ML19256F072
| ML19256F072 | |
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| Site: | 05000574 |
| Issue date: | 10/19/1979 |
| From: | Cummings W AFFILIATION NOT ASSIGNED |
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| NUDOCS 7911210068 | |
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Appendix A AFFIDAVIT OF WILLIAM LINDSLEY CUMMINGS (Member, Friends of the Filipino People) bfI fkh 7911210 h
AFFIDAVIT E WILLIAM LINDSLEY CUMMINGS I, the undersigned, William Lindsley Cummings being first duly sworn do depose and say:
My name is William Lindsley Cummings. I am a resident of Orange County, North Carolina. My address is Rural Route 8, Box 142, Chapel Hill.
I am a professional ecologist trained at the University of North Carolina where I am presently a candidate for the degree of Ph.D. in Ecology. Within the discipline of ecology my specialization has been social and cultural ecology and, in particular, the human use of tropical ecosystems. For a considerable portion of my career, both my research and professional experiences have involved the application of ecological principles to problems of international economic development.
My graduate education in ecology was made possible by a three and one-half year assistantship from the Carolina Population Center, a major national center of research, training, and technical assistance in the areas of international development and population planning, supported by the United State Agency for International Development (USAID). My course work was interdisciplinary and, in addition to its biological core, included graduate study in public health, epidemiology, anthropology, political science, sociology, and demography rele'ed to international environmental and development concerns.
From 1972-1975, I was involved with center programs and research studies in international development. I was also associated with the USAID-supported PLATO Project organized to build models of economic development which emphasized the interaction of population, agriculture, environment, and energy use. I had responsibility for training population and development planners from USAID-assisted nations in the use of these models and their application to population and development policy. The Carolina Population Center had a strong interest in the Philippines with whom it maintained an extensive research and advisory relationship.
My own interest and association with the Philippines is longstanding. The son of a U.S. military officer; my family twice resided in the Philippines for extended periods during my father's assignments there. During the second of these assignments I vas college age and made numerious visits to the Philippines.
There from 1967-1968 I carried out research toward a degree in Political Science from Williams College.
13// 242 In March 1976, upon completing my oral and written doctoral examinations in ecology, I was awarded a Frederickson Fellowship by the University Overseas Population Internship Progran funded by USAID. This award supports international internships in the field of population policy and development within governments universities, and foundations of the 3rd World. There Frederickson Fellows participated in host countries projects as well as advised and rendered technical assistance.
My own training had prepared me for service in the area of ecological aspects of population and economic development. With USAID arrangements I was invited by the Vice President of the University of the Philippines to join the University's Ins't itute for Environmental Planning where I was to assist in the training of planners and provide research skills and technical assistance in the areas of my expertise. I accepted this assignment and received the appointment of Visiting Research Associate there. Following orientation at USAID/ Washington, I arrived in the Philippines in April 1976. My in-country affiliation was with the Population and Health division of the USAID Mission in Nbnila.
For two semesters at the University I taught modules within the Institute curriculum on the subjects of tropical ecology, the application of ecological principles to development and land-use planning, and environmental assessment and impact analysis. I had f equent opportunity to interact with Institute faculty; many of whom held high-level positions in government development agencies in addition to their academic appointments. Thus, as I began to formulate plans for the research to be undertaken during my assignment, I was able to gain considerable familiarity with the policies, programs, and projects of the Marcos government and the major environmental and planning issues in Philippine development. Among the most critical of these issues and the most demanding of 2nalysis was the severe stress being placed on Philippine ecological systems and the very rapid and accelerating rate of environmental degradation the nation was then experiencing.
- The abrupt and precipitous rate of environmental decline exceeded that to be expected from population growth and pressure alone and appeared to be more clostly related to recent policy shif ts and initiatives adopted by the Philippine governnent.
