Enviro-Conservation, a Needed Inter-Generational Gift
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Now, we're listening, now we're concerned! Yes, everyone seems to be getting interested, as conscious stakeholders should be, about Environmental Conservation, now that our Mother Earth has been showing symptoms of having fallen terribly ill. And into the Yuletide season, traditionally a gift-giving season, parents are busy looking for gifts to wrap for their beloved children. After all, Christmas is "for children"!
.....But, really now, do our children have reason to be very thankful about the traditional gift-giving that has been centered in the malls and in the poor man's version of them, the market sidewalks in Divisoria? Or haven't we, parents, just limited our concerns to eye-popping toys, that mostly carry toxic parts like toxic plastics, and to delicious food that would induce cholesterol and sugar overloads on Noche Buena?
And what about the days after the holiday festivities? Any concern about the children's health and the state of their environment? About the environment that we have been despoiling for years and decades, it's really theirs, after all. We have only borrowed it from them, our children and our children's children, from the next generations! Any concern about leaving with them a sustainably-livable environment? Or are we thinking of turning the Earth to them many decades still up ahead? They are already inheriting our planetary environment right now. And, as we have said, it's not a very livable one anymore!
....Some may call us "killjoys" or "spoil-sports" for bringing up really serious problems at a time that the yearly calendars have set for "fun-fun-fun." But we have no choice-- we can't continue being irresponsible to the environmental interests of our children and claim to really love our children and, supposedly for them, really be committed to maintaining a purely enjoyable atmosphere throughout this season...and let Planet Earth go hang!
....In this context, the organizers of the 21-year old Kamayan para sa Kalikasan Monthly Environmental Forum have chosen for our "Christmas session" on December 16, the focused topic, the "Environmental Conservation as the Needed Inter-Generational Gift for Our Children." Although each of the usual forum guests has something to say about this matter, we have invited young panel speakers in various situations in life to provide the forum with rich insights for us to ponder and discuss, and, perhaps, to make personal resolutions about. These include Rodne Galicha, Philippine country district manager of The Climate Reality Project (TCRP), a leading green activist in local governance; internet technology expert Ian Reyes; and Kamalaysayan's history teacher in Taguig City, Linda Corro Oliva, who is herself a young mother worried about the despoiled environment her little child would have to grow up in.
....Kamayan para sa Kalikasan has been convened on the third Friday of every month (10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.) through free lunch) since March 1990. It has never missed a scheduled session since it was started then by the Clear Communicators for the Environment (CLEAR). In 2002, CLEAR was joined as co-convenor by the SanibLakas ng mga Aktibong Lingkod ng Inang Kalikasan (SALIKA), headed by Marie Reyes-Marciano, founding president, who has been the forum's lead moderator since that year. It has been fully sponsored all these 21 years by the Kamayan-Saisaki-Dads Restaurant along EDSA, near the SEC/Ortigas area, in Mandaluyong City, which has also been its regular venue.
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