QUEZON PROVINCE, PHILIPPINES – Environmental group serves Lakad-Panaghoy Para sa Sangnilikha on November 17-19 to cry for a true solution to the ecological crisis, citing specific calls to halt environmentally-destructive projects in the province.
Coinciding with the Conference of the Parties (COP30) of the United of Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Belém, Brazil, the Quezon for Environment (QUEEN), a coalition of green advocacy and inter-faith groups, strongly plea for the obstruction of corporate-serving projects, that systematically impede social and ecological justice, otherwise serving the interest of the poor.
The ‘pilgrimage of hope’, which traverses through municipalities of Mauban, Tayabas City, Pagbilao, and Atimonan, particularly denounces local projects in the province tagged as climate-exacerbating devices. Meralco Gen’s (MGEN) proposed 1,200 MW Atimonan coal-fired power plant remains a big thorn to communities which they fought for a decade, arguing a non-necessary addition to the ‘coal capital’ title of the province.
Consequently, the protest also laments the Ayala Group of Companies’ proposed 247 MW Banahaw Wind Power Project in the sacred and protected area of Mt. Banahaw, and the flooding of ‘destructive RE’ projects in the province. Extractives, which aggravate risks of the climate disasters in several parts of Quezon, are called to cease.
Government agencies, which are supposed to protect the interest of the people, now play a significant role in the expedition of most environmentally-destructive projects’ greenlighting.
“Greed invites human-made disasters which the innocent, poorest communities are mostly suffering. And we want those corporations, in collusion with concerned government bodies, to realize that they are not solely taking profits, but lives”, said Rev. Fr. Warren Puno, Convenor of the Quezon for Environment.
The suffering of communities from continuing intensified disasters, which in the past decades battered the World Index top-notch country, are even more exacerbated by the abominable corruption that recently exploded in the eyes of the Filipino people.
Typhoon Tino (international name: Kalmaegi) and supertyphoon Uwan (international name: Fung-Wong), withdrew nearly 300 lives, causing billions of peso in damage, displacing millions of communities in the Luzon and Visayas regions during the first half of November.
“Doing nothing in the middle of a human-made crisis is like watching a massacre without even showing a piece of grimace”, said Rev. Msgr. Emmanuel MA. Villareal, a Quezonian priest and environmental advocate.