Since the economic reorientation undertaken by the Marcos administration and particularly since the declaration of martial law in 1972 there has been a massive influx of capital into the Philippines. Under the tutelage of the international aid complex and through compliance with International Monetary Fund demanded guidelines, the Philippines has explicitly and aggressively adopted a particular 13// ?43
program of rapid economic growth modeled af ter the development experience of the so-called " miracle" nations of Brazil, Taiwan, and South Korea. Associated with w:
this program have'been marked efforts to intensify exploitation and extraction of Philippine natural resources (logging and mining of primary importance); to promote large scale corporate agricultural ventures and major increases ha production of primary export crops such as sugar, coconut, and fruit; and, to encourage export-oriented industrial development.
The success of these efforts is seen to hinge on completion of a highly ambitious series of major infrastructural improvements in transportation, communication, i$rigation and energy development. Of major importance are hydro-electric resources to be tapped in association with multi-purpose river basin development. These improvements are meant to provide the support base necessary for sustained economic growth, and this national infrastructural push has been i
made possible primarily by the la'rge amounts of both U.S. bilateral assistance and multilateral aid being made available through the World Bank and its af filiates, and the Asian Development Bank. This substanial international commitment to the Marcos government and its economic program, as well as the conplementary liberalization of foreign investment and incentives under martial law which permit higher returns and repatriation of profit have resulted in an unprecedented s.unge of economic activity, private foreign investment, and government initiated projects.
An overall development program emphasizing major capital improvements and
" big projects" as ambitious as that of the Philippines is extremely expensive.
The visible economic costs alone have been staggering since the bulk of incoming capital including international aid as been in the form of loans.
Almost over night the Philippines has become one of the biggest borrowers in the Third World, with an external foreign debt surpassing eight billion dollars.
The immediate social costs of the martial law economic reorientations were also large; including government imposed financial austerity upon the population, serious hardships and inflation associated with the devaluation of the peso to stimulate exports, and government sanctioned low wages in conjunction with the prohibition on strikes and labor action. In theory this actual deterioration of Philippine living standards, already among the lowest in Asia, at a time of rapid economic expansion was explained as temporary. It was regarded as short-term deprivation demanded of the Philippine people in a time of national
)}(( ,44
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sacrifice in order to achieve economic development and erect the New Society President Marcos has claimed he will build.
There are, in truth, lags between the receipt of development capital, its actual employment and use, and the realization of its benefits. By 1976, however, after four years of martial law, it was becoming possible to assess the wider environmental impacts and costs of the Philippine economic boom.
That is, the projects and programs financed by the enormous increase in aid, loans, and investment were no longer on paper but were being implemented and their ground level consequences were becoming clear for the first time.
The scope and scale of these combined efforts were, as I have stated, unprecedented; essentially involving the gross physical reworking of large parts of the national landscape. The most dramatic thrusts were into areas that had previously been poorly integrated into the national economy and which offered opportunities for resource development that had been untapped. In short, what was occurring was the wholesale opening up of the remaining Philippine frontier and its rapid exploitation, development, and incorporation into the national system.
It is important to note that these frontier areas are the last undeveloped tropical forest lands in the Philippines. Moreover, their location in the upland mountainous interiors of the archipelagic system gives them a critical ecological importance much greater than their relative size alone would suggest. These watersheds and their mature forest cover play a controlling role in hydrological and microclimatic conditions in the Philippines and are the dominant factor in maintaining national ecological well being. Waterflow critical to power generation, lowland irrigation, and ultimately the intricate balance of estuarine and coastal marine ecosystems, from which the Philippines derives its major source of protein, is directly dependent upon the state of these areas. They are in fact, essential to a high quality of life in that nation.
Frontier-development in the humid tropics is a risky enterprise generally and comparison with the situation in the Brazilian Amazon may help illuminate what is at stake in the Philippines. Considerable similarity exists between the Brazilian and Philippine models of development. In both economic booms have been stimulated by extensive foreign investment and borrowings; the futures of both nations are among the most heavily mortgaged in the Third World.
13// ?45
Rapid monetary infusions have financed programs in both which have dramatically expanded export production and opened interior frontiers to rapid, large-scale resource development and extraction. In the well known case of Brazil and the Amazon international scientific concern has raised serious questions regarding the long term consequences of such a course of action. Brazilian development, moreover, occurs in a giant nation; the Amazon region itself is more than five million sqt are kilometers. Philippine development, however, which is every bit as ambitious as that being undertaken by Brazil and employs similar high-impact technologies, takes place in a very small nation. The environmental consequences of development there are greatly intensified by their compression into an area of only 300,000 square kilometers, less than 1/28 the size of Braz il . The entire Philippines could fit 15 times into the Amazon frontier.
