Friday, June 7, 2013

Articles of Interest (LOCAL): Recent Updates on the State of Education in our Country


Sometimes we will be unable to post full articles here due to copyright laws, so we will provide direct links to the articles instead. The short video we also included below should sum up our current educational state in a nutshell, which in truth is quite abyssmal. -LCDE Staff



Tuition, other fees up in 1,257 schools

Monday, June 3, 2013

What? 2011 too!?

In relation to the article below, the Philippines happens to be also one of 2011's most disaster hit countries as we soon found out in this article (Philippines tops list of disaster hit countries in 2011), which is definitely a worrying trend. This is one list we do not want to be on. For now we leave you with this video of tragic disasters on the Philippines from 1990 to 2010, some natural and some man-made. - LCDE staff


                                       

Article of Interest (LOCAL): Philippines is most disaster-affected country in 2012

Philippines is most disaster-affected country in 2012


Source: CDRC-Phil

The Philippines topped the list of countries with the highest mortality rate due to natural disasters in 2012.
 The Citizens’ Disaster Response Center (CDRC), a non-government organization based in the Philippines, cited the records of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), which showed that 2,360 people were killed due to natural disasters in 2012. Coming in second was China with 771 deaths.
  CDRC is a partner of CRED, a World Health Organization collaborating center based in Brussels, Belgium, which maintains the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT: The International Disaster Database).
CRED also reported that in terms of the number of people affected by natural disasters, the Philippines came in second to China. There were 43 million people affected in China; and 12 million in the Philippines.
CDRC’s Deputy Executive Director, Carlos Padolina, said that the Philippines’ ranking was due to Typhoon Pablo (Bopha), the largest disaster that occurred in 2012. Pablo killed over 1,000 people in Southern Philippines.
 Meanwhile, citing its own data, Padolina revealed that a total of 471 natural and human-induced disasters occurred in the Philippines in 2012. Compared to the 2011 data, 2012 posed a 9% increase in the number of disaster events recorded by CDRC.
 CDRC monitors both natural and human-induced disasters that occur in the Philippines.
 “Majority of these disasters were caused by flood with 143 incidents and 7.8 million people affected. The high number of flooding incidents can be attributed to the Southwest Monsoon which inundated much of Luzon in August of 2012,” Padolina said. “However, the major cause of mortality rate last year was Tropical Cyclone,” he added.
 Padolina also pointed out the increasing trend in the number of affected people in the last five years. He said the strong typhoons that the Philippines experienced in recent years have contributed a lot to this trend.

Download CDRC’s complete Philippine Disaster Report 2012 here.

Friday, May 31, 2013

Article of Interest (LOCAL): Peasant leaders call for land, justice

Peasant leaders call for land, justice

By RITCHE T. SALGADO
Bulatlat.com

CEBU CITY — More than 200 peasant leaders from 16 regions and 65 provinces of the country gathered here this week to discuss decades-long issues that continue to hound the agriculture sector.

Antonio Flores, newly-elected secretary general of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), revealed that based on reports from their regional and provincial chapters, landlessness brought about by new forms of land-grabbing such as land conversion and abuses on farmers’ rights remain to be the top concerns that continue to hinder the development of the sector.

He believes that the government’s Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) and its renewed version, CARP-Extension with Reforms (CARPer), is nothing but a sham that is being used by rich land-owners and agricultural corporations in legitimizing abuses against farmers, majority of whom have for generations been working on the land that do not “legally” belong to them.

KMP believes that in order to solve the issue of landlessness and to stop abuses, government must show sincere efforts in addressing the problem by scrapping the bogus CARPer Law and replace it with the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill (GARB).

Authored by Anakpawis party-list representative Rafael “Ka Paeng” Mariano, GARB aims to bring the true essence of agrarian reform into the country, which is to give land to the farmers.

In contrast, under CARP, government buys the land from landlords at bloated prices, and then sells it to the “farmer-beneficiaries” who are required to pay every month for 30 years with yearly interest of six percent.

“CARP is the most expensive and the longest-running agrarian reform program in the world,” said KMP deputy secretary general Randall Echanis.

By 2005, the Land Bank of the Philippines have approved P41.6 billion ($1.014 billion) as compensation to landowners affected by CARP, and for CARPer, government has allocated a budget of P150-billion ($3.658 billion) for its five year implementation from 2009 to 2014. Another P150-billion ($3.658 billion) is to be allocated based on the proposed extension of the program until 2019.

Echanis, who is also the third nominee of Anakpawis, said that despite this, CARP remains to be a failure and the effort of government to extend it for five more years after CARPer’s expiration in 2014, only shows that the government is not concerned over the welfare of farmers who make up majority of Filipinos.

Mariano agrees, saying: “Another extension of CARP is the height of callousness of Aquino, a notorious cacique, to deny our rights to the land in the face of the Filipino peasantry’s collective clamor for genuine land reform.”

Echanis said the implementation of CARP is nothing more but a sham, giving farmers a sense of false belief that they could finally own the land that they till.

“It is nothing more but a way for then president Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino to ensure that the Cojuangco’s Hacienda Luisita and other vast haciendas in the country would be protected from land distribution,” said Echanis.

