The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is not yet off the hook when it comes to the controversial Manila Bay white sand dumping issue, but this didn't stop the agency to renew its call for the creation of a permanent bureau meant to fight environmental crimes.
In a statement, DENR said that instead of creating task forces that are temporary in nature, the agency will be more effective in protecting the environment if it has its own permanent bureau dedicated to enforcing environmental laws and regulations.
Such statement came more than a month after the Global Witness report declared the Philippines as the world’s second deadliest country for land and environment defenders, only next to Colombia.
Reacting to the report, Environment Undersecretary Benny Antiporda told Business Bulletin is now asking the country’s lawmakers to pass a law that will strengthen the legal mandate of the agency for the enforcement of environmental laws.
“The DENR is asking for the understanding of the legislative body to come up with a law creating the enforcement bureau for the DENR,” Antiporda said. “We need that legal mandate for stronger enforcement of environmental laws.”
Antiporda said that right now, with limited resources and enforcement mandate, DENR’s forest rangers can only be given shotguns for precautionary measures, while illegal loggers are complete with high power rifles and dynamites.
This was reiterated by Nilo Tamoria, executive director of the DENR’s Environmental Protection and Enforcement Task Force (EPETF) during an inter-agency consultation webinar on the proposed bill creating the Environmental Protection and Enforcement Bureau (EPEB) held on August 28.
Tamoria said that a new task force is created with each new administration, and this has become a "repetitive cycle that negatively affects continuity or sustainability of the DENR’s law enforcement efforts".
“That is what we experience here in DENR. There is no sustainability and strong enforcement mandate” Tamoria said during the webinar organized by the EPETF and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), through its Protect Wildlife Project.
In November last year, DENR Secretary Roy A. Cimatu formed a technical working group to study and draft a proposal creating an enforcement bureau within the DENR.
Cimatu said that by having a permanent enforcement bureau, the DENR will be more effective in stopping environmental crimes, such as illegal logging and smuggling of wildlife species.
It was just this June when House Deputy Speaker Loren Legarda filed House Bill 6973 seeking to create the EPEB under the DENR.
The proposed measure has been referred to the Committees on Government Reorganization and on Natural Resources.
The bill aims to capacitate DENR enforcers through the establishment of an Enforcement Academy, where they can learn skills and techniques normally taught to mainstream law enforcement agents.
At present, the DENR is dependent on law enforcement agencies, particularly the Philippine National Police and the National Bureau of Investigation, in the implementation of environmental laws.
Once in operation, Tamoria said the EPEB will “level up the DENR as the country’s lead agency for environmental law enforcement.”
For this year, Global Witness fears that things are about to get worse for the environmental and land defenders in the Philippines amid the on-going pandemic.
“The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown have intensified the problems land and environmental defenders face. Governments around the world – from the US to Brazil and Colombia to the Philippines – have used the crisis to strengthen draconian measures to control citizens and roll back hard-fought environmental regulations,” Global Witness said.
The Global Witness report also showed that over half of all reported killings last year occurred in just two countries, which are Colombia and the Philippines.
The report linked most of the murders to the mining industry, with 50 anti-mining defenders all over the world killed in 2019. Again, the Philippines has most mining-related killings, with 16 deaths.