The insular tropical ecosystems of the Philippines are even more vulnerable to disruption than those of the vast but fragile Amazon. Obviously, the Philippines cannot afford to make mistakes.
In the Philippine case, however, the potential for just such a disastrous mistake was unusually high. The massive capital influx had resulted in
" development overload" spurring what, in many respects, was a crash program.
This committed the country to a multitude of hastily conceived essentially short-sighted proj ects which lacked internal coordination and exceeded administrative, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation capabilities. Further, as the cumulative impact of these proj ects began to be felt upon the landscape there were urgent indications of grave environmental damage which suggested that expected benefits might be short-lived, far less than proj ected, and, in some cases, negated by the unanticipated costs and long range effects. This situation, I learned, was additionally complicated,beyond its administrative and mangerial aspects,by problems in the Philippine political system.
My interest in initiating research into these questions during my tenure at the Institute led to discussions with the supreme national economic planning and development management body, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA). I was invited by its Deputy Director General to advise, as Consultant Ecologist, an interdisciplinary planning group organized to evaluate the social and environment consequences of rapid development in Palawan the nation's most recent and largest frontier and one cf its least developed regions. The mandate of this group, the Palawan Comprehensive Development Planning Proj ect was to determine how what one senior government scientist described as "run away development"(( ]46
could be arrested and replaced by an ecologically appropriate program which emphasized sustained yields and recognized the region's carrying capacity. The project was designed as a demonstration, a case study, to formulate approaches and techniques which could be employed in other regions where similar conditions obtained. I worked directly with this group for more than a year. Much of this time was spent in the field gathering first hand information on the actual impacts of government and private. projects. I was provided supporting services by the government and the Philippine military which included the use of aircraf t and equipment to carry out my work. To help identify common trends and provide comparative data,I also visited other major frontier areas in northern Luzon and Mindanao which either had or were experiencing similarly rapid incorporation and development by the central government. In Manila the project team was empowered to create the intra-governmental superstructure and linkages between Cabinet departments and line agencies necessary to effect its mission. I was responsible for establishing certain of these, and, in that manner, came into close and frequent working contact with government agencies and senior officials responsible for resource management, environmental protection, and applied ecological research. These included: the UNESCO-Philippines Man and the Biosphere Program, the Inter-agency Committee on Ecological Studies, the Inter-agency Committee on Environmental Protection, the National Environmental Protection Council, the Department of Natural Resources, the Development Academy of the Philippines; and the various regulatory branches within the Bureau of Mines, the Bureau of Forest Development, the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, the National Pollution Control Commission, and the Philippine Coast Guard. During this period I was invited by the Philippine government to participate in a select group of foreign and Philippine scientists convened to advise on environmental protection in conjunction with " International Conference on the Survival of Human kind: the Philippines Experiment." As a result of these relationships I gained broad experience and familiarity with Philippine environmental issues. I was also given access to internal government documents and information not widely available given martial law censor-ship and government secrecy. Upon the completion of my fellowship,NEDA asked me to delay my return to the United States and requested USAID to extend my services. I stayed and was formally hired by USAID/ Manila where I was attached to its
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Provincial Development division with the designation of Environmental Specialist. In that capacity, I continued to advise NEDA and, also, when requested, provided my services to other AID proj ects. At that time, to my knowledge, I was the only member of the USAID Mission, one of the largest in the world, with training and experience in ecology and environmental assessment. In short, over my year and a half in the Philippines, I was able to acquire a unique and wide-ranging perspective on both the state of the Philippine environment and the economic development programs and policies of the US and Philippine governments. I received an intimate and unusual glimpse of the contemporary Philippine situation, which encompassed at one end the upper echelon of national economic and environmental policy formation, and at the other the direct ground level impacts of such policy upon people's lives and local ecosystems. Since my return to the United States with the completion of the Palawan Proj ect in September 1977, I have been engaged in the analysis and interpretation of my