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[ganymede09]

Good day,

I am Filipino living back in the Philippines.  I happento come across the online petition campaign being undertaken by the Reproductive Health Advocacy Network (RHAN) in the country. RHAN is trying to gather signatures to petition Philippine Congress to legislate the Reproductive Health Bill. If you  have not read nor signed it yet and would just like to, you can go to this link:

http://www.petitiononline.com/rhan2008/petition.html

I am not directly connected with RHAN but just a concerned person trying to help them out.  Right now I have been trying to get in touch with as many Pinoy individuals and communities including those abroad who are still citizens and have direct connections or interest with the socio-political events in the country.

What i am most personally concerned about this issue is the potentially compounding impact of the worsening effects of climate change. The Ateneo School of Government in Manila had just put online a paper from a recently held professorial lecture where the potential impacts of this phenomenon were detailed and reading it I realize the serious implications this has on our country specially when our population is (according to experts) set to double in the next several decades.

Studies which really got my attention include projections of PAGASA on sea level rise if it were to go around 1 meter will displace 2 million people in Manila alone.  Climate experts  also expects that a combination of droughts and floods will hit respective parts of the country that could severely affect agriculture.  Even our marine food supply can be affected as scientists have found out that rising sea temperatures can slowly kill off coral reef ecosystems upon which the fish that the millions of our fishermen depend upon. Just imagine the economic and social impacts that could befall our kababayans when this happens.

If you are interested here are the links to the powerpoint presentation and the paper itself:

http://www.observatory.ph/SCJ_doc.pdf

http://www.observatory.ph/SCJ_ppt.pdf

Regarding the climate effects mentioned above, the Philippines as a nation would most likely have little impact as of the moment  to slow down  or even reverse these since measures that are  being implemented or formulated by the international community  will take decades at the least to generate the desired changes. For the meantime,  the country would remain amongst the most vulnerable of countries.  But decelerating our population growth I believe is more within our power to change and would directly and greatly lessen these population vulnerabilities. But sadly measures to do so are not being implemented fast enough,  the Reproductive Health Bill envisions to do this and should be enacted as soon as possible. But as most everyone knows and as you have written yourself,  there are certain sectors in Philippine society who strongly lobbies against the bill.  The bill badly needs its own lobby support and thus I am appealing that everyone who supports the bill to contribute our own efforts.

I believe there are also a lot of Filipino citizens living abroad who are supportive of the bill's agenda but may not be aware of the petition campaign and so it would be most helpful if i may request your kind assistance in passing along the links above to those you may know about through your contacts and networks among your families, friends and colleagues and/or get them to post the same on their respective online sites.   


Thank you very much and more power,


Mel Manalo

[buddhist punk]

Done, and thank you for sharing. I hope that reproductive health education will be taught in schools, especially public schools, so that there will be less teen and unwanted pregnancies. Children giving birth to children is NOT the way to go if we are to survive as a country.

One comment, though. You would be more effective if you posted these two issues separately for clarity. It's quite a stretch to hold these two concepts at one go.

[ganymede09]

Done, and thank you for sharing. I hope that reproductive health education will be taught in schools, especially public schools, so that there will be less teen and unwanted pregnancies. Children giving birth to children is NOT the way to go if we are to survive as a country.

One comment, though. You would be more effective if you posted these two issues separately for clarity. It's quite a stretch to hold these two concepts at one go.

hi thanks for the comment. I realize that the concerns of the population issue (as stated in the pettition) would already warrant supporting it.  What i added is what i think will really be important in the future ahead (next decades). We are about 90 million right now, as population experts project we will be about 150 million in the next 50 years.  By that time, the severe effects of global warming, if not reversed, will be also felt, droughts in Luzon and Mindanao, floods in the Visayas (as mentioned in Ateneo paper i posted with the link). I think its curious the headline news the last few years - el nino in Luzon and the landslide in Leyte , are these already the signs of what is yet to come?).  These phenomena will wreak havoc with our agriculture including rice harvests.

