All roads lead to the World Summit on Sustainable Dev’t

All roads lead to Johannesburg, South Africa for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). On Aug. 26 to Sept. 4, 2002, delegates from all over the world will converge to discuss measures and course of action to preserve the environment.

The Philippine delegation made up of government, legislative and non-government representatives will be led by DENR Secretary Heherson Alvarez, DFA Secretary Blas Ople, NEDA Secretary Dante Canlas, Senators Edgardo Angara, Robert Barbers, Loren Legarda-Leviste, Ralph Recto, Robert Jaworski, and House Representative Augusto Baculio, chairman of the committee on ecology.

The Johannesburg conference is an off-shoot of the Rio de Janeiro WSSD Summit in 1992. Global warming, loss of biodiversity, poverty, the introduction of GMOs and the non-implementation of Agenda 21 are the major issues to be discussed in the summit.

For one, the world-famous 2,000-year-old Banaue Rice Terraces, the 8th Wonder of the World, is now in a real crucial stage, and will soon be declared by the World Heritage Committee in Danger, as a result of a monitoring mission conducted by the joint ICOMOS-IUCN World Heritage Committee last December 2001, according to Antonio M. Claparols, president of Ecological Society of the Philippines (ESP), and regional councilor of International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN).

Claparols, who will also be joining the World Summit hopes to once again lobby for the rehabilitation program of the Banaue rice terraces. The said program has received a major set back with the abolition of the Banaue Rice Terraces Task Force, a management body created for the restoration of this world heritage site which was earlier declared to be in danger. Continuing efforts are being directed for the immediate release of the funds by the Department of Budget and Management before the summit to start rehabilitation work on the communal irrigation system of the terraces.