observations and the field data I collected in Palawan. That research has been the basis of both my doctoral dissertation: The Ecology of, Underdevelopment: A Case Study of the Social and Envirommental Consequences of Modernization and Development in a Frontier Region of the Philippines, and a major report, Martial Law, Economic Development, and the Situation ol[ Philippine Peoples I am preparing for the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs. I have also maintained continuing contact and involvement with Philippine affairs, speaking of ten and writing on Philippine. development issues. In January of this year at the invitation of the Center for Environmental Studies at Williams College, I delivered a month long seminar on " Human Needs and the Ecology of Agriculture and Economic Development in the Humid Tropics" which focused on the Philippines. On the basis of my Philippine work and commitment to public interest ecology, I was named a Director of the Third World Energy Action Group formed to review and promote appropriate energy alternatives for Third World development. For these reasons, I feel well qualified to comment on the Philippine situation. Based on my experience there, the two subsequent years I have spent completing the analysis of that research, and my continuing involvament in Philippine matters, I would like to share some general observations on Philippine development which will establish the context of my specific concerns with the Philippine / Westinghouse reactor itself. It's time to say some things that need to be said. i3// 148
The Philippine environmental situation today is among the most serious on our planet. Levels of exploitation and stress upon major Philippine ecosystems are unquestionably in excess of those systems capacities for self-repair and continued service. They are, in other words, being drained. The Philippines is in the midst of an environmental crisis and adverse transformation of its
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landscape which portends an ir' reversibly diminished capacity for supporting human society. Many of the factors contributing to this situation have been long in the making . I refer to the legacy of colonial extraction and impoverishment which deprived the Philippine people of control over their national patrimony and left the majority poor, landless and without power. The great natural wealth of the Philippines , the biologien1 productivity of its living systems, and the labor of its peoples has always been expropriated to serve a tiny elite and the foreign interests which have supported them. The Philippines is a rich nation; its people are poor because they have been prevented from participating in their countries development and denied their share in its benefits. In a nation, for example, where nearly one-third of agricultural land, and the best one-third at that, is devoted to export crop production controlled by a tiny minority; people go hungry not because there are too many of them, but because too few have benefited from its productivity. With the declaration of martial law President Marcos assumed dictatorial powers which he pledged to employ on behalf of the people to redress this continuing colonial legacy. Yet in the seven years of his regime not only have social and environmental conditions continued to worsen but the rate of deterioration itself has increased. The implications of this course are especially tragic because they were not pre-ordained, inevitable, or inexorable but have been directly related to the political and economic policies of the Marcos government itself. Land reform the supposed cornerstone of the New Society has been a charade. Under the Marcos government corporate farming and foreign dominated agribusiness have continued to expand at the direct expense and dispossession of small farmers. In agricultural development the green revolution and its miracle grains, meant to make the Philippines self-sufficient in rice , has proved to be more a " miracle" for large laudowners, and the creditors and agrochemical industry who supply its necessary components. Local self-reliance has diminished , the gap between rural rich and poor has widened, and poor farmers have been rendered even less capable of self-provisionment. 13/7 ?49 Displaced by corporate expansion and mechanization, in many cases " removed" by the government itsalf, the poor and landless are driven to the frontiers, pushed into the marginal and mountainous uplands. There instead of new homesteads, they find that there are few public lands to be had because millions of hectares have been awarded under the Marcos government to logging, mining, and agribusiness concessions. More lands have been stripped of their timber and laid open for mining than at any time in Philippine history. Although the Philippine elite participate in these new essentially foreign oriented ventures the greatest benefits, like the logs and minerals themselves, are exported. Relatively few jobs are available to the inmigrating pioneer in Phese highly mechanized and capital-intensive operations. Harried by governmett and company forest guards they are relegated :o the steepest and most marginal. of areas. There, without the tools to properly develop them and with no secura land tenure, they become trapped in a cycle of land degradation and declining yields, which further impoverishes the pioneers and in a few years forces them to abandom the exhausted site. The consequences of this assault upon the landscape in which government endorsed logging and timber extraction