Almost a thousand Filipino youth across 13 cities in the country took to the streets their demands for climate justice as part of the global movement of climate youth strikes.
The youth called on the newly-elected leaders for: phasing out of coal and fossil fuel; just transition to 100 percent renewable energy; strengthening the Indigenous People’s Rights Act of 1997 (RA 8371); Appropriate legislation & funding for climate research and development; strengthening of the Climate Change Adaptation Disaster Risk-Reducation & Management Policy; and fast-tracking the Sustainable Transportation Act of 2017.
Kabataan Partylist Rep. Sarah Elago had filed HR 2565 urging Congress to signify its full commitment in support of the Youth Strike for Climate movement.
“As the hope of our nation and the inheritor of our tomorrow, the protection and defense of our environment are in our hands. We need to act; we must unite now,” the youngest member of the 17th Congress said.
“The survival of the next generation which we are a part of is non-negotiable. We are taking these concerns to the streets because we want people, especially the government, to recognize that climate change is one of the biggest problems that we are facing now which we need to act on,” said Jefferson Estela, Manila lead convener.
Estela is part of the Youth Strike for Climate PH, main organizer of the local climate strikes, which is a coalition of youth-led environment organizations, initiatives, and movements in the country.
While critics slam rallies as “added noise to the streets,” various environmental coalitions prove that occupying public space is just one of the tools to move public policy.
One such is 350.org, an international environmental non-profit which organized the East Asia School Strike Organizers Camp prior to the local youth strike.
The camp aimed to empower and train school strike organizers on climate justice and non-violent direct action.
Beatrice Tulagan, East Asia field organizer, said it is crucial for environmental organizations to support and empower local activists so they can serve as a new generation of front-liners.
“From the beginning, we’re really focused on building a grassroots climate movement to sustain new advocates’ interests and engagement with climate change issues,” she said.
During the training, the school strike organizers who became the lead conveners in their respective cities were trained to articulate their agenda and demands and properly lobby to formal channels.
Former DENR Undersecretary Tony La Viña said that rallies are effective as long as the demands are clear.
“The demands must be specific. The protester must ask for a policy change, a decision government must make, or a behavior a private company must change. Otherwise, it is just noise,” the former dean of the Ateneo School of Government said in an interview.
Although springing from the global movement initiated by Greta Thunberg, the youth strikes here in the Philippines “grew organically” because of connections made in environmental conferences and seminars, organizers said.
Race against time
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its landmark report last year warned that we have 12 years to cut carbon emissions before the effects of climate change will be irreversible.
Threatened ecosystems, extreme weather events, climate-caused poverty, and unprecedented sea-level rises that would affect 10 million people by 2100 are the most glaring issues stated in the report.
According to the report, rapid and far-reaching transitions in land use practices and energy and transport systems would be needed to help keep global temperatures within 1.5 celsius, which can only be achieved with comprehensive environmental policies.
An an archipelago of more than 7,600 islands, the Philippines is reported to bear the brunt of this human-induced impending catastrophe as it poses to be the third most climate change-vulnerable country in the world, following India and Pakistan. (Val Amiel Vestil/Association of Young Environmental Journalists)
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});