The Philippine Agenda 21

THE PHILIPPINE AGENDA 21

by Antonio C. Antonio

January 24, 2015

Philippine Agenda 21 is the Philippine framework for sustainable development (SD).  It presents an environmental management strategy that seeks to protect the environment and make it serve the legitimate needs of Philippine society.  The strategy is derived from the agreements reached by over 200 nations (and an even larger number of civil society groups) who met in the United Nations’ Conference on Environment and Development (or UNCED, but is more often referred to as the Earth Summit) held in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) in 1992.  In that Summit, the consensus was reached that the environment should be viewed as a support system for society and its economy.  It needs to be protected and carefully nurtured, to ensure that it continues to provide support to society in the long-term.

Philippine Agenda 21 was developed by a multisectoral group representing different constituencies of Philippine society to articulate, in the particular environmental and economic setting of the Philippines, the concept of managing the environment as forged in Rio.  It was approved by the President of the Philippines on September 1996.  (This is an important aspect of Philippine Agenda 21 because this means that its concept of environmental management enjoys a broad consensus and support in Philippine society; it carries a high level of legitimacy and has a significant social, political, and moral competence as such.)

In Philippine Agenda 21, The environment is viewed as an integral dimension of development.  Unlike before (following World War II) when development was  commonly understood as mainly a matter of economic progress (as a two-dimensional phenomenon of GDP growth over time), Philippine Agenda 21 takes off from the Earth Summit’s concept of SD that links economic progress to the ecological costs, and social dimensions of production and consumption.  In this view, economic welfare is seen as a legitimate concern of society (that it should be raised to the level that gives dignity to the human being) but --- and this is the distinguishing mark of SD --- only to within the capacity of Nature to replenish the endowments it lost to support economic growth, and only to the extent that the growth will not erode a people’s cultural and social life.

In short, environmental management, as proposed in Philippine Agenda 21, calls for utilizing the ecological and social resources found in the environment to meet society’s higher economic aspirations, but only to within the ability of the resources to keep their integrity intact.

The foregoing information was researched from the book of Dr. Ben S. Malayang III entitled “Socio-Cultural Principles of Human-Environment Interactions”.  It speaks of the novel and creative way by which we, Filipinos, took an international agreement (Agenda 21) and tailor-fitted it to our needs and the way we perceive what is right and ideal for us and the world.  This is the Philippine Agenda 21.

Just my little thoughts…

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