended to in perpetuity and at such great expense. Thinking of all this could not put Ochie at rest. He was not a scientist in the abstract. He was a scientist of and for the people,” Avila continued.
