Aquino ally calls for boycott of China-made products

By Gil C. Cabacungan Jr.

Philippine Daily Inquirer

MANIILA, Philippines – Albay Governor Joey Salceda, a political ally of President Aquino, urged Filipinos on Sunday to band together and boycott China-made products in retaliation to Beijing ’s “bullying’’ in the country’s territory.

“Let us boycott ‘Made in China’ products, buy Filpino. Let us hurt them where it counts. We also protect our children and communities from the pervasive and persistent risks of various types of contamination and poor quality of their products,’’ said Salceda in a speech during an Independence Day ceremony at the Albay provincial hall.

Salceda said retaliation through trade against China’s repeated intrusions in Spratlys Islands and the West Palawan Sea has become the only viable alternative to ordinary Fiilpinos since military provocation was not an option.

The governor said the country could not depend on other countries in fighting off “not only threats to our national sovereign territory” but also actions that bring “shame to our dignity as a race and as a nation.’’

The Philippines posted a $900-million trade deficit with China in 2010, said Salceda. The country imported $7 billion worth of goods from China while shipping a little over $6 billion goods to China, but Salceda reckoned this was actually bigger as he estimated that another $3 billion worth of goods were being smuggled from China and were sold in Divisoria.

Salceda said that boycotting China-made goods would force exporters to seek alternative markets for their products and prompt industries to get their inputs from other sources. He said that China has placed little foreign direct investments and soft loans to the country.  Most of the Filipino workers are deployed in Hong Kong and Macau, not in the Mainland, according to Salceda.

“The consequences of a China economic reprisal are offset by the strategic benefits of national unity and dignity, which by themselves are priceless. The risks of China boycott are reasonable and affordable when compared to the costs to national well-being of other options or of doing nothing,’’ said Salceda.

“Sure, it will not bring mighty China to their knees but it would make loud and clear to the imperial mandarins of Beijing that all Filipinos are united in their sentiment: enough to the bullying that tramples upon our dignity as a nation,” he said.

“This should send a strong signal to the Chinese people who shares kinship in our humanity that their rulers are committing these infringements in their name,’’ added Salceda, a former top stock market analyst and economic adviser of the previous Arroyo administration.

Plastic bag ban benefits cited

By JONATHAN M. HICAP

July 10, 2011, 2:52pm

MANILA, Philippines -- Six months after the plastic bag and styrofoam ban was implemented in Muntinlupa, the city government said it has eased flooding in the city and reduced the volume of collected garbage.

It was also reported that store owners and consumers have become accustomed of doing their daily business without plastic bags.

Al Cosio, head of the Environmental Sanitation Center, said the plastic bag ban has greatly eased flooding in the city.

Mayor Aldrin San Pedro said that because of the plastic ban, the city was spared from flooding during the onslaught of typhoon “Falcon” last month.

Store owners said their expenses were reduced since they no longer buy plastic bags to put items bought by consumers.

Supermarkets in Muntinlupa now use alternative receptacles to place groceries. SM Supermarket, for instance, uses cardboard boxes to pack groceries. Consumers also have the option to buy the supermarket’s reusable green bags. Other groceries use paper bags made of old newspapers and magazines.

Residents now use the traditional “bayong” or native bag, or reusable bags when they go to public markets or grocery stores.

Environmental groups said that so far 11 towns and cities in the country have passed ordinances which banned the use of plastic bags. These are Muntinlupa in Metro Manila; Carmona, Cavite; Antipolo City, Rizal; Los Baños, Laguna; Sta. Barbara, Iloilo; Lucban, Quezon; Infanta, Quezon; Imus, Cavite; Biñan, Laguna; Batangas City; and Burgos, Pangasinan.

Environmental groups cited local government units for the ordinance and urged lawmakers to pass a national law that will prohibit the use of plastic bags and promote organic reusable bags.

They also want the implementation of a take-back mechanism where producers will be asked to recover plastic discards and a plan for support to LGUs in waste management initiatives.

