'Source to sea' right. Hopefully may pag-asa pa rin sa kaso
ng mga ilog rendered 'biologically dead'. The sea is their ultimate sink. And we couldn't just allow nature to take
its natural course without human intervention in the case of toxic waste dumped
into coastal waters, right?
That's what happened to Mogpog River and Boac River in Marinduque. Should be part of the equation.
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| Part of Mogpog River. |
Marine ecosystems need 'source to sea' cleanup
by Rey Anthony Ostria, Inquirer
Without addressing the sources of the trash that make it to
the sea, local government units will have a hard time rehabilitating degraded
coastal waters, Director Crisanta Marlene Rodriguez of the Biodiversity
Management Bureau (BMB) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources
(DENR) told journalists here on Sunday.
“We can’t really focus on the sea alone because 50 percent
of what happens in the sea originate from the land,” Rodriguez, who was also
the former DENR Bicol director, said at Bicol’s World Wildlife Day celebration
in this city Sunday.
She said, however, that some companies in the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) region are doing their part in addressing the
problem by doing away with plastic packaging.
“Several companies in Asean are trying to remove the use of
plastics and going back to the basics and using bottles,” she said.
She added that the government was thinking of an incentive-based
program to address the problem of marine litter.
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| A man searches for recyclables through garbage floating in heavily polluted Manila Bay. Photo by Richard Reyes, PDI |
In a news release on the World Wildlife Day, Achim Steiner,
administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, said that five to 12
million metric tons of plastic make it to the sea each year, posing a health
hazard to marine creatures of all sizes.
“To reverse this, a literal ‘sea change” is required in how
we manage both ocean and land-based activities, across sectors ranging from
fisheries to agriculture to waste management,” Steiner said.
For the first time, the World Wildlife Day celebration is
focused on marine life.
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| Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) flowing down the Boac River day in and day out. |
