Speech at UNDCC

Speech at the High Level Segment Open Dialog Session

RTD 2: “Desertification/land degradation and climate change—what role for the land in the ongoing negotiations for a new climate change regime at Copenhagen?”

29 September 2009 UNCCD COP9 Buenos Aires

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ABI : A civic right to reclaim the purse

Presented at the workshop “Human Rights and Human Development: Policy Implication and Monitoring” at the University of Pavia organized jointly by the Human Development, Capability and Poverty International Research Center at IUSS, UCODEP and Commune di Arezzo, Italy on 9-10 June 2009.

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Justice to cool the planet

Oddly, the current global recession may be a blessing to the environment and the world, since less growth implies less stress on the environment and emissions need to be slowed down. Here’s a golden opportunity to deliver on social and environmental justice which is a necessary condition for securing our path to sustainability. Developing countries, for instance, must avoid the unsustainable path taken by the industrial ones and shift to clean production and consumption at once. Only a fairer deal will lead to sustainability: a bail-out for the eradication of world poverty, rehabilitation of the environment, stabilization of the climate system is fair and mandatory. This will not be possible, however, until the rich change the way they produce and consume and learn to live within sustainable limits.

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Microfinancing MDGs - Health & Education

PRRM VP Isagani R. Serrano discusses country initiatives in realizing the goals of the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs). He said that Asian developing countries should emphasize the MDG on health and education as these would directly benefit the poorest of the poor.

This was the gist of his speech during the INAFI Asia Conference on Microfinance and the MDGs held March 12-13, 2007 at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), in Bangkok, Thailand.

He said that “while the region as a whole is on course to achieve a large majority of the MDG targets by 2015, none of the region’s developing countries is individually on track to meet at the targets.”

“Considering present trends, many (countries) are likely to miss vital targets, including those for infant mortality, HIV prevalence, and access to water and sanitation,” he added.

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Kuroda’s Dilemma

The ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK (ADB) President Haruhiko Kuroda wants regional integration but the Bank’s big owners would not let him have his way.

Kuroda envisions an Asia-Pacific region much like the European Union and wants the ADB to move in this direction. “Regional cooperation and integration is an idea whose time has come,” Kuroda insisted. “Imagine an Asia-wide economic community, a community of nations where borders are fully open to trade and investment and that offers competitive, complementary markets for the benefit of all its members as well as the rest of the world. If we can envision this, I know we can achieve it.”

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Local Development Plans: Making Good on Social Commitments?

In 2002 Social Watch-Philippines commissioned five teams of local experts to do case studies on the extent to which commitments to social development have been reflected in local development plans in four provinces and one city. The study sites included the four provinces of Nueva Ecija, Camarines Sur, Guimaras, and North Cotabato, and the City of Dumaguete. The commitments referred to here are those pledged to by the Philippine government in the 1995 Copenhagen Social Summit,1 the Geneva 2000 World Summit on Social Development or Copenhagen+5,2 and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of the 2000 Millennium Summit.3.

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Memories of FQS

The revolution has arrived… And indeed the revolution was on everybody’s mind, before everybody’s eyes. Mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and friends sat by the radio throughout that sleepless night, all on edge, thinking of the revolution. That night, an exodus of privilege made ghost towns of exclusive villages in the suburbs…

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The Social Roles of CSOs in the Phils.: Accreditation, Taxation and Advocacy

Activist and development CSOs and people’s organizations, though still in the minority, are at the cutting edge of social change processes as they engage in activities that impact directly on the larger society. They usually band together into larger social coalitions and movements to leverage their influence on public policy and government practice. Their work in educating, organizing, and mobilizing people around the issues of human rights, equality, social and economic justice, and environmental protection have made possible some of the most dramatic events in Philippine history. Their actions do not always seem “civil,” but they are certainly high in civic spirit, motivation, and initiative.

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ASEAN Civil Society Conference on Building a Common Future Together

The Conference bannered the theme “Building a Common Future Together”. The sub-themes were (1) ASEAN Identity and Media; (2) Economy and Trade; (3) Human Dignity; (4) Natural Resources and Environment; and (5) Women, Youth and Indigenous Groups.