He said that ever since CARP was implemented, human rights violations against farmers have intensified. This includes extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances.

According to human rights watchdog Karapatan, during President Benigno Aquino III’s term alone, from July 2010 to December 2012, there were 137 victims of extrajudicial killings, 77 were peasants; 25 were indigenous people, whose struggle is also mostly agrarian; and 13 from the urban poor, majority of whom were also farmers who have been displaced because of land conversion.
Of the 14 cases of enforced disappearances, meanwhile, 11 were from the peasant sector.

“Farmers asserting their rights to the land are subjected to human rights abuses, agrarian struggles and peasant leaders are being criminalized, incarcerated, and worse, are being massacred,” the KMP said in a statement.

“Simultaneously, CARPER serves as a counter-insurgency program to drive away farmers from the militant and life and death struggle for a genuine and truly distributive agrarian reform,” it continued.

Echanis admitted that as much as they want, they could not stop the increasingly intensifying attacks against peasants asserting their rights to land. However, what they could do is to put forward the struggles of the peasants through mass actions that they plan to intensify in the coming years.
These campaigns would include the bungkalan (land cultivation), an assertion of a peasant group’s right to cultivate the land; lakbayan or long marches; camp-outs, and peasant barricades, among others.

Echanis also said they plan to intensify their campaign for the passing of GARB. However, he clarified that they have no illusion that it will even pass the House of Representatives.

“Majority of the members of the House of Representatives are large landowners, so it is expected that they will protect their interests,” Echanis said.

“Still we will push for GARB’s passage because that is the right thing to do. More than pushing for its passage in Congress, we would also continue to take this campaign to the streets, engaging our members, who compose majority of Filipinos,” he said.

“It is time to put an end to the more than 40 years of deceptive, anti-farmer, and pro-landlord land reform that is being implemented by the Aquino government,” said Echanis.

Articles of Interest


From time to time we will be posting up articles from various sources that we think makes for insightful and informative reading material. The choice of articles we post do not necessarily reflect our views on the various subjects they present. Articles will be classified as local (Phillipines) and international (Everywhere else!). - LCDE staff

                                                                                                               


Thursday, May 30, 2013

LCDE: DENR, NGO partner for better environment

DENR, NGO partners for better environment

by LCDE staff

    The Leyte Center for Development, Inc. (LCDE) together with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) forges partnership for a three-year reforestation project in Southern Leyte.

Represented by CENRO head Alejandro K. Bautista and witnessed by DENR Regional Executive Director Manolito Ragub, the department partnered with the award-winning local non-government organization headed by executive director Jazmin Jerusalem, formalized through a memorandum of agreement conducted in CENRO San Juan in Southern Leyte.

LCDE is currently implementing a three-year project funded by the BMZ or the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and Plan Germany, which covers the ecosystem restoration of the uplands, the lowlands and the coastal area in two municipalities, Silago and Saint Bernard.

The project, Adaptation to Climate Change by Strengthening Natural Resilience may compliment the National Greening Program (NGP) of the DENR, which includes the development of the 10-15meter forest zones for protection and to identify boundaries between timberland and alienable and disposable lands, said Bautista.

During the MOA signing, Ragub expressed his support for the renewed partnership with LCDE, this time on the issue of climate change. “This is a good opportunity to be hand in hand again with old partners,” he said.

He also saw the relevance of the project, especially on the province of Southern Leyte that is historically vulnerable to several different hazards.

“I am also happy to note that the initiatives of the offices in this program are focus on the environmental development, which is also part of the Five Major Pillars of development of our President Aquino,” said Ragub. “That we are guided by these major programs of the government, partnered by competent NGOs.”

Ragub also mentioned that LCDE has pioneered such partnership between the DENR and an NGO in the region for the upland development, specifically in the reforestation and agroforestry, to benefit and empower the communities in the selected project areas.

The ceremony was held in Feb. 21, 2013, attended by guests from CENRO, DENR-8, LCDE and people’s organization in Saint Bernard and Silago.



LCDE Executive Director Jazmin A. Jerusalem sits with DENR-8 Regional Executive Director Manolito Ragub (middle), and PENRO San Juan Alexandro K. Bautista, during the during the Memorandum of Agreement signing for the reforestation component of the three-year project for Adaptation to Climate Change by Strengthening Natural Resilience, funded by BMZ and Plan Germany, implemented by LCDE.



DENR-8 Regional Executive Director shakes hands with PENRO San Juan Officer Alexandro K. Bautista, during the Memorandum of Agreement signing for the reforestation component of the three-year project for Adaptation to Climate Change by Strengthening Natural Resilience, funded by BMZ and Plan Germany, implemented by LCDE. Also in the photo is LCDE Executive Director Jazmin Jerusalem.

LCDE Executive Director Jazmin A. Jerusalem (2nd from left) together with  DENR Regional Executive Director Manolito Ragub, the head of of PENRO San Juan Head Alejandro Bautista (2nd from right), and LCDE Project Coordinator Fenna Joyce Moscare (extreme left), during the Memorandum of Agreement signing for the reforestation component of the three-year project for Adaptation to Climate Change by Strengthening Natural Resilience, funded by BMZ and Plan Germany.