IN A PREVIOUS essay, I asked the question of whether graft and corruption are sins or not.
I think I might have left my answer hanging, so I am going to give my answer here now.
But before I do that, let me say again that graft and corruption are not one and the same. They do have a cause-and-effect relationship, and that is perhaps the reason why they are often confused with each other.
Corruption is the cause of graft. Corruption is the temptation that causes someone to commit acts of graft. Legally, graft is a crime because there is a Philippine law that punishes it.
However, there is also God’s law in the Ten Commandments that prohibits stealing, and so therefore, graft is also a sin.
But is corruption also a crime?
I am not sure about that, but I could say that whoever causes someone to steal could also be an accessory to that crime.
It could be said that some people can commit graft on their own, without anyone corrupting them. But then, it could also be said that the lesser corruptors there are, the lesser grafters or thieves there will be.
Having said all that, how do we reduce graft?
Since we have already established that graft is a crime that is also a sin, we could reduce graft by leading people towards living a life away from sin. If they could decide to turn away from sin, they could also decide to turn away from stealing.
FROM ABANDONED FISHPONDS TO MANGROVE FORESTS
Environmentalists seem to have hit the jackpot when Environment Secretary Maria Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga ordered the inspection and evaluation of abandoned, underdeveloped and underutilized (AUU) fishponds, to be able to identify potential areas for mangrove restoration.
Although it may still take some time before the order becomes fully implemented, she has already fired the first shot.
Just to give this order a historical perspective, hundreds if not thousands of wetlands and mangrove forests were destroyed in the past, to be converted into commercial fishponds.
Perhaps at that time, there was not much appreciation about how the destruction of wetlands and mangrove forests could affect the environment.
To be fair, nobody objected also to the potential of food production at that time, with new economic growth of course. Although food production will never be replaced as our top national priority, we must now balance that nowadays with our other top priorities of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction.
After evaluations by a Technical Working Group (TWG), some of these AUU areas could be converted back into wetlands and mangrove forests, by way of replanting and regeneration. Let us all help the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in this endeavor, because it is good for all of us./PN
