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| Photo by Romeo Ranoco/Reuters |
Partido ng Manggagawa
(Labor Party-Philippines)
12 November 2013
Capitalism is destroying the
planet. Now we suffer.
The horror of devastations
unleashed by monster-typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) upon eastern and central
Philippine regions is unspeakable. As of
writing, estimates on number of casualties and actual damages stay tentative
since many areas remain isolated and communications, power, road and port
systems are down.
Initial estimate made by the
provincial government of Leyte and the regional police put the death toll to at
least 10,000 as 70 to 80 percent of houses and structures along the typhoon’s
path were destroyed. In Tacloban City alone, city officials told the
media that the death toll ‘could go up’ to 10,000 as people died en masse from
surging tidal waves. As of the moment,
we have yet to account for some of our party members, including the leader of
the city’s federation of tricycle drivers and operators. Another member, a newly-elected village
official in another town of Southern
Leyte, is still without contact. We just keep on hoping that they have
survived the wrath of Haiyan. There is
also little information on Eastern Samar towns
where Haiyan made its first land fall from the Pacific.
Massive loss of lives and
destruction is indeed beyond words to describe.
The death toll is surely to climb up when actual rescue and retrieval
operations reach the isolated areas.
National and international aid are coming in but there will be
definitely