has~been the dominant factor, and especially upon Philippine forests are frightening. The Philippines, which remained nearly completely clothed by rich and complex tropical finest at the beginning of this century, has been laid bare over more than 70% of its areas since then. The Philippines to my knowledge, has experienced one of the most rapid rates of deforstation in human history. Exposed to torrential monsoon rains vital soil nutrients accumulated over thousands of years and formerly held tightly by the vegetation cover have literally been washed away. Massive erosion has ensued and millions of tons of soil have been lost. From the mountains to the sea, an interrelated ecological chain reaction ha s ensued. Denuded watersheds result in floods and lowland devastation. Without the absorbency of the natural vegetation,run off is rapid and erosive; silt and sediment back up behind dams and choke irrigation canals. Water tables fall, and the year round release of water from the highlands which makes dry season irrigation possible is destroyed. Estuarine systems, among the most productive of biological zones are disturbed. Delicate corals,the base of the entire coastal marine ecosystem,are smothered by deposits of eroded mountain soils. Typhoons are a natural phenomenon in the Philippines but the incredibly
!3/7 ?SO
destructive floods they have brcught in recent years are not natural disasters. The growing severity of these floods is related to the environmental damage the Philippines has experienced; and the loss of life a product of the increased vulnerability of the people many of whom have been pushed to the very edge of survival. They are social, economic, and ecological disasters. As tropical ecologists now generally agree many of the consequences of forest destruction are irreversible. At levels of destruction currently being experienced in the Philippines the regeneration of these ecological systems is precluded. As the Philippine bio-region is one of the most diverse and biologically rich on earth with many species unique to it alone, the cost in extinctions and loss of irreplaceable genetic material of incalculable future value cannot be measured. This is to say that permanent reductions in organiza-tion and complexity are being inflicted on the Philippine environment, which lower its vclue and life supporting ability. Philippine deforestation and the chain of ecological consequences I have described have direct bearing on both the Philippiae energy situation generally and the case of the Philippine nuclear reactor. It is within the context of national ecological destruction that present and future Philippine energy needs and their most appropriate solutions must be considered. The global energy crisis engendered by the oil embargo and OPEC price hikes has been acutely experienced in the Philippines as elsewhere in Third World. But the Philippine crisis has deeper roots. Economics dictate that the Philippines must achieve greater self-suf ficiency in energy. Logic compels that nation to make more efficient use of its domestic energy resources and to carefully develop those which remain available. The actual effect of many government actions and policies, however, has been to consistently undermine these objectives. A major infrastructural component of the Marcos development program has been large-scale hydro-electric proj ects, and power generation from hydro-electric sources has traditionally received emphasis in energy development. Until nuclear power came along these big and expensive showcase proj ects were among the most prestigious symbols of national development and progress in the Third World. The Aswan Dam in Egypt is probably the most well known example. 1377 )51
It is now apparent in the Philippines that the continued utility of the majority of the entire post-World War II series of hydro-electric developments, from Ambuklao to Pantaba gan, has been endangered. The economic justification of these giant and costly projects has been predicated on their projected ability to provide power and other benefits for generations. Watershed destruction above the dams has drastically decreased their life expectancies, and, unless a dramatic reversal occurs in Philippine govern =ent behavior, most of these dams, including those most recently constructed, have already entered their final years. Consistent government failure to restrain logging operations within catchement areas coupled with its abysmal record in resettling those displaced by the projects has resulted in widespread watershed deforestation. The accompanying vastly accelerated erosion is quickly filling the lakes behind the dams with sediment reducing their capacity to contain water volumes necessary for generating sustained year round power. Much of their flood control value has also been lost. Hence, by the dry season insufficient water volumes exist and power production must be curtailed. During my stay in the Philippines severe summer brownouts and shortages were common in Luzon. Many areas were left without electricity altogether in order to divett power to Manila; a serious enough situation that the Philippine military was placed on alert in those provinces. Nuclear power then provides no real answer to the Philippine energy crisis. Any meaningful solution necessarily depends on prompt and decisive action to protect existing energy resources and production systems, and to conserve those which remain. Such a solution will also demand a government energy program that the Philippine people themselves can identify with and embrace. This has not been