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In August the fisherfolk also complained that some old growth mangroves in three sitios of Barangay Taliptip in Bulakan were cut down without proper permits.
Unlike in past typhoons, the flood was higher and stayed longer, and the surges hit stronger, carrying off the sand at the top of the soil.
Based on the Coastal Resource Management Project conducted by scientist group AGHAM, 670 kilos of fish catch will be lost for every hectare of mangrove that will be damaged.
"We must investigate how these extractives were allowed to acquire, operate, and abandon tenements in geologically hazardous areas without sufficient risk-mitigating measures."
“The birds’ habitat, the people’s source of livelihood and protection from storm surges are being turned into just another concrete jungle for the profit of the very few.”
“Small-scale miners actually attempted to apply for regulations via an application for a ‘Minahang Bayan.’ But Benguet Corp., as tenement holder of the area, opposed this to maintain their control over the area’s mineral resources.”
There is an increasing number of commercially operating large-scale mines and mineral reservation areas under Duterte, and in the case filed by environmentalists at the IPT2018, such an expansion in mining activities has come with frequent and increasingly violent attacks against anti-mining activists and environmental defenders.
Ompong is expected to be the strongest weather system to hit the country this year.
The challenge to build genuine solutions to flood risk factors should not have been new to the administration of Rodrigo Duterte. These proposals were outlined already in the 2016 People’s Agenda for Nationalist and Progressive Change, a comprehensive 100-day agenda document hand-delivered to Duterte himself.
The Tumanduk are being forced to accept P50,000 per hectare for those holding a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title, lesser amounts for those without title. These monies could not last long.
With so much biodiversity and unique ecosystems holding economically valuable natural resources, Asia is an alarming hotspot of biodiversity loss.
It is ironic that the Philippine government still holds the vice presidency of the UN Human Rights Council’s Bureau despite its flagrant disregard of human rights.
“The government must conduct a thorough assessment of the Boracay Island and identify appropriate mitigating measures to address the degrading state of the island.”
That P735.6-billion reclamation budget from SMC seemed to have been enough for NEDA to ignore the thousands of people to be displaced and the ecologically critical vegetation to be damaged.
Boracay needs scientists, engineers, development planners, social workers, and community organizers, not the hundreds of troops and police.
“Green activists are being terror-listed, slapped with harassment charges, faced with martial rule, and even murdered as if environmental activism is a crime.”
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