Our country needs green nationalism
By Edward S. Hagedorn, Mayor of Puerto Princesa

Early this year, we witnessed the grand launch of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

With 169 stories and the equivalent of two Empire State buildings standing one atop another, it is considered today the tallest building in the world.

Most were awestruck at the grandness of Dubai’s $1.5 billion achievement.

Too many forgot that everything comes with a price that often go beyond monetary values.

For a city-state that already has the highest per capita carbon footprint in the world, operating the world's tallest structure also "involves melting the equivalent of 28 million pounds of ice a day for air conditioning, and the consumption of billions of gallons of desalinated water."

There is always a cost and more and more we need to be aware of the impacts we are creating on the very life systems that sustain us.

We are very much aware of this in the city of Puerto Princesa, a city with the largest land mass in the Philippines, sprawling across 253,982 hectares of land and stretching 106 kilometers long.

Despite having far less resources, the city has been trying to construct a similar historic achievement though what we are attempting to build is a different type of monument.

Puerto Princesa is called “the city in a forest” with good reason.

A chain of mountains runs through its middle. Mangrove swamps and limestone cliffs complement surf pounding our shoreline.

Beaches are punctuated by coves and rich marine life while unique islands dominate Honda Bay on the east.

We know there is so much to protect even as we recognize the reality of the city's continuing growth.

We are trying to do both and we hope other Filipinos will take notice.

Because there is a lesson we are being taught daily which the Philippines needs to learn and soon.

We live in a country which has all the trappings of an independent republic and yet each week our very sovereignty is put to question because of our increasing dependence on the resources and abilities of others.

We act as if we had no ties to the environment and as a result, nature reminds us more forcefully each year of the devastating fallacy of such thinking.

The result: the economic and ecological vulnerabilities of our people have multiplied.

No one will disagree with the assertion that our country needs radical change, especially this year when changes in the national and local leadership may take place.

But asking for change is no longer enough.

We need to put in place solutions that define the kind of change our people need and that demonstrate that such change is both desirable and viable.

On February 14, an occasion most Filipinos commemorate with romance, Puerto Princesa City will do just this: promote love of country by breaking new ground.

It will do so through the construction start of an anaerobic biodigester, which will mark Puerto Princesa as the first city in Asia to complete the Climate-Friendly Cities (CFC) loop, in partnership with homegrown NGOs such as the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities (iCSC).

We embraced iCSC's program because it is fully in line with the ambition of the city's leadership.

The City's CFC project is composed of three components: (1) the non-burn biodigester that will promote the decomposition of the City's organic waste. This will produce the biogas that will be fed to (2) a charging station that will power the City's (3) electric public transport system.

A green circle. A complete cycle that fully utilizes the City's resources – what others consider “waste” – which does not create more pollution and which directly factors in the continuous development of the City.

Because under the CFC, as the City grows so will its capability to create and use more of its own energy sources, all the while attracting similar sustainable business ventures.

Today, we can now plan the further growth of commerce, such as an increase in hog farms which before we had to severely limit because of the city's low capacity to absorb the waste that comes from such industries.

But no more.

With the CFC program and our desire to bring in electric public transport, we can now consider the hog farm expansion under the CFC logic.

Because the more biowaste there is, the more energy we can produce, which means more revenue for the city, more jobs and a greater ability to deploy more electric transport such as eJeepneys, eTrikes and electric quadricycles.

The iCSC calls this Green Nationalism, and we in Puerto Princesa have embraced it.

Because Green Nationalism means self-reliance – self-reliance in solidarity with nature.

It is the promotion of a type of independence anchored on what Puerto Princesa has tried to practice over the years: to make do with what we have. To live within our means. To develop our industrial capabilities as best we can without harming ourselves and our surroundings.

Because human development – not a gigantic leap in gross national product – is what counts in the end.

By putting together a working example of green nationalism at work, we can make a historic contribution to the continuing fight for real, lasting Philippine independence.

In our city, heroism is practiced daily each time our school kids pick up litter on the streets or when our villages segregate waste and compost and citizens patrol and secure the sustainability of their fishing grounds or forests.

In Puerto Princesa, our heroes wear green.

This is the way we honor the struggles of our country's esteemed ancestors.