MANILA, Feb. 8 – An environmentalist group urges lawmakers to codify the country's environmental laws to streamline and group them as a regulatory tool which authorities can enforce more effectively.
"It'll be better to codify such laws into an environmental code because many of these overlap with each other, " said Voltaire Alferez, executive director of Earth Day Network (EDN) Philippines.
Alferez said the proliferation of environmental laws and their overlapping provisions should be codified since some of them were could hardly be enforced.
Alferez said that generating more laws boosted environmental protection in the country but existing regulatory regime was already sufficient to help address environmental degradation.
"Enough of new regulations – we have over 130 'green' laws already," he said.
These existing laws were on protecting air, water and land, on solid waste management (SWM) and on other environmental concerns, he said.
Population control alone won't curb environmental degradation also, Alferez said.
"The problem isn't population size but people's attitude towards environmental protection," he said.
Whether the population is big or small, the environment will suffer if people don't exert efforts to protect it.
EDN, an organization of over 2,000 groups advocating environmental protection nationwide, reiterated that electoral candidates must explain how they plan to boost enforcement of environmental laws.
He said candidates must explain their plans particularly as international experts already warned about possible havoc that the Philippines as well as other archipelagic and island nations would experience from climate change unless global warming was addressed.
Experts said that global warming resulted from emission of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) that trapped heat in the earth's atmosphere.
Philippine regulations seek to lower GHG emission levels nationwide through measures like SWM and low-carbon industrial production.
To help raise public demand for more effective enforcement of Philippine environmental laws, EDN mounted in 2009 its 10 Million Movement.
This campaign seeks to gather at least 10 million signatures from people bent on supporting candidates committed to environmental protection.
EDN plans to present these signatures to the candidates before May 10, election day, so they can be aware there are 'green' votes to gain from caring for the environment.
"We invite everyone to show aspiring leaders Filipinos care about the environment indeed," Alferez said.
He said parties interested in joining the campaign can email secretariat@earthdayphils.org.
Application forms are also available at EDN which is based at National Ecology Center along East Avenue in Quezon City, he added. (PNA) RMA/CJT/utb