FRAMEWORK FOR OUR ENVIRONMENTAL

CAMPAIGNSPRESENTED BY THE KALIKASAN

PEOPLE’S NETWORK FOR THE ENVIRONMENT

11 August 2015

ENVIRONMENT

BASIC ENVIRONMENTAL PRINCIPLES

PEOPLE HAVE AN INSEPERABLE AND INTEGRAL PART OF NATURE1

SOCIETY AND ECONOMY MOLDS MAN’S OVERALL RELATIONSHIP WITH NATURE2

Slavery

Primitive Communal

Agricultural Industrial

Feudalism

Capitalism

Hunting and Gathering

DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY

PRIMITIVE-COMMUNAL

• No classes

• Natural resources are considered as ‘commons’

• Utilization of nature is based on subsistence

SLAVE SOCIETY

• Rise of classes and the concept of ownership

• Production developed with the advent of slaves that created surplus production owned by lords or masters

• Relation of masters to nature is similar to their relation to slaves –exploitation to serve the interests of the masters

• Production and trade further developed with the advent of settled lands, agriculture

• The dominant social contradiction is the relation of big landlords, who own huge tracts of land, and the subservient peasants who till them

• Exploitation by landlords of nature remains

FEUDAL SOCIETY

CAPITALIST SOCIETY

• The gap between the oppressor and the oppressed classes greatly widened with the rise of capitalists dominating over workers

• Production greatly expanded but was dirty and wasteful, as it based on super profits and over-production

• Greatly worsened the exploitation of the poor and the environment

Nature of Capitalism• Maximizes production to achieve the

biggest possible profit margins

• Results in anarchist, wasteful and dirty production

• Inevitably results into a monopoly over production, resources, and capital

• Distribution of monopoly capitalists among themselves over markets and raw materials

MONOPOLY CAPITALISM: SYSTEM IN CRISIS3

CAPITALISM IS THE ROOT OF CRISIS

Monopoly capitalism• Concentration of capital to a few big

corporations• Super profits taken from the wages

of workers and plunder of environment

• Crisis of overproduction• Globalization that pushes dirty and

plunderous industries to colonies and neo-colonies

ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS

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• The rapid destruction of the environment is the direct result of the rapid and unabated plunder or resources for the interests of a few

THE PHILIPPINE CRISIS IS ROOTED IN GLOBALIZATION4

FALSE NOTIONS AND SOLUTIONS BY ‘ENVIRONMENTALISM’5

To divert attention from the roots of the environmental crisis, imperialists promote the concept of ‘environmentalism’ to distance environmental issues from the issue of class contradictions in society.

ARE THESE CORRECT IDEAS?

• Change in individual attitude and lifestyle as primary solution

• Overpopulation as primary root of environmental crisis

• Promotion of under-development of societies to preserve the environment

ARE THESE CORRECT IDEAS?

• Valuation and privatization of all aspects of ecosystem to ‘give value’ to the environment

• Allocation of capital to green technologies as ‘offset’ or as primary solution

• Reforms in policy, programs and projects, and elections as primary solutions

These solutions, on their own, do not address if not directly avoid the root issue of over production driven by corporate greed of big capitalists and other ruling classes.

KATANGIAN NG ATING PAKIKIBAKA PARA SA KALIKASAN

SCIENTIFIC

The issue of the environment is firmly connected to economic and political issues of our society and the world at large.

PATRIOTIC

The struggle for the environment is linked to the overall struggle for economic independence, national patrimony, and democracy.

MASS-ORIENTED

The protection of the environment is the struggle for genuine people’s development through genuine land reform and national industrialization.

We should all recycle. But recycling is not enough. Recycling will never be enough = it doesn’t get to the core of the problem.

But the good thing about such an all pervasive problem is that there are so many points of intervention.

There are people working here on saving forests and here on clean production. People working on labor rights and fair trade and conscious consuming and blocking landfills and incinerators and, very importantly, on taking back our government so it is really is by the people for the people.

- Annie Leonard, Story of Stuff

Remember that the old way didn’t just happen by itself. It’s not like gravity that we just gotta live with. People created it. And we’re people too. So let’s create something new.

- Annie Leonard, Story of Stuff