In this issue of Community & Habitat, coming out IN time for the 56th anniversary of PRRM, we focus on the theme of climate change. Here we try to understand what it means, not so much its science and math but more about its impact on our lives. We stress climate justice, we look at how people are adapting. We also tell stories about how some PRRM communities are dealing with the problem. Climate change shows itself in many of our present troubles, now starkly in rising food and oil prices. When in crisis situation like we’ve never seen before, oil and food are a deadly combination. Agriculture and fisheries, and all their associated activities, run on oil. Why are we in this situation? Maybe it’s peak oil, maybe the earth can no longer feed so many people.

Where is this leading to and how is it going to end? Who knows. You might say we’ve been through crisis after crisis before, there’s no reason why we can’t ride this one. Let’s hope it’s not a sign that global warming has crossed the limits. Beauty, like ugliness, is in the eye of the beholder. In this crisis I see both. Maybe the high prices of oil and food are just right because they somehow reflect the true costs of production and consumption. Thanks to this crisis, people are forced to go on oil and food diet. When they do our health and environment would be all the better for it. The crisis is a test of our good sense and resilience.

Problem is, the oil and food prices are soaring not because they account for the full costs of resource depletion and environmental pollution and the needed rehabilitation. The increases may be due mainly to monopoly and greed. Only a few—the big oil and food companies—are making money while the rest of us suffer. Food security or energy security means having the money to buy. In a sense, there’s no crisis for the rich, there’s crisis only for the poor. What if money’s not the issue, would there still be enough oil and food? Is there enough for the world’s 6.6 billion, for the Philippines’ 90 million? Maybe, maybe not. There’s enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed, so said Gandhi. In communities that are used to sharing, if there’s enough food for two there’s food for three. The crisis makes good counsel, telling us that it’s about time we consumed less, adopted clean and green production, and slowed down. It makes compelling reason for a shift to soft energy paths and sustainable food production. Renewable energy should get increasing share in the energy mix. It’s about time we shifted from high-carbon to low-carbon agriculture. Agriculture contributes significantly to climate change. Reducing or abstaining from use of fossil-based, high energy inputs will instantly reduce agriculture’s CO₂ emissions, in addition to easing our heavy oil import bill.

If only we could shorten the food mile, which means growing food as close as possible to where it’s consumed. This way we reduce our food’s carbon footprint as we become more secure in food. It’s crazy that corn has to leave our farm gate and made to circle the world and return to us as corn chips. Wherever we are—in the city or countryside—we can help grow food. A tiny plot can supply a family with enough veggies. In Singapore part of the demand for vegetable could be met through rooftop gardening. We have to change our eating habits, too. It’s not only about rice. A full healthy meal can be had with just a fistful of unpolished organic rice, camote, gabi, corn, or coconut, veggies, fish, meat, fruits. Sustainable farming and ecological waste management go hand in hand. Dumpsites can be closed immediately and biodegradables can be turned into organic fertilizers and distributed to farmers to augment the composting they themselves do in their own farms. Together with watershed management and other climate change adaptation measures, ecological farming can help ensure the future of Philippine agriculture. Appropriate systems and practices are already in place, ranging from low external input to full organic. An example is the system of rice intensification (SRI), a rice farming cultural practice that involves early transplanting, wide spacing and single plant a hill, intermittent irrigation and therefore less water use, three or four times weeding in a cropping cycle, use of organic compost. Small farmers are breeding their own seeds, making their own organic fertilizers from materials available within the farm and neighborhood. They are managing communal irrigation systems and watershed areas. They educate each another on how best to promote, plan and practice sustainable agriculture and rural development. In Thailand small farmers bring their produce directly to market centers and negotiate a fair price. If only Filipino farmers can get all the basic support from government—farmer schools, barrio roads, irrigation, hand tractors, shredders, composters, dryers, silos, market centers, credit & insurance for crop failure—there is no reason why our agriculture could not become sustainable. Consumers can help. They can buy only organics, pay a premium for soil and water regeneration and watershed protection, lend a hand in promoting ecological farming in government, schools and media. They can help elevate farming as an equal of other professions.

Coastal fishers have been striving to make fishing sustainable. But theirs is an even worse tragedy, a tragedy that usually befalls commons. Just 10% of the world’s oceans, the coastal zones are the seat of biological diversity and source of nearly all the fish catch. These zones are now heavily polluted with sediment, sewage, and human and industrial wastes. The tragedy expresses in various ways. You see it in rising ocean temperatures, in the collapse of major fishing grounds, degradation of mangroves and coral reefs, ‘fishless’ oceans, malfunctioning estuaries and coastals, fish price inflation, no fish diet. This is the legacy of 200 years of industrial fishing, of fishing going global, of advances in technology from trawl to sonar to satellite, of a hunter mindset that respects no boundaries and thinks that fish will always be there for the taking. Fisheries development is basically oriented to growing the economy. Send the big boats out to sea and you’ll get a higher GDP. Fisheries as usual is technology-dependent and capital-intensive, and biased toward the rich and so-called national interest. Small fishers and their communities are among the poorest although their habitat is rich in gifts and their labor enriches the nation. Basic services like education, health, water and sanitation have not worked for them. Yes, it’s a tragedy of the commons, a tragedy for all of us. But while we all suffer, the poor among us suffer more. We may all be responsible, but some should answer for more. Surely, we’re not equally responsible for what happened and continues to happen to our fisheries.

Oceans are warming and failing in their function as stabilizer of the global climate system. They can no longer capture carbon emissions and dissolve wastes as well as they used to do. They could only take so much shit, as it were, and beyond a certain limit their ecological functions start to malfunction. With mangroves and corals gone, not only are fishes rendered homeless, nothing more stands between a coastal community and the raging tsunami. We can look forward to a future where most of the big boats are grounded and destructive fishing is no more. Coastal zones are reserved for exclusive use of small fishers, coasts are cleaned up, rivers and forests are restored, and waste dumping in water bodies is no more. Suppose there’s room still for ecological aquaculture. More, let’s say 20% of oceans were already secured as global marine protected areas and the UN and other intergovernmental organizations are able to manage them well. We may not be able to do all that before climate change reaches the so-called tipping point. Whatever, we owe it to ourselves to do something like this now, not a day later.