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Slowing Down, Coming Together

Slowing down can be the single most effective action to save the world. It’s a very radical way of looking at things, at how to get out of the present mess. Liberals may dismiss slowing down as a refuge of the weak-hearted and conservative, as more precaution than cure. They may be right, but in any case we say to them: it’s payback time. Give it a break. Slow down.

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MDG Five Years After: Issues, Gaps and Challenges

After five years from the Millennium Summit and ten years from the Copenhagen and Beijing summits the Philippines is still struggling to deliver on its social commitments. A generation of less educated, less healthy Filipinos living in a much degraded environment is a very real possibility.

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International Development and Globalization

The paper describes community development in rural Philippines in the context of rapid globalization. Globalization — here defined simply as a process of opening up and linking distant cultures, with both its positive and negative connotations — unleashes its material (economic, political, social) and symbolic (icons, messages) power on rural communities. Though largely unprepared for the consequent changes in their lifeways, these rural communities either disintegrate or develop their own ways of coping and discover effective strategies to fight back and rebuild solidarities, locally and beyond their borders.

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Looking to 2015

Ten years gone by since the Copenhagen and Beijing summits and the Philippines is still struggling to deliver on its social commitments. The government would be compromising long-term sustainability by not investing enough in the development of our human resources. Then our country might wake up to a scenario nobody wants: a generation of malnourished, less educated, less healthy Filipinos, living in insecure environments. Instead of social cohesion we may have a society more divided by 2015.

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A Review of the SNR (Stop the New Round) Case Study

Stop the New Round Coalition-Philippines or SNR was an ‘enterprise’ or a project authored and run by “political entrepreneurs” who knew the WTO stuff well enough and were steeped in spotting, creating and seizing opportunities amid many challenges to achieve a specific objective. the author had made an excellent narrative and examination of this success story of “political enterprise and entrepreneurship”. The lay of the land, as it were, had been solidly established. I’m particularly impressed with the nuanced analysis of outcomes and impact.

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Human (In)Security in the Philippines

The Philippines is somewhat of a puzzle: a democratic society, some say the most democratic in this part of the world, having so much freedom and so much insecurity at the same time. Why is this country in such a mess? What might be obstructing its path to human security?

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MDG 7 Agenda and Strategy: Ensuring Environmental Sustainability

At the 2002 Millennium Summit, the Philippines was among the 189 UN member-countries who committed to the achievement of eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, reckoned from the 1990 baseline. This is about what lines of action Social Watch-Philippines might pursue to help achieve the MDG 7 specific targets.

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World Movement for Democracy – A Citizen’s Movement Promoting Democracy Worldwide

The World Movement for Democracy convened its Third Assembly on February 2004 at the International Convention Center in Durban, South Africa. Around the theme “Building Democracy for Peace, Development, and Human Rights”, gathered over 600 democracy activists, practitioners, and scholars from 125 countries across all regions of the world to discuss practical solutions to a wide range of problems confronting democracy.

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INTERNET: Closing or Widening the Divide?

The arrival of the so-called information society—and with its recent ‘leap of faith’ in the Internet revolution—has brought about great strides in wealth creation, in linking distant cultures. The IT revolution has caused time and space to shrink, and borders to disappear. In other words, the technology has made the world far richer and much smaller. Yet, despite (or perhaps because of) such unprecedented technological advances we see widening inequalities between and within nations and societies alongside vast improvements in human condition overall. Now the disparities express in a new dimension—in the so-called Internet divide.

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Rural Development and Poverty Eradication

Poverty eradication cannot fully succeed without people empowerment. But helping the poor to help themselves get out of poverty is not easy. To think that they can assume greater responsibility to build a sustainable society is even harder to imagine for many who are used to relying on the rich and powerful to lead their country to progress.

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Joburg Summit

The Joburg Summit was a follow-up to the 2000 Millennium Summit, incorporating the March 2002 Monterrey Conference (financing for development/poverty) and Doha Development Agenda of the 2001 WTO Ministerial Meeting (especially trade access for poor countries). Each new one builds on the previous others. Did Joburg?

