Category: Environment

This is our planet. Let’s work together to secure and sustain it.

File Under Oddities: Project Save 182 Misleads Sting into Changing Concert Venue

October 20, 2012October 22, 2012 P. Farol 75 Comments

Appearing to crow about what seems to be a victory of sorts, Project Save 182 lawyerÂ Cheryl Daytec-Yangot posted on Facebook that Sting had moved his concert from the Mall of Asia to the Araneta Coliseum. Yangot claims to have written to Sting’s representatives and apparently misinformed them that SM had cut the trees that her…

Environment, Glitz and Glamour

Philippines noted for trade in Santo NiÃ±o statues made from illegally-traded elephant tusks

September 26, 2012 benign0 11 Comments

The Philippines has reportedly been identified in a National Geographic report as a major destination and market for ivory illegally exported from Africa. Elephants are classified as endangered animals and trade in any product made from them — such as ivory from their tusks — is illegal. The Philippines in 1981 became a signatory to…

Culture, Environment, Religion

Is government responsible for the safety of citizens residing in earthquake-prone zones?

September 4, 2012 benign0 33 Comments

Is there really such a thing as government absolving itself of any responsibility for the well-being of its citizens in the event of a disaster? Apparently there is such a notion if we are to believe Quezon City public order and safety head Elmo San Diego. According to San Diego, residents of the posh subdivisions…

Civics, Environment, Government

Are the obvious solutions to the Philippines’ problems feasible?

August 27, 2012 Kate Natividad 15 Comments

I keep reading about people proposing sensible and obvious things to combat the biggest problems we face today, like controlling (and maybe even reducing) population, reducing carbon emissions, and voting for the best leader. All sounds like the ‘intelligent’ things to do, don’t they? But all that is just asking too much when you consider…

Development, Environment, Lifestyle, Society

It’s about time the Philippine government blasts squatters out of the water

August 14, 2012June 13, 2013 benign0 44 Comments

Apparently emboldened by the rising anger over the man-made nature of the massive floods that devastated much of Metro Manila last week and increasingly loud calls to rectify the problems related to it that politicians had allowed to fester for decades, President Benigno Simeon “BS” Aquino III has issued a strong mandate for decisive action…

Development, Environment, Government, Society

Solution to Manila flooding may involve more of living with it than protecting against it

August 12, 2012June 13, 2013 benign0 29 Comments

Metro Manila is, by its very nature, a city vulnerable to flooding. Yet it has grown and developed into a monstrous megalopolis that, today, teeters on the brink of catastrophic failure. Manila is bisected by the Pasig River into which connect a system of natural waterways that both feed into it and absorb excess water…

Development, Environment, Government

Is PNoy to blame for the recent flooding in Luzon?

August 10, 2012June 13, 2013 Ilda 99 Comments

When former President Gloria Arroyo (GMA) was in power, people were quick to blame her government for what happened during the flooding brought about by typhoon Ondoy in September 2009. Yes, her government could have done more to prevent the flooding but the deluge brought forth by the rains induced by the storm that caused…

Development, Environment, Government, Politics

Metro Manila a candidate for urban ‘catastrophic failure’ according to policy expert

August 10, 2012 benign0 39 Comments

The virtue of ‘resilience’ has become a dirty word now in the Philippines as third-time unlucky Manila is again hit by another one of those “one-in-one-hundred” calamities that were once the key statistical notion underpinning urban planners’ archaic flood “control” master plans. Although response to the disaster has “improved”, the feel-good rhetoric around Filipinos’ cockroach-like…

Development, Environment, Government