The country’s top environment official on Wednesday called for stronger cooperation among member-countries of the Asean, which is home to more than 600 million people.
In a statement issued for the ongoing 28th meeting of the Asean Senior Officials of the Environment (Asoen) at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) in Pasay City from July 23 to 29, Secretary Roy A. Cimatu of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) urged member-countries “not to lose sight” of the fact that environmental protection and conservation is “not for their own sake, but for our people to live better lives in harmony with nature”.
The Asoen meeting is in preparation for the high-level Asean Ministers’ Meeting on the Environment to be held in the country in September, as part of the Philippines’s chairmanship and hosting of the Asean Summit this year. The event coincides with the 50th founding anniversary of the regional intergovernmental organization.
“We cannot protect the environment and not protect life. Let us give our children a world better than we found and what we have,” Cimatu said.
The Asean collectively comprise the seventh-largest economy in the world with a combined population of 600 million people, a situation that, according to Cimatu, “exerts considerable challenges in providing clean air, clean water and ecological management of solid waste”.
Cimatu said the 10 countries comprising the Asean now face common problems on air and water quality, ecological management of solid waste, forest degradation, reduced water supply and biodiversity loss, among other environmental issues.
“Like haze and forest fires and illegal trading in wildlife, they do not stop at national borders,” said Cimatu, a former chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
“We share the air that we breathe, the seas around us, our forests, and the animals that travel across our countries,” he stressed.
According to Cimatu, the population pressures also put to test the sustainable use of the region’s rich natural resources.
The region’s environmental problems, which transcend political and territorial boundaries, can best be solved through cooperation, sharing of experiences and expertise, and joint efforts between and among Asean member-states, he said.
Hence, he added Asean is vital in resolving environmental concerns, which have grown in magnitude and complexity over time, to include biodiversity loss, sustainable cities, chemical and waste, water resources, coastal and marine resources, climate change and haze pollution.”
The DENR chief also underscored the need for Asean member countries to work together in coping with climate change, which he described as the “most pervasive of all the environmental problems in the region”.
He cited the environmental group Germanwatch’s Global Long-Term Climate Risk Index that named four Asean members—Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines—as among the 10 countries in the world most affected by extreme weather events from 1995 to 2014.
“This underscores the urgency of the situation we face,” Cimatu said.
Southeast Asia is rich in biodiversity. It is home to 18 percent of all known plant and animal species on Earth that are unique to the region and cannot be found anywhere else. Southeast Asia also boast of almost one-third of the planet’s coral reefs and 35 percent of all mangroves. The region’s forest cover is 48 percent of its land area.