Groups seek green leaders in May 2010 polls

MANILA, Philippines – More than 200 strong environmental advocates, led by Alyansa Tigil Mina (ATM), danced their way to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to raise public awareness to vote for candidates that will advance green agenda in the country on Thursday.

“Celebrating Earth Day remind us of Mother Earth’s centuries-old generosity providing humanity the resources we need to survive in this planet. Reality is, we have used our resources beyond our basic needs with our hunger for personal ‘wants’ and development,” said ATM national coordinator Jaybee Garganera.

“The health of our environment is already in critical condition primarily because of a misguided development system, which continuously exhaust our resources beyond its capacity to regenerate or replenish, relentlessly polluted our air, water and land and disturbed our climate due to excessive emissions,” added Garganera.

“We call on a system change not climate change! We need to change the current misguided development system that exacerbates climate change. In particular, the aggressive promotion of extractive and fossil-fuel based economy such as logging, mining and coal-fired power squander what is left of our finite resources,” exclaimed Garganera.  “We are calling for the scrapping of the Philippine Mining Act of 1995, the passage of an alterative law on mineral management and a moratorium on large-scale mining operations”, he added.

“We [ATM] call on the Filipino people to be meticulous about choosing our future leaders in the May 2010 election. We urge each voter to look into the platforms of the candidates especially with regards to their environmental and development agenda for our country,” exclaimed Garganera.

“We seek green leaders that posses strong political will to change the system of thoughtless fast-tracked issuance of business permits to the extractive industries and poor regulation of these industries. We want robust leadership that will hold environmental criminals accountable and implement stricter measures on environmental safeguards,” concluded Garganera.

ATM’s call for system change not climate change express its global solidarity action parallel to the ‘World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth’ happening in Cochabamba, Bolivia as a response to the failed COP 15 in Copenhagen held in December last year.

ATM is an advocacy group on environmental and human rights issues and people’s movement composed of more than eighty (80) organizations from mining-affected communities and civil society organizations nationwide. It is convened by HARIBON, Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center – Friends of the Earth Philippines (LRC/FOEI) and Philippine Partnership for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Areas (PhilDHRRA). (30)
 

For more information:
Jaybee Garganera, ATM Coordinator, (0915) 315.37.19 /
Roslyn Arayata, ATM Policy Research and Advocacy Officer (0917) 521.7937