the case and as a result, little popular supports exists for government proj ects. Todav in Northern Luzon the Philippine government pursues a military y . solution to its energy problems by making war against the Bontoc and Kalinga peoples in order to implement the ill-conceived Chico River Basin Development Project which will destroy much of their homeland. There and throughout Mindanao, with the Cotabato - Agusan River Basin Development Proj ect, government energy projects face serious opposition. Based on my visits to these areas, I am convinced that this opposition is justified for the Marcos government has failed at every opportunity to demonstrate good faith in its dealings with those to be displaced by them. i5// ?S2 Nuclear power provides no solution, and there are many indications that it was never intended to. In my understanding, the genesis of the Philippine nuclear plant was not from a process of rational appraisal of potential energy sources in which the most economic and promising were selected. It is widely recognized, for example, that Philippine geothermal sources offer a less expensive alternative. Purchasing the reactor was not a planning decision made on the basis of a genuine assessment and evaluation, but a political decision based on an entirely different set of considerations. That is,it was a proj ect imposed in contradiction to previously established priorities. In a nation where millions live in absolute poverty. where human needs cry out for attention where resources are destroyed for lack of government support for environmental protection, the diversion of more than a billion dollars in development capital to a single project of questionable derivation is of major significance. A billion dellars, for instance, could employ tens of thousands in reforestation, watershed restoration, and smaller-scale projects producing both more power at the same cost and a much more equitable distribution of benefits. The political element in the reactor sale and U.S. Export-Import Bank loan was obvious in the USAID Mission as well. This loan, dwarfing every other category of U.S. development aid and making the reactor the major U.S.-assisted project in the country, bore no relation to existing USAID priorities and contradicted in many respects their intent. The decision to support the reactor export did not arise from the development side of the U.S. Mission. It did not reflect a decision made in response to Philippine development needs. It was instead, from its inception, a decision made in response to commercial concerns external to the Philippines. The imposed nature of the nuclear proj ect is additionally manifest in the " choice" of site. In fact, there was no " choice" at all, but a unilateral decision. Every indication I received from Philippine scientists ordered to carry out environmental studies associated with the proj ect was that such studies were meaningless since the location had been pre-ordained from above and was not subject to change. Actual construction had begun before these studies were even completed. These scientists expressed deep resentment and told me they felt they were being used to erect a facade of scientific responsibility around a proj ect in which serious environment, health, and safety considerations had essentially been neglected. An air of unreality rather than resentment typified
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discussions I had with American Scientists I became acquainted with who were employed by the EBASCO Corporation, a major contractor to the reactor project. These scientists employed in the ecological and geologist site. studies joked with me about the insanity of their work given the inevitability of the nuclear plant which was already being built. Here they were living in houses already constructed for the technicians who were to operate the reactor while they carried out research that should have preceded any decision on its physical location. They also expressed their personal disgust in what they felt were Westinghouse improprieties related to excessive and inflated project costs presented to the Philippines; In the words of one of them: "This project is a gigantic ripoff from top to bottom." Seismic events are a frequent occurrence in the Philippines and I vividly recall a conversation I had with an official of the National Pollution Control Commission NPCC shortly af ter the 1976 earthquake and tidal wave which killed thousands in Mindanao. The NPCC was at that time the principal government regulatory agency in environmental matters, and the official I spoke with was a nuclear safety engineer detailed to the reactor project. I asked him whether the Westinghouse reactor could withstand an earthquake of that magnitude. He smiled, shrugged his shoulders and threw up his hands in a gesture that lef t no doubt that it was anybody's guess. I pressed further asking hin if he felt the reactor was safely sited. He looked around the room to ensure none of his superiors had over heard my questions. "No," he replied. There is no question that the project was imposed upon the people of Bataan. In the course of my work I received reports describing government harassment of local citizens and intimidation of those who raised questions concerning the reactor's safety and local impacts. I visited Morong and was able to observe the adverse con enquences of plant construction upon local marine resources. I must say that none of what I learned about the reactor export really surprises me. My own experiences within the Philippine government and in the countryside of Palawan and elsewhere had indicated that the many "'tms which surrounded it were not unique. Top-down planning and the impositiot " development" upon the people is an essential characteristic of the authoritarian political system erected by President Marcos since 1972. Under martial law traditional avenues for the expression of popular concerns and for public participation in 13 / / ..'5 4