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BALI NO COMMITMENT Rio +10 Prepcom 4

The Bali Prepcom of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), a.k.a. Rio+10 or Johannesburg Summit agenda was expected to finish negotiations on the main outcome document, frame and flesh out the elements of the Joburg Declaration, and talk about partnerships and initiatives for sustainable development..

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Rio +10 PrepCom 3 Report

What to make of Prepcom 3? What it hoped to achieve? Why are things not working as intended and planned? An easy explanation is most intentions produce consequences not intentioned. And that most plans are often proven wrong anyway. Fairness is once again on the negotiating table in the Rio+10 process. It shows in section after section of the outcome documents of the Johannesburg Summit. And yet, from the way negotiations are going, you would readily sense that the process would be as difficult, if not harder, now as ten years ago in Rio.

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Global Campaigns and Advocacy PRRM 1986-2002

PRRM’s global presence or international cooperation work, as we know it today, was almost non-existent prior to 1986. Where we are at 16 years after?

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SIGN3 – ASIA Regional Survey Philippine Report

It won’t be easy to overcome these barriers. If there’s not enough social capital to begin with then the promotion of SI and the SIGN3- Asia as vehicle for such an agenda can best be done through investing in more dialogs about the project. Rebuilding mutual trust between and among sectors, e.g., business and labor, government and NGOs, or even only among NGOs themselves, is a formidable task for any group wishing to take up the challenge.

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Civil Society in the Philippines: Struggling for Sustainability

Learning to live and work together is a huge challenge in the new millennium which CSOs in the Philippines have been struggling to grapple with in their own context. There are just so many issues to handle before government, corporations, CSOs and plain citizens can work together to put things right. Most basic, they must first recognize what keep them apart even as they build on those things that bind them in common.

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Scenarios of Sustainability

Why think scenarios? Scenarios are a range of possibilities that can lead to one or other alternative future. Strictly speaking, they are not predictions of the future.

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Dialog on Rio+ 10

Sustainability is everyone’s concern and it’s everyone’s business to make sure it happens across diverse conditions at all levels, from local to global. A sustainable world is a desired common future we dream and try to build together. To let things be could mean we all go bust. We have come to a defining moment in human history, as the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio describes our time.

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The Philippines: Ten years from RIO

The Philippines had already translated the concept of sustainable development into strategy, as early as 1989, when the idea of a Rio Summit had barely entered the pipeline of UN resolutions. The country was one of the first to do a debt-for-nature swap. And much earlier on played a significant role in the predecessor conference in the 1992 Earth Summit and UN conference on Human environment that triggered a good number of environmental legislations during the martial law years.

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DEGLOBALIZATION: Fast Backward to the Future

We belong to this bunch of idealists and activist-reformers in great hurry. We are in such a hurry to stop and reverse negative globalization. In a sense, we are one driving factor for a creative disintegration of the present system. It might be that we are for the creation of smaller worlds—small defensible spaces where everyone will have a better chance to participate and exercise self-determination—and for building one-world on this foundation. From each other we can learn how best to live together, to come together before the wrecking ball succeeds in tearing our world apart.

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Cross Sectoral Collaboration for sustainable change

This paper is not about listing the stories out there – a difficult job in itself. Rather, it is about what judgements can be made about what practices of cross-sectoral collaboration indeed promote sustainable change-a task no less daunting. The focus is on what make or break such kind of collaboration.

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Environment and Poverty: Interconnections and Trade-Offs

This paper seeks to examine the complex interplay of environment and poverty in the context of Asia-Pacific development, past and future. In teasing out such interplay the paper also seeks to avoid a common pitfall: blaming the poor for environmental decay or demonizing affluence as the root cause while absolving the poor of any responsibility. As well, the paper will try to help identify possible approaches to better integrate efforts at the national and international level to address the twin challenges of poverty reduction and environmental protection.

