Is our planet beyond saving?

THE AETA are among the most neglected people in the Philippines.

Juan Delgos is a poor Aeta farmer living in a bamboo hut with a grass roof in the Zambales mountains, North of Manila. He is bent with age and hard work and has endured lashing rain and burning sun. He is a subsistence farmer with his wife and three children living on ancestral land.

Juan’s grandfather was a hunter and gatherer in the once lush rainforests of Zambales. After World War II and Independence, massive deforestation destroyed the rainforests during the 1960s. The logging families and politicians cut every tree they could find leaving the mountains in the Philippines with only three percent of primeval forest. After a massive public outcry by environmentalists in the 1990s, logging was outlawed but it was too late and there is still illegal logging today. If the forests were regrown, they would absorb billions of tons of CO2.

The Aeta indigenous people survived and remained poor. They sold banana and Pico mangos to commercial traders for exploitative low prices. To help them, the Profairtrade Development Enterprise (PDE) organization came in and paid triple the traders’ price for Pico mangos. They picked up the mangos, paid cash in the field and gave them a share of the earnings after the mangos were processed into mango puree and exported. The PDE also helps provide sanitation and water supply projects in the villages. It also provides as many as 2,000 mango saplings and fruit trees every year to restore the mountains and provide income.

Five years ago, the PDE helped the 360 Aeta farmers reach the certified international organic standard for mango. That was a big achievement for poor farmers and they renewed their certification every year after passing strict inspections. They then sold tons of organic mangoes. The Aetas were doing very well during mango harvest until the climate changed for the worst.

“Now there are no more good harvests, it is too hot,” Juan said. “The rain storms and wind come at the wrong time and wash away the mango blossoms. The fruit flies lay their eggs and kill the flowers on the trees. Then the heat dries what little fruits survive,” he said. That is the tragic impact of climate change. The farmers and the PDE are now working on growing banana for processing into puree since the mangos are failing due to global warming and coal-fired power plants are the main culprits.

There are 28 coal-fired power plants in the Philippines and 22 more are planned and approved by the Department of Energy. Will the Philippines cancel the planned 22 coal-fired plants and get development funds to build renewables like geothermal, wind and solar as new sources of electricity? It’s not likely, as elsewhere in the world many politicians are puppets controlled by the coal and oil corporations.

Forty percent of the world’s electricity is produced by burning coal and they produce the highest concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.  China is the worst of all, followed by India, the US and Australia. As many as 80 countries depend on coal plants and another 15 countries are planning to join them. Only 19 have pledged to quit. So what hope is there for reducing CO2 in the atmosphere to hold global temperatures at 1.5C by 2030?  Not much really.

Only when economic forces greatly favor low-cost renewable energy sources and the people are free and enlightened to elect candidates of integrity, with virtue and values, and with commitment to justice and equality, will the warming slow and the planet will be saved. (preda.org)/PN