DENR's Paje: What Can We Expect?

THE NEW ADMINISTRATION of President Benigno S. Aquino III now faces a million challenges for expected meritorious performance and has rightly declared that one of the first things it must do is to conduct a comprehensive inventory of all the problems of the country in all the fields of governance. Envi­ron­ment is one field where the administration cannot afford to go “trial and error” on the state of, and care for, the environment, which is so vital a public concern.
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..........The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has been seen to be a schizophrenic entity that seeks to combine the mandated functions of environ­mental protection and of resources utilization for financial benefit, something like what a veteran environmentalist once described as “protecting the rivers while selling the rivers down the river,” the dilemma being so real that if the DENR’s sought an ECC for its own janus-faced structural priorities it would be rejected for “serious flaws in the design.”
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.......... Surely, as the Kamayan Forum Journal has said many times in the past with a sympathetic headshake, the DENR portfolio in the Cabinet has been “a hardship post.” (read full editorial on this in http://kamayanforum.8m.net/KFJ-editorials-A.htm#9)
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..........Past presidents have consistently favored quick financial gain over environmental conservation, while the citizens, in varying degrees at various times, have found their wisdon and voice to seek efective protection for the environment to sustain their very survival. The new President had run on the platform of genuine change and promises change on past patterns, aside from promising to be the people’s servant and not their “boss,” while the DENR’s innate dilemma remains. Just what level of effectiveness in environment conservation can the people expect? Would President Aquino and his DENR Secretary be able to resist with prudence the strong environmentally-destructive pressures from the proverbial “root of all evil” and offer the same lame excuses to the people whose lives are jeopardized by the earlier established patterns of selling Nature herself down the River? Would the DENR now have a new formula, a new policy framework, for relating environmental protection with the demands of the economic captains of the country and their giant corporate sponsors?
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........Aquino’s choice of acting Secretary Ramon Paje ("acting" until confirmed by the Commission on Appointments of Congress) presents the country with a DENR veteran insider who can spell the difference, in terms of advice and leadership he can give. It depends on his wisdom and will power. What can the people expect from him before he turns over the helm to, presumably, former Rep. Neric Acosta who has already been named to be his successor after just a year?
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........ The organizers of Kamayan para sa Kalikasan monthly environmental forum would like “The Man Himself” to shine light on these questions, the better for expectations to be both realistic and legitimate. We have invited Sec. Paje to be the focal resource person to be on the spotlight during our 245th session on Third Friday, July 16, which will run from 11 a.m. up to 2 p.m, through lunch, at the Kamayan-Saisaki Restaurant along EDSA (near Ortigas Ave.), Mandaluyong City. We have invited a number of reactors to be with him for that session.
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......... The forum runs through three distinct portions: Portion 1, where each resource speaker delivers, straight-to-the-point, the most important points of his/her presentation; Portion 2, where the forum participants are given the chance to briefly express their views and ask their questions; and Portion 3, where the resource persons answer the questions and comments and deliver their brief reiterations and closing remarks and the moderators deliver the synthesis.
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........This may turn out to be a historic, if telltale, session of the 20-year-old monthly environmental forum.