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New RD Strategy of the World Bank. A Brief Reaction Paper

Why is it so easy to sink in money to further widen an already wide hi-way? Why is it so hard to spend for barrio roads, communal irrigation systems, post-harvest facilities, potable water, a rural clinic, a barrio school? Why must a highland dweller be made to pay for the amenities and convenience of the big city inhabitants?

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Globalization and Poverty Eradication in Asia and Pacific

Around Asia and the Pacific, especially after the 1997 crisis, worries about globalization are growing. The questions are many but one that’s uppermost in the mind of many NGO and social activists is whether poverty eradication efforts would be better off with more than less regulation in the flow of goods and services. The computer aided volatile money—the so-called hot economy—seems to be the number one pet-peeve. But questions are unsparing, implicating even the real economy of raising GM-cows and eating McDonald hamburgers.

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Crisis as Education

The quality of governance cannot rise much higher than the existing level of political culture and practice of the governed. In this sense we deserve the kind of government we get. If we’re not getting the right kind that means we still need to exert more to deserve one.

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NGO Networks and Coalitions: A View from the Philippines

NGOs are voluntary non-state organizations interfacing with the UN system and functioning like a reference or sounding board. Networks and coalitions are formal or informal arrangements by which NGOs work together around a common goal. The sheer number of NGOs in the Philippines is about 60,000 by the end of the 20th century.

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Sustainability after the Bases

The perspective and experiences of PRRM in promoting sustainable development after removal of US bases in 1991.

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Building Inclusive and Sustainable Societies: A PRRM Perspective

Forty eight years down the road, PRRM has been doing just that—helping the poor to develop themselves in their chosen ways and become important actors in building inclusive rural societies.

…But building inclusive societies and realizing sustainable development in a rapidly globalizing world is a far more complex story. The PRRM story is but one small episode in a complex web of strivings to find clues and learn the ways out of social exclusion and unsustainability.

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Social Inclusion and Sustainable Development: A PRRM Perspective

Neither democracy nor development is inclusive enough to have a space for every poor rural village in the Philippines. But democracy and development for all is attainable and worth striving for. It is not an impossible vision.

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Social Development in the ESCAP Region: An Overview of Concerns & Initiatives

The universal concern for eradicating poverty, for achieving full employment and for creating participatory and inclusive societies by all means has to find its match in action. The goals are feasible and the world, but especially the ESCAP region, has the means though not the desired political will as yet to realize them.

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Response to the Millenium Message of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan

The Millennium Message talks of UN-private corporate partnership which is welcome. A partnership between the UN and peoples organizations on a higher level than what exists and not bound by member-state regulations is equally appropriate. It can fill in the missing element in the evolving system of global governance. The Millennium Message deserves the support of every man, woman and child everywhere.

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Eradicating Poverty

Helping the poor to help themselves get out of poverty is not easy. That they can assume greater responsibility to build a sustainable society is even harder to imagine for many who are used to relying on the rich and powerful to lead their country to progress.

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Hanging on Dental Floss?

How come I’m not with the anti-Erap camp? How come I’m not with the EDSA or Makati crowd? How come I’m not at Mendiola with the Erap partisans either? Where am I exactly?

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Learning Disorderly Orderly

Much has been said about the unsustainability of the present, and equally about the pathways to sustainability. Add to this what’s most important for us popular educators—the recognition that learning our way out needs education for sustainability. And yet, still more questions. What about this kind of education? Progressive education, whether of the capitalist or socialist kind, has fed and driven modern life. Will life be better if education turns conservative? Can conservative education help solve the equity and sustainability deficits of the exiting millennium? Is it the same as education for sustainability? How shall we define education for sustainability? What does it feel like? Do we know enough about existing practices to tell how it looks like?

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CIVIL SOCIETY AND DEVELOPMENT: A Philippine Profile

The Philippines offers a rich contextual backdrop for deliberating on important regional and global issues related to civil society and development. Emerging trends in the Asia and the Pacific, as they are driven by internal and external factors, may be read from what changes are happening in the Philippine economy, society and politics.

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A “Y” Building Civil Society

I believe education is key, if not the most critical. But it should not be just any kind of education since education has always been part of the problem as well as part of the solution. What we need is a different kind of education that results in greater equality and justice, in an inclusive civil society, in shifts of thought and action toward a more sustainable society.