government decisions which affect them have been closed. These avenues have not been replaced by the new bodies and local organizations created by the Marcos regime which, in my experience, were neither authentically representative nor independent. The hierarchy of New Society organizations does not work from the bottom up, raising and articulating people's concerns; but from the top down as a chain of command to enforce social control and implement government decisions at the local level. This autocratic centralization would pose serious risks even in the most benevolent of dictatorships since the government has effectively isolated itself from the citizenry. Furthermore, as I learned, there is not reason to ascribe either general benevolence or a receptivity to popular concerns to the Marcos government. In Palawan tens of thousands were displaced by government actions which carved their homelands into corporate fiefdoms. The entire province was divided up among logging, mining, and agribusiness interests and subjected to an externally dominated program of development from which the local population was systematically excluded from participation. Before its people's eyes the Palawan environment, one of the richest in the nation, was being ravaged with complete disregard for its future. In the Palawan planning proj ect I advised we were expected to correct this deficiency. This was an impossible task as the damage had already been done. We found that government-sanctioned corporate " development" there had left the people of Palawan worse off than they were previously. It fell to the NEDA-Palawan proj ect not to prepare an ecologically sustainable plan, but, rather, to pick up the pieces of shattered local societies and provide the immediate health, nutrition, and social services now more necessary than ever before. In Palawan as in Bataan, and indeed as has been the repeated case across the nation, people suffered. The message they tried to send the government was not initially one of opposition to its aims. The Philippine people are among the most patriotic I have encountered, with even the poorest ready to make sacrifices for the national good. The message the people sent was one of pain. We are being hurt by these programs they said: They called for help. Time and time again, the government response was not dialogue, not help, but repression. To question government programs has become " subversive" in the Philippines. This is the reason t.he jails, stockades, and prisons have been filled with political prisoners since martial law. In Palawan and in the other frontiers the Marcos government has
elected to control the people rather than control the pillage. This control also extends to the scientific and academic community. Only vestiges remain of a once proud tradition of academic freedom and excellence at the National University where I taught. Discourse is chilled by the presence of government agents and informers in the classroom and campus. Faculty critical of government programs or whose research may question government claims are punished, their careers destroyed. A close colleague of mine whose work challenged government energy development programs in Northern Luzon and documented its adverse impacts was twice imprisoned without charge and silenced. A don't rock the boat attitude and non-controversial mediocrity has replaced incisive scholarship, social criticism, , and scientific independence. My Palawan investigations also revealed numerous conflicts of interest related to the role of high government officials in private development projects. The select list of principal beneficiaries of Palawan development reads like a Who's Who of the New Society and the Marcos Cabinat, including the First Family itself. It was generally recognized within NEDA that certain provinces were "his" and certain others "hers" referring to the personal interests of the President and First Lady. It is my considered judgement that the Marcos government serves itself and not the Philippine people. The Marcos claim has been that national development was stalemated by party politics, patronage, and corruption prior to martial law reforms. One of the most important justifications for .the Marces usurptation of dictatorial powers was that it would permit stream-lined and rational economic development under the neutral control of planners and technocrats rather than the politicians. As I was to observe, however, there was constant political interference within government economic and planning mechanisms and the decision-making process. That is the political expediency and personal interests of the Marcos regime replaced all others. The environmental program, for example, of the Philippine government - both its inclination to protect the health and safety of the population and its willingness to promote development which conserves rather than abuses national resources - has been impressive on paper but negligible in practice and application. With respect to environmental protection government actions were taken which consistently disregarded the recommendations of its own scientists and adviring bodies. To a certain extent, it may be said thag given the scale of the environ-mentally impacting projects being advanced by the government, it lacks the capacity to Provide adequate ecological evaluation of their merits at early stages 1 ~T / / >S6
