PHILIPPINES: Enforcing Environmental Laws

Commentary

PHILIPPINES: Enforcing Environmental Laws

August 30, 2007 11:38:00 am

Edited by: Bernard Hibbitts | JURIST Staff

Andrew Wood, Pitt Law '08, files from Manila:

The Philippines has a number of laws on the books that are geared towards protecting the environment, but effective enforcement of those laws is another story. This fact is evident in the aquarium fishing industry. The Philippines is one of the world's leading exporters of ornamental fish. Destructive fishing and over-fishing, including the use of cyanide in collecting aquarium fishes poses a significant threat to the marine environment, which is extremely diverse in the Philippines.

For example, the Verde Passage Marine Corridor, located about 2 hours south of Manila, was recently found to contain the richest biodiversity of marine shorefish in the world. The Indo-Malaya-Philippines Archipelago (IMPA) has long been considered the area of highest marine biodiversity in the world. There is a higher concentration of marine species per unit area in the Verde Passage in the Philippines than anywhere else in the IMPA. Hence, the Verde Passage Marine Corridor, home to over 1700 marine species, has recently been dubbed the "center of marine shore fish biodiversity in the world" by a world renowned scientist and expert on marine fishes.

Still, the use of destructive fishing methods such as the use of cyanide and other toxic substances continues and threatens the marine environment. The toxins are spread among the corals, stunning the fish for easy collection. In the process, corals — living organisms in and of themselves — are damaged and killed. The problems posed by cyanide use are widely known, and laws exist that are intended to regulate the situation. For example, Section 88 of the Philippine Fisheries Code addresses cyanide and other noxious chemicals in the same manner as dynamite fishing. The most significant problem, however, is the lack of enforcement of the law.

An ineffective enforcement scheme exists on paper that requires fishermen to stop at a Cyanide Detection Test Center before they sell their fish to an exporter. Enforcement within this scheme requires better equipment as well as an enforcement strategy that continues a multifaceted approach but needs to emphasize regulation at the exporter level if enforcement is to succeed. Improved equipment, which the national government's Cyanide Detection Test Center has proposed they need, would enable cyanide testing in the laboratory to be significantly more effective. Even with adequate equipment, however, fishermen often bypass the legally required stop at the CDT center and go straight to the exporters. While enforcement is encouraged at all levels, the most effective way to remedy and manage these violations is at the exporter level because there are far fewer exporters than there are fishermen. The exporters are required to obtain a cyanide-free certification for every batch of fish they purchase, and if this requirement is enforced at the exporter level the fishermen will necessarily have to follow suit.

In addition to the emphasis placed on enforcement at the exporter level, a multifaceted approach should be continued and the best current model is that provided by the Marine Aquarium Council (MAC), an international NGO with a strong presence in the Philippines and the Verde Island Passage. An approach that integrates the various concerned stakeholders is necessary to achieve a successful legal framework. Identifying the problem — the destruction caused by cyanide — and raising awareness among the stakeholders including the fishermen who use cyanide is a start, but it is not enough. As noted before, most fishermen are aware of the problem. If the law is to act as a deterrent, an effective enforcement strategy is necessary.

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Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.