Dr. Yen is a “Y” beyond compare, so to say. He has left us a legacy of education for citizenship — in the shape of a mass movement — as the foundation of any civil society.

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With CARP, What More Can We Do, How Far Can We Go?

It may be argued that we cannot put a price tag on agrarian justice. The dignity that comes with ownership and deciding the use and mode of running of one’s own farm cannot be valued in material terms. So, would it have been better if all previous DAR budgets were put in one basket instead of sinking most of it in program beneficiaries’ development (PBD) which never led to any significant landlord buy-out anyway, as some preliminary studies and anecdotal accounts would suggest.

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“Rocky Road to Inclusion”: Farmers Associations in the Philippines

Farmers’ associations are at the forefront of this struggle. These organizations have evolved over the years against the backdrop of social injustice and exclusion. They are the voice of grassroots participation in the countryside. They are the forces driving land reform movements throughout our history. They are the silent heroes who continue to make agriculture a solid base of the whole Philippine economy.

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CSOs Matter to MDBs. Looking into CSOs’ Impact on Governance in the WB & the ADB

Civil Society Organizations (CSOS) do impact on the running of the multilateral development banks (MDBs). To what extent and how will be the core of this case presentation, focusing specifically on the World Bank (WB) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

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COMING APART, COMING TOGETHER Globalization and Civil Society

Much attention is now focused on the civics—here simply defined as citizens and civil society organizations of high civic mindedness and civic initiative—for the kind of leadership role they have been playing and can continue to play in building a more civic world in the midst of high-speed globalization. The civics are everywhere—in state, corporate and social organizations—trying their best to secure and promote the common good under enormous pressures coming from all directions.

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Dealing with Normative Conflicts

Conflict situations are usually many-sided. Therefore their resolution will require an integrated strategic framework. A sound framework enables participating parties to acquire a profound appreciation of the roots as well as manifestations and consequences of conflicts. It provides everyone a clear perspective, direction and hierarchy of priorities even if efforts are simply focused on immediately actionable points.

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Tubig Para Sa Baryo

What could be more basic than water? Ninoy survived a 40-day fast without food, but not without water. Recently an Indian yogi was reported to have lasted more than 100 days taking in nothing solid. He’s still alive because of water.

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A Break for the Poor at Last

No nation grows out of its poverty situation without growth in the real economy. Enlarging the economic pie should match the needs of the present generation and the immediate next. We must emphasize real economy because glowing GNP statistics contain a lot of bubbles. Bubbles are bound to burst sooner or later, as shown in the recent Asian crisis.

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ADB in the Asian Crisis

What has the ADB got to do with the crisis? Can ADB be part of the solution? What is the relevance of our ADB lobby work to the search for solution to the Asian crisis? What do we want and can really do as a lobby group? How should we do it? These are some of the questions and there may be more the group might want to take up.

Continuing Education for the Environment

It has been said that environment is where we live and development is what we do to make our life and living environment better. Education serves no other purpose than to acquire knowledge, skills, attitudes and values for the benefit of the common good that has been sacrificed at the altar of growth for much too long. In a sense, this is but the old humanism in a new context, that of survival and security of humanity itself.

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The Promise of Habitat

Land is a centerpiece theme of Habitat. A place under the sun, so to speak, is the most fundamental condition on which the Habitat Agenda is built. Because habitat is about a real community of place, land therefore is viewed in terms of all its uses — as space for human settlement, production, infrastructure or built-up, and environmental protection.

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Reflections on Our ADB Lobby

A consensus judgment will not come easy, even among like-minded activists and lobbyists. The difficulty lies in part to ideological reasons, as in the case of a radical perspective clashing with a less radical one. Another problem has to do with information. How much do we really know about the Bank’s projects to be able to ascertain their costs and benefits and final effects?

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What’s SDK Got To Do With It?

