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During the country surveys, a wide range of events were identified that are perceived to be caused by environmental mismanagement or to cause environmental damage. Examples include, pollution, deforestation, hurricanes and storms, droughts, flooding, landslides (see, for example, Box 5.9).
Box 5.9: The influence of environmental disasters in The Philippines
“Major environmental events emerged as the strongest driving force to environmental mainstreaming in the Philippines. This is not surprisingly the top choice because the country has been experiencing a string of unprecedented and catastrophic disasters that are mostly attributable to environmental degradation. The Philippines is a disaster-prone area being right on the sea and in the ring of fire. However, the frequency and intensity of recent disasters have been at such catastrophic levels that Filipinos became more worried and watchful. Huge floods, landslides and mudslides, usually caused by deforestation due to illegal logging and land conversion, have buried wide areas, wiped out towns and villages and cost tens of thousands of lives. Over-fishing and destruction of coral reefs have reduced fish catch and worsened poverty especially in fishing villages. Extreme pollution of waters has caused red tides and fish kill phenomena. All these have led to, among others, extreme poverty, adverse psychological and psychosocial impacts, and high cost of rehabilitation that impinge on national budget for economic and social development.
Perhaps a blessing in disguise, the fear for these disasters and concern for personal safety and national security are making Filipinos do more to resuscitate the environment and teach or prosecute those who destroy it. They try to learn more about what cause these disasters and initiate actions accordingly. For instance, there is already a good level of awareness that the mega-typhoons and El Niño drought - that often simultaneously hit the country and result in the destruction of crops and other produce - are largely due to climate change and global warming. As these events hit, consideration and integration of environment in decision-making heightens and becomes a priority agenda of government and the people”.
Source: Earth Council/ICLEI, 2008 |
“Much of Chile’s environmental progress over the last fifteen years was driven by concerns about pollution’s impacts on health” (RIDES, 2008)
“There is a desire [in South Africa] to stem increasing disasters of all kinds relating to the degradation of the environment, climate change and the energy crisis” (DBSA, 2008)
“There is increased fear of risk from environmental degradation [in Uganda] as witnessed by occasional floods, drought, falling water levels in Lake Victoria and outbreak of water-borne diseases” (Birungi, 2008)
Global climate change is clearly seen as a huge challenge facing the world that needs to be tackled at all levels (international, national, local, and by individual action) and that must be fully integrated in all development policies and planning. The growing prominence of climate change in national agendas – even if currently much of the ‘push’ is from international initiatives – offers real opportunities to facilitate mainstreaming initiatives:
“Climate change is a hot topic [in Latin America} and has really pushed questions such as energy efficiency onto the political agenda. Effects of climate change are already being noticed with Peru predicted to be the third most vulnerable country in the world to the impacts of climate change” (RIDES, 2008)
Indeed, in many countries climate change vulnerability and capacity assessments, mitigation and adaptation programmes and associated funding sources are already deep into the policy and investment decisions of the ‘mainstream’. So much so that they themselves need to be subject to environmental tests to ensure that their climate change benefits are not achieved at the cost of other environmental (or indeed poverty reduction) benefits e.g. reduction of biodiversity and local livelihoods in the case that carbon storage projects favour forest plantations over natural woodlands and farming (see section 5.4.4).
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