ONENESS in all of God’s creation. This is foremost in the hierarchy of the laws of nature as everything is inter-connected. No sun, no air, no water, no life. No forest, no river, no crops, no food. It is that simple.
Exploit and kill the forest ecosystem and all other ecosystems will perish with all the billions of flora and fauna that have been there for billions of years even before the homo sapiens came into being. By seniority, these plants and animals that constitute the mega-diversity have more rights than the humans to exist. In just one hundred years, these life forms perish because they have been sacrificed to the altar of greed and profit by adhering to the growth-at-all cost development paradigm that has given way to unbridled materialism and consumerism in utter disregard to life’s spirituality.
Well, am not surprised. The last century saw humans killing each other reaching more than 100 million deaths because of two world wars and the so-called cleansing of Hitler and Pol Pot. Such brutality of the homo sapiens to their own kindred has manifested the diabolic nature of man unseen in other species. If humans can do that to their own kind, more so to those they described as lower forms of life notwithstanding the truism that all life is sacred. Even Gaia (mother earth) is now dying because of the diabolic acts committed by the new comer specie called man whose existence came about 700 million years ago while plants and animals existed for more than three billion years.
Now that 17 million hectares of our dipterocarp forests gone in our country, the rest of the eco-systems are dying if not yet dead. Twenty major rivers in the country are now biologically dead. As you travel from Cagayan de Oro to Butuan City, look below the bridges. Either no water or the water is polluted, going to the sea that are polluting the bays.
Where are our coral reefs, the homes to fishery and marine life? About 75 percent totally damaged and only five percent is in excellent condition. Where are our mangroves, the spawning grounds of the fish? Almost gone having been converted into residential or commercial centers.
According to studies, the poorest of the poor are our fisherfolks and coastal communities as 10 out of the 13 major bays in the country are biologically dead. This is very painful in an archipelago which was once described as “the center of the center of marine life on earth.” This is in addition to the fact that by unit area, the Philippines has been tagged as the richest on earth in terms of endemicity.
As we lost our ecological wealth, poverty is now glaring in the rural areas where three out of four are wallowing in poverty. The farmers are producers of food, yet, their dining tables fall short of it. The workers are the makers of wealth, yet, they live below poverty line. In fact, according to the data of the Food and Nutrition Institute, 28 percent of our children are malnourished, 27 percent are underweight and 30 percent are stunted in growth.
The sins of a few loggers are now visited upon our people. Typhoon Sendong that hit Cagayan de Oro and Iligan City in December 17, 2011 has left a clear warning that put in clear category all term that we have grossly violated the laws of nature and are now suffering the consequences. Yes, another law of nature says that there is no free meal in nature. What we do to nature will surely come back to us. We have killed nature, nature is now killing us.
Mother Earth is now dying: global warming, melting of the iceberg at the tune of 1,000 hectares per day of iceberg 386 meters high, rising of the oceans and extinction of the species. Yes, the unimaginable is becoming imaginable: the end of life on earth.
Who controls? Who decides? Who benefits? From the so-called contemporaneous development paradigm? Only big business, the oligarchs and the cartels highly adhering to a flawed development paradigm which can be likened to a giant that is now dying, now off-balance. So as not to fall, the giant must run and in running it steps on communities, the fragile ecosystems, the ozone layer, and Gaia herself.
We must now all unite to form a countervailing force through cooperativism whose DNA is that of members-owned, value-based and sustainable, for nature and for all the people, all for the greater glory of our Creator – otherwise, we will all fall in demise!
