Informing Rizalists about World Environment Day

AT THE Biennial General Assembly of the Order of the Knights of Rizal, held at the Philippine Columbian in Plaza Dilao, Manila, on May 30, 2010, which was also the first day of the full-week run-up to this year’s world-wide commemoration of the United Nations-mandated World Environment Day, June 5, I marched up to the registration table as an ordinary “knight of Rizal” (K.R.) belonging to the city chapter in Calamba, Laguna, the birthplace of the hero, from which I was in a transition process to being the organizer and first chapter commander of the Zambales provincial chapter of this worldwide organization.
.
. Under my arm I clutched dozens of copies of a one-sheet handout that I had planned to distribute at lunchtime, having failed earlier to get a few minutes off the hectic assembly program. That task belonged to me as the secretary-general of the World Environment Day network in the Philippines.
The handout carried on most of its obverse face this reprint of an article published 14 years ago:

Dr. Jose Rizal and the Environment
By Luis Cesar T. Arriola
.
(First Published in Earth Day Everyday, a commemorative magazine April 1996)
.
. Dr. Rizal was born on this month which has long been declared by the United Nations as World Environment Month. As we celebrate his birthday this June 19, 1996 and the Centennial of his Martyrdom this year, one could not help but ponder on the values and teachings of our National Hero about caring for our environment.
.
. Rizal must probably be restless with what had happened on the Laguna Dake and Mt. Makiling which inspired his youth in Calamba. More so, he must be totally distraught on what happened to Pasig river which was the main background of his novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo.
.
. His poems are full of his penchant for the beauty of nature. His “To the Flowers of Heidelberg” was the aftermath of his excursion into the woods of Heidelberg and the town of Wilhelmsfeld where he lives for two months enjoying the smiling spring and the peace of the green valleys. Zero waste (sanitation and hygiene) is something that Rizal was so obsessed with. In his first voyage to Europe, he was so impressed with the unusual cleanliness on board Djemmah of the Messageries Msritimes. When he came back, he had always introduced a program of cleanliness. He initiated this in Dapitan where he was exiled.
.
. We must bring back to mind, therefore, the love of Rizal forNature. If we don’t who would? With havocs like Ormoc and Marinduque, must we suffer more before we take the first step? It starts with us. When Rizal talked about the Youth as the Hope of the Motherland, “ he was directly referring to our parents and us. To a certain extent, we have been remiss in our duties as citizens of our country and the only planet Earth we live in.
.
. How can we now inculcate in the young minds of our children the love of nature when we have to travel miles and miles and spend thousands before we can experience the wonderful feelings that Rizal had just in his immediate milieu. Poems are now written not in admiration of but in desperation over what a wonderful world it would have been – if we had only adhered to Rizal’s love for nature.
.
. Below this article was carried my statement for the occasion, linking this large gathering of Rizalists to the WED:
.
. “The times stare us in the face with a big challenge. Let millions of Filipinos help our siblings the world over embolden their respective tongues to shout the universal assertion of our right to live in healthy environment. Let our Rizalian distaste for equivocations, for even the most erudite of “ifs and buts,” move us to actively and effectively defend our lives and posterity and that of our siblings among this planet’s flora and fauna, entire species now being pushed to extinction in the name of lucrative business and entire varieties of food crops now being castrated by genetic technology to ensure monopolies in the mass production and trading in seeds. Filipi­nos, most of all the honorable Rizalists among us, have an urgent Mission for Humanity, and that is to resist being silenced, much less coopted, by offers of gold or threats of punishment, and instead to shout out loud the Truths that will set us free, the Truths we are ready to die for in the field of Bagumbayan or elsewhere to regain our perdido eden.”
–Prof. Ed Aurelio C. Reyes, KR (Knight of Rizal), May 30, 2010, Biennial General Assembly
.
. The back page carried all important basic information about the “New Seed” project, along with the internet address of a website, http://newseed.8m.net/, that I had earlier created and uploaded to carry all that information to more and more people.