Rising sea waters is also a concern specially when strong typhoons happen. I remember it was just last year when there were reported storm surges in Pangasinan shown on the news, these did not happen before in that area because the pictures showed dozens of concrete houses being washed away (Why would the residents there put permanent structures if the storm surges where a normal event?). Mentioned in Ateneo paper is that if sea level will rise by 1 meter, there will about 2 million people displaced. Where are we going to put all the evacuees?!

My point is that if these worsening effects will be hard to adapt to for the country with 90 million people, what more with 150 million. Even Al Gore when he visited the Philippines said that its population is a serious concern  when it comes to global warming. This is a slow phenomenon which took decades to build up and manifest and so it will also take decades to resolve the problems it is causing.  Its harder for the Philippines to deal with it because it did not create the problem but was caused by the heavy industrialized nations.  For the time being that the international community is dealing with it, our country will be at the mercy of climate change effects and like i said before, wouldnt it be easier for the Philippines to deal with it if its population did not get out of control? 

Thanks anyway for reading the thread (I also hope you read the Ateneo professorial paper through the link i posted) and signing the petition.  Whether you fully agree with what I posted here or not, I hope you pass the petition around to all the filipinos you think will support it. Cheers!

[buddhist punk]

Thank you for clarifying. I understood the connection and appreciate the message. However, because this is an online forum, you are up against short attention span and some people used to prepackaged pap. It's just the nature of the medium. Also, you are up against a counter-argument email doing the rounds. It was unbelievably narrow minded and mean. Unfortunately this is what "sells". I hope your efforst are successful.

[ganymede09]

Thank you for clarifying. I understood the connection and appreciate the message. However, because this is an online forum, you are up against short attention span and some people used to prepackaged pap. It's just the nature of the medium. Also, you are up against a counter-argument email doing the rounds. It was unbelievably narrow minded and mean. Unfortunately this is what "sells". I hope your efforst are successful.

yes there will always be people like that.  but i my main aim to get attention about the petition itself through your forum did get done, and i suppose there were some who were able to sign it (and i hope the thread doesnt get buried too soon so some more can) from here.  So i guess my mission here is somewhat accomplished. 

Thanks for the opportunity, your time, and also your heads-up.

mel

[ProudPinoy]

See?

[buddhist punk]

You have to understand that there is a counter-petition going around in emails, appealing to peoples' Catholic/Christian values to oppose this bill. The email rides on the popular "life is sacred" theme, our population explosion notwithstandng.

I wrote, what I thought, was a scathing response to the opposing signature campaign. I basically said if we do not educate the poorest of our poor through schools and community clinics, if we do not help the poorest of our poor in reproductive health, our runaway population would eventually destroy the thin fabric that is holding our country together (and people here assume I hate our country, hahahahaha!).

I emphasized that most people agree that "life is sacred"; that they are obsessed with the fetus (no abortion!) but when this fetus is born, it's on its own. No one will lift a finger to help support it. Not the church, not the government. Nobody is minding the street children. I said unless priests decide to get "real jobs", raise a family, and go through the rigors of basic survival, then will I want to hear what they have to say about reproductive health. As it stands people are listening to men who have never had to fend for themselves.

I got one reply, he thanked me, but insisted that "life is still sacred" and we are participating in the "slaughter of babies" but hey, no contraceptives or sex education in school! It is un-Catholic! Such a mindless, robotic response!

You have to understand the strategy ganymede is using, yet another "popular" social issue: global warming a.k.a. climate change. Because this issue will actually affect everyone, layman or priest, child or adult, people might actually care enough to think about it. Madali kasing i-ignore ang mga mahihirap at batang kalye, eh. Eto, kapag wala nang natural resources, ayan matatauhan na sila. Thus the connecton, albeit reaching talaga.

[ProudPinoy]

We had this argument in anotha thread.

Hatchets were buried already.Hahaha.

Gagawa nga pala ako ng bagong thread na inspired ng iyong comment dito.