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WWF-Philippines official statement on President Marcos’ first State of the Nation Address

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We recently expressed what we hoped President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. would recognize as the most crucial challenges: climate change and nature loss – and the need to address these together and holistically. We appreciate the initial direction he has taken, particularly in recognizing that we are stewards of nature and one of the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. 

We would like to share some inputs that build on the key points raised.

  1. On the push for increased agricultural productivity: While we recognize this as an important step on one hand, we want to highlight its impacts on the environment. We should be mindful and deliberate with the increase of productivity, by implementing measures and safeguards to ensure the protection of nature and promotion of sustainable production. This includes agro-ecological practices that restore and maintain ecosystem services. We also particularly want to raise the importance of implementing measures that prevent food loss and waste, specifically post-harvesting.   
  2. On renewable energy: We urge the president to lead executive actions and identify priority bills in order to fulfill his promise to increase the use of renewable energy sources. WWF is a partner of the government in pushing for energy efficiency and in developing and adopting more cost efficient renewable energy sources. We would like to see more of this transition in the energy-intensive areas of heating and cooling, manufacturing, and food production during this administration. However, we need to be wary of the impacts of pushing for nuclear power, which is too costly and risky, and natural gas, which is a fossil fuel.
  3. On the precarious fresh water supply situation: We advocate for nature-based solutions like reforestation, watershed management, and wetlands restoration be on the priority when it comes to addressing these problems. We support the pending legislative measure to improve our water governance by establishing a central body that will lead the country’s adaptive approach to integrated water resources management.
  4. On tourism and infrastructure development: We would like to see tourism flourish in aid of economic recovery but we hope it does not happen at the expense of the ecosystems that sustain all of us. Development at the cost of nature will lead to devastation.

We strongly hope that the government will soon also speak about the plans to address the plight of indigenous peoples, environment defenders, and urban poor. These groups are at the forefront of environmental protection, and often suffer the most from the impacts of nature loss and climate change.

We all want the Philippines to succeed. We dream of a country where the air is clean for everyone to breathe, the waters are clear for everyone to swim, the soil is fertile for all plants to grow, the animals are thriving, and the Filipinos have their needs met. In the next six years, we hope to have made progress towards such a country.

About WWF-Philippines:

The World Wide Fund for Nature Philippines is an environmental non-government organization committed to create an impact on biodiversity protection and responding to the climate crisis -towards a safe and just recovery. WWF-Philippines works with a host of partners including national and local governments, to co-create inclusive, innovative, and interdisciplinary solutions that emphasize the role of science in the service of life. 

WWF-Philippines’ focus is on scaled solutions with our partners to match the enormity of the tasks required to address the urgent environmental challenges facing the present and next generations of Filipinos. Its mission is “to stop, and eventually reverse the accelerating degradation of the Philippine environment – to build a future where Filipinos live in harmony with nature.”