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PRESS RELEASE
September 23, 2021
Environmental activist group Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment (Kalikasan PNE) joins the Global Climate Strike today to urge the government to implement an emergency moratorium on large-scale reclamation, mining, and dam construction projects nationwide.
“More than 66 million Filipinos living on our coasts will suffer catastrophic impacts from both coastal risks such as reclamation and upland watershed risks such as big mines and dams. The Duterte government must impose an emergency moratorium on these projects now or else be known as the presidency that condemned its entire nation to drown,” said Leon Dulce, National Coordinator of Kalikasan PNE
Dulce referred to the flagship projects under the Duterte administration that demonstrated various dangerous risks and actual impacts, including the Aerocity reclamation, which was awarded an Environmental Compliance Certificate despite opposition from scientists and other stakeholders, and the Kaliwa Dam, which was flagged with anomalies in its Free, Prior and Informed Consent and Commission on Audit findings.
“If President Rodrigo Duterte still pursues these projects, he sets a dangerous precedent of allowing the destruction of our vital ecosystems and displacement of the most climate vulnerable communities. The risks that come with these projects are not worth the so-called benefits, which only benefit the project proponents,” Dulce added.
The environment group said that the damages made by the Duterte administration with its projects need to be reversed by the next administration.
“We cannot expect another Duterte presidency to resolve our climate crisis after the chief executive lifted the mining moratorium and allowed the renewal of operations of Oceanagold, whose operations had depleted the water supply in Didipio in Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya,” Dulce said.
“We need a new leadership in government that will pass an emergency just and green recovery plan that will impose a moratorium on destructive projects and pour green stimulus in climate-adaptive livelihoods, biodiversity protection, decarbonization, and pollution control,” he added.
“It’s time for people-powered climate action to take back the government from this current dispensation of polluters and plunderers,” Dulce ended. ###
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