The power of education to raise consciousness and commitment never ceases to fascinate me. It was a right choice for SDK to put a high value to it. But what about this education? How does it account for what happened to Jun Tera who was our teacher and to Tonyhil who was once his pupil? How is it to explain the phenomenon of “demonization” that has dogged Marxist revolutions from Lenin’s time to the present? What did we teach ourselves and others that led to actions whose results were hard to live down? Were we interested more in received truths and answers than questions?

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Development is Good Politics

Here I take development to mean simply as a continuous process of improving the quality of peoples’ lives. Development is what we do to live a longer and healthier life, enjoy greater freedom of choices through education, access to justice, to rights and entitlements due every citizen, and to make optimum contribution to the common good. Development also means finding solutions to the outstanding issues of poverty and inequity, governance and people’s participation, and sustainability of the process itself with respect to its environmental impact.

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Re-Imagining Civil Society

Is there more to the current discourse on civil society than just fascination with the trendy? Since the 1980s, perhaps even earlier, people’s participation, people empowerment, NGOs and social movements, and the catch-all concept of sustainable development have been fashionable themes. Is civil society one more baloney in the shelf? What gives this notion its current forceful appeal? How relevant is it to the construction of the 21st century society?

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Coming Home

My desire to return to our farm sounds utopian. In a sense, it is. Nobody in my family would take me seriously – they know that I always avoided the most difficult tasks on the farm. Besides, my hometown is not exactly paradise. It’s like any other place that has been touched by civilization and its legacy of poverty and pollution.

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NGOs and Politics

It is not uncommon to hear comments like “NGOs and politics should never mix.” The suggestion being made is, NGOs should confine themselves to development and must leave the business of politics to politicians.

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GO-NGO Cooperation in Project Planning and Management

Development is an all-important question to be left to government alone. But it would be equally wrong for the NGO community to think it can take on sole responsibility for it simply because government is increasingly proving to be a failure. The two sectors have to find effective ways of working together to realize the vision of sustainable development.

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A Scale of Sustainability

A Biodistrict framework within which to operationalize an alternative development agenda. A critical mass of self-governing communities pushing this agenda. An aggressive policy advocacy that results at least in government’s tolerance for alternatives and actual commitment of the needed public resources, if not in fundamental policy and strategy shift. This may just be one answer to what seems to be an unending search for sustainability. But why a district scale?

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Developing a Fourth Generation NGO Strategy

Where do NGOs go from here? Adopting in common the third generation strategy can contribute to realizing the calls of democratization and empowerment. But this will not be enough. The nature of the development crisis demands a comprehensive system change, which means doing away with the structural obstacles that in the first place caused the failure of official development strategy.

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Theory and Practice of Rural Reconstruction in the Philippines

Rural Reconstruction in the Philippines is a classic story of a movement. Its embodiment, the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement (PRRM), speaks of a tradition that dies hard.

The PRRM story began where a nearly successful peasant rebellion ended. Its vision was to change the face of the Philippine countryside, to liberate the peasants from ignorance, poverty, powerlessness and disease. Such was a mission that would have denied the Filipino peasant every reason to revolt again.

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About Fairness

The concept of sustainable development from when it first popped up as a catch-all theme in the 1987 Brundtland Report has been at bottom about fairness. It’s about fairness between and within nations and societies and fairness to our environment now severely threatened by human action. This was the idea at the core of the 1992 Earth summit, it remains the unfulfilled dream ten years after.

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Civil Society in the Philippines: Struggling for Sustainability

Learning to live and work together is a huge challenge in the new millennium which CSOs in the Philippines have been struggling to grapple with in their own context. There are just so many issues to handle before government, corporations, CSOs and plain citizens can work together to put things right. Most basic, they must first recognize what keep them apart even as they build on those things that bind them in common.

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Ensuring Environmental Sustainability

Goal 7 of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is about ensuring environmental sustainability. The following targets are: to integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs; reverse loss of environmental resources; reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water, and achieve significant improvement in the lives of slum dwellers.

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My Bohol Experience

Bohol must preserve its environment if only to reduce its vulnerability to climate change. The flood tragedy in Jagna should be a wake up call. The Bohol MDG project should and can be a model for the rest of the country.

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