in' their design, planning, and implementation. Insufficient capacity also exists for related follow through, including generalized ecological monitoring, competent regulation, inspection, and enforcement of environmental and pollution control standards. These problems, however, could be overcome if the will existed on the part of the government to do so. Such will does not in fact, exist. The Philippines has some of the most progressive environmental regulations to be found in the Third World; many of them Presidential Decrees carefully crafted by Philippine scientists not to obstruct development or retard it, but to insure ' he wise and sustainable employmn t of the nacion's resources for the public good and its protection from unnecessary hazard. In my experience virtually none of these measures were enforced. In many cases implementing orders and guidelines to translate these Decrees into action had never been written. For this reason the Philippines has become a haven for industries of the advanced nations seeking to evade fomestic environmental standards; and the Philippine population is exposed to risks that would not be countenanced in the developed world. The information I have provided has outlined the context of martial law, economic development, and the Philippine environment in which the Westinghouse reactor export must be understood. I have suggested that the problems which surround it -- its imposed nature, the repression of opposition, its inappropriate-ness respect to real energy and development needs of the Philippine people, and the egregious disregard for the safety, health, and well-being of those affected -- are not unique to this particular proj ect but characteristic of the Philippine situation today. What makes the reactor export a special case, of course, is its immense potential for destruction. As we have learned from the Three Mile accident nuclear technology, even under the best of conditions, remains experimental, unpredictable, and risky. To approve the Westinghouse export is to permit this experiment to be conducted under the worst of conditions, and I shudder to consider what might ensue. As we in the United States re-evaluate our own commitment to nuclear power we must be doublely cautious about its imposition upon others. Westinghouse and the nuclear industry as a whole may have made an expensive mistake in prematurely commiting themselves to a nuclear future that may now never
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come to pass. If this is the case and their overcommitment to an unproven technology has caught them short and brought financial problems it should not fall to the Philippine people to bear the burden of this error. To permit the export of the Westinghouse reactor for reasons of commercial expedience serves only to compound the mistake. As the Marcos regime has already demonstrated the safety of millions would rest not on the complex of regulatory process, review procedures, and environ-mental safeguards which protect us here; not on the checks and balances, the freedoms, the accountability of public figures in democratic society, but upon the whims and political fate of one man, and one man alone. Nuclear power is too dangerous to take such a chance. The proposed nuclear export to the Philippines, therefore, is a colossal gamble. Once the reactor is in operation, we will have placed our bet and can only cross our fingers. The Marcos government imposes its programs upon the Philippine people because otherwise, they would not be accepted. The economic development policies he has pursued have attracted capital, investment, and aid. They have stimulated a boom, a surge of economic activity, but not real development. Marcos is indeed building a New Society, but his New Society is a palace with no room for the Philippine people. Moreover, it is a palace built upon a foundation of ecological destruction that cannot be sustained. The great social costs, the belt-tightening and sacrifice Marcos demanded of the people as temporary deprivations in the name of developmen*. and the future good are now permanent fixtures of Philippine life under Martial law. They cannot be repaid as long as the natural wealth of the Philippines continues to be squandered and recklessly drained. Substantial popular support for the Marcos regime no longer exists. The prospect for civil war in the Philippines is a very real one. Continued support of the Marcos government by the United States as would be demonstrated by the reactor export opposes us against the people of the Philippines; people who have been among our firmest friends. In 1977, according to an EBASCO geologist employed at the nuclear project, New People's Army cadres were in control of the mountains surrounding the Morong reactor site. As he told me, the only way he could accomplish his field studies was with their cooperation and approval. We both agreed that this was no place to send a nuclear reactor. For this and for i377 158 all the reasons I have presented as an ecologist, a specialist in Philippine development, an American citizen, and a friend of the Philippine people, I respectfully urge the Commission, not to approve the Westinghouse export. m 6w $l i k'?? Subscribed and Sworn Notary: to me on a rr t 4 1;71 My commission expires y,/ Commission excites 9 20-83
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