The globalization of environmental competence
From the pen of leading business and financial analyst Dean de la Paz, a great take on recent events and the potential of the Philippines to take a sustainable energy-driven pathway because of new leadership. Read on...
The globalization of environmental competence
by Dean de la Paz / Through the Looking Glass
BusinessMirror, 08 July 2010
It started out with our leadership in geothermal technologies where Philippine steam fields, their development as critical sources of inexpensive energy and their competent operation and management are prominently world-class. Where we lag in other 21st-century technologies, in this sector of environmental engineering, the Philippines establishes the bar others strive to equal.
There is a misconception that energy development endangers the environment, agriculture and forestry, each critical in an economy such as ours. The same is echoed for the transport sector that depends on carbon-burning energy. Fortunately, the misconceptions are untrue.
As undeniable counterarguments, the records set by the Philippine National Oil Co.-Energy Development Corp. (PNOC-EDC) debunk such where its business model extends from the corporate to rural and communal levels. A 100-percent privatized corporation with over 30 years of proven viability, the company pioneered in social forestry, where forest-dwellers are empowered to preserve critical watersheds that constantly charge and recharge geothermal steam fields.
In a discussion I had with PNOC-EDC chief executive officer Paul A. Aquino, he emphasized that the company’s distinctive competences were founded on its engineers and professionals who, despite a perennial shortage of funds, heroically established our prominence on the global stage of environmental expertise.
We, however, note that the uniquely Filipino symbiotic coupling among corporations and the community it serves is not confined to such grand and capital-intensive endeavors. While PNOC-EDC’s return on assets is 4.4 percent, nearly quadrupled from when it had been a government enterprise, financial and social returns can even be greater where alternative grassroots and smaller business projects are viable and sustainable.
In this, the correct path is ironically exemplified by the country’s most urbanized community and quite recently by policy pronouncements by Vice President Jejomar Binay.
The global community witnessed two eloquent and impressive examples of the kind of environmental leadership the Philippines can provide. Virtually globalizing our environmental initiatives, before two critical audiences Binay has virtually taken us to the world stage and there proudly displayed what we can achieve.
The first is a festive statement for sustainable and environment-friendly transport. The “B-Jeep” Binay proudly rode at the presidential inaugural, with its mobile murals designed by celebrated artist Abdulmari “Toym” Imao Jr. takes the cliché jeepney, a product of Filipino ingenuity, to the 21st century, where Filipino folk culture, art, ingenuity and environmentalism combine in an initiative both exportable and itself an eloquent icon of what Filipinos represent.
That Binay is himself iconic of modern local-government competence is not lost in the profound message of the B-Jeep. Pioneered in the Philippines’ foremost global business center, the vehicle is being adopted by various local communities nationwide, thus spreading the governance initiatives nurtured in Makati and transplanting Makati’s modernity across the islands following an appropriately branded enterprise entitled “Biyaheng Filipinas”.
Reiterating his theme of people being the center of economic progress, in a more direct manner, Vice President Binay, likewise, established those initiatives when, before the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) Asia Clean Energy Forum in June, he spoke of the Philippines’ imperative to go green as critical to its economic development.
Binay correctly pointed out that because our economy is agriculture-based, where that sector remains a principal source of livelihood, wayward stewardship of the ecosystem can have lethal and deleterious
effects.
For the Vice President, it is imperative that economic programs, from the rationalization of taxes to infrastructure development, each nourish the ecosystem. Declaring both paradigm and policy, under the Aquino-Binay administration, Binay stressed that environmental consciousness is not simply a luxurious adjunct of economic programs but is an integral component of development.
As the new administration’s first and probably its most profound international policy statement to date, the Binay declaration before the ADB bodes well for a country that seeks not simply accountability for past wrongs but is also ready to lead the global community in doing the right thing through distinctive competences it can bank on.
Emphasizing that “it is people that make the economy work,” Binay said that “to attract investments in sustainable development, [government and business constituencies] must share the vision of green entrepreneurs, inspire managers with inspired green governance, and invest in social and environmental programs to invest workers with good health, education and a healthy ecology.”
Far from sound bites and political rhetoric, under Binay in Makati, progress, civil rights, social protection and environmental awareness were prioritized, not as privileges of a well-governed community, but as rights of the people of Makati. From the B-Jeep to Makati’s green-procurement processes, energy-efficient street-lighting and “green loop” waste management, again the theme of people-centered development is evident.
At the ADB, the Vice President has shown the world what Filipinos can achieve. Evidently, he is one elected official who knows where he is going. It is time we hop on his jeep. #
