June is Environment Month.
Ideally, this month should be spent celebrating the gains from previous activities aimed at protecting the environment.
However, we are instead discovering more bleak information about the status of our environment, particularly our marine resources.
One can go to the internationally-renowned Apo Island to learn that its biggest natural attraction, the marine sanctuary, has been damaged from the rains brought by Tropical Storm Sendong last December.
Tourists hoping to see the unspoiled coral reef at the sanctuary are instead referred to other diving spots in the island, and the sea turtles who frequent the “Chapel” drop-off west of the island.
In other parts of the world, the situation is also not very promising. An Australian scientist and environmentalist, Dr. Terry Hughes, reported there has been a great amount of degradation of coral reefs, especially in the famous Great Barrier Reef in Australia.
The loss is primarily attributed to the acute mortality events from crown-of-thorns starfish, coral bleaching, and strong catastrophes, said Hughes, director of the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies of James Cook University in Australia.
In 2008, 19 percent of coral reefs in the world were categorized as “lost” or are unlikely to recover from deterioration, said Dr. Hughes, citing the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network report.
Hughes said that 15 percent were “critical” or were found to have 50 percent of coral loss, 20 percent were “under threat” or with 25 to 50 percent coral loss and 46 percent were “low risk.”
Yes, we may be confronted by a lot of bad news about the environment. But that should not stop us from doing something to help it recover. After all, as most of the damage sustained by the environment is man-made, the key to repairing the damage also lies with man.
We should continually ensure that our seas are clean. This does not just mean that we continually clean up our oceans and refrain from destructive fishing methods.
We can have clean seas by ensuring that we manage our waste disposal systems on land, be they liquid of solid waste.
We can also ensure our forests are healthy so that the soil from the mountains will not be washed down to the sea after a storm.
After all, whether on land, sea or air, everything is interconnected. And we, humans, are but only a small part of the environment that we destroy.
