This was a news story published by CNN Philippines last April 23, 2022 with the headline "Mitigating
effects of climate change a private-public collaboration -- advocates".
This article was written during this year's celebration of Earth Day. According to the article, today is the
time wherein the public and private sector should collaborate strongly to be able to combat the effects
of climate change in the Philippines. It was highlighted by Angel Mata Jamilan, founder of The Low
Impact, a public database dedicated to give the public news, ideas, statistics, and other relevant
information on how to start and maintain a sustainable lifestyle, that individual efforts alone to shift and
encourage others to practice sustainable living will not resolve the problem of climate change.
The statement was further agreed upon by Roderick de Castro, executive director of Business for
Sustainable Development. He agreed that to be able to combat the problem of climate change,
government policies should be in place. Among the problems de Castro had specifically mentioned that
the government needs to resolve were the problems regarding the amount of carbon dioxide emission
by coal-fired plants and the need for the country to shift into using renewable energy.
Industrialization, undeniably, contributes to the massive pollution index of the country. Pollution from
industrialization can be identified as a negative externality. It is said to be so because pollution affects
the health of the country's manpower. Although in economics, there is a so called 'polluter pays'
principle that states that whoever contributes to the pollution in the environment should support
themselves in the quest of mitigating the effects of the pollution it will produce in a way that the people,
all living forms, and all biological process in the planet will not be affected and disrupted, not all the
time offenders are being fined. So the negative consequences of these actions will bounce back, not
only to human beings but also to other living organisms on the planet.
Pollution had been linked as one of the factors that might cause a country to hurdle along its way to
economic growth. Taken from the case of India in 2013, India lost almost 8.5% in their GDP due to their
increased costs of expenses for people's welfare and the sudden death among the labor force due to air
pollution. Also, children being exposed at a very young age to pollution will have an imminent effect in
their development stage which might be carried until their adolescence, and will cause disruption in
their health. There will be less, unhealthy or even no army of workforce reserved for the years to come.
The numbers have made their statements, that when the Philippines aims its way to economic
development, it should be sustainable economic development. Because economic development will not
be a complete development when its country and its countrymen suffer.