“We know for a fact that our noble legislators in Congress, led by the tireless Committee on Ecology, are doing their best to complement what our LGUs have started. We want them to know that we will be behind them in firmly cutting down waste and phasing-out plastic bags,” said Roy Alvarez, president of EcoWaste Coalition, in a recent statement.

Shortages of fresh water seen as emerging threat

"The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Fresh Water in the Twenty-first Century" (Scribner), by Alex Prud'homme: A rising chorus of jeremiads warns that shortages of freshwater, not oil, will trigger the most pressing challenges of the 21st century.

A spate of books and articles has laid out possible scenarios in which population growth, pollution and mismanagement will lead to a scarcity of water in some regions. The idea that large population centers such as Phoenix and Las Vegas could be rendered uninhabitable may no longer be the stuff of apocalyptic fiction.

Prud'homme, co-author with his great-aunt Julia Child of "My Life in France," makes a thoughtful and compelling case that policymakers and average citizens should pay more attention to the precious but undervalued commodity that flows from their taps. Future wars, he suggests, may be fought over water.

This comprehensive account, reflecting exhaustive research that took Prud'homme across America, contains a series of dramatic stories and colorful characters that highlights the degradation of the nation's once pure and abundant waters.

The book begins with the 2005 murder of a 43-year-old Ph.D. hydrochemist and mother of three whose body was recovered from the bottom of a 35-foot (10-meter) concrete tank at a water purification plant in northern New Jersey. The unsolved mystery serves as an introduction to the various ways in which our water supply can be contaminated.

Prud'homme segues into the sad history of some of America's most chemically befouled waters, including Newtown Creek in the New York borough of Brooklyn and the Housatonic River in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, before detailing the impact of agribusiness-related pollution in Wisconsin and the Chesapeake Bay region.

He descends 580 feet (177 meters) below midtown Manhattan for a fascinating report on construction progress on a 9-mile(14.5-kilometer)-long tunnel that was planned more than 50 years ago to meet New York's demand for water. It's now set for completion in 2020 at an estimated cost of $6 billion.

Population growth is sure to contribute to future water scarcity, particularly in the fast-growing Southwest. Another factor is climate change, as rising temperatures result in more frequent floods and droughts. Because the biggest users of water are irrigated agriculture and power generation, the effects go well beyond the trickle from household taps.

Prud'homme sees Phoenix "as a kind of experiment in extreme living, like a dress rehearsal for life on Mars, or perhaps for a future America beset by regions of extreme heat and dryness." Las Vegas "could be relinquished to the dust, heat and tumbleweeds."

Other issues include privatization of water supplies, exemplified by the efforts of former oil wildcatter T. Boone Pickens to suck up rights to groundwater that can be sold to thirsty cities across Texas.

The book also examines bottled water, a "cultural phenomenon" embraced by tens of millions of Americans despite an exponentially higher cost than tap water and the questionable effect of the bottles and the fuel required to transport them.

Amid the gloom and doom, water managers are seeking drought-proof supplies of freshwater, or what Prud'homme calls "the hydrologic Holy Grail." One idea is to modify the weather by seeding clouds with dry ice particles, a technique still unproven. More realistic, perhaps, is desalination of seawater, a method used in Saudi Arabia that requires large quantities of energy.

The more ambitious visions include "Flipping the Mississippi" to divert water from the nation's amply supplied midsection to the thirsty West. But the author deems such ideas as unrealistic, preferring solutions that work with nature rather than disrupt its balance.

Examples of wise water management include Singapore, which controls demand through high water taxes, efficient technologies and constant reminders about the need to conserve. A gold star also goes to Intel, whose water-efficient semiconductor fabrication plant in the Arizona desert has become a model for industrial conservation.

"The Ripple Effect" offers a balanced and insightful assessment of what could emerge as the dominant issue in decades ahead. Anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the threat to what the author calls "the most valuable resource on earth" would do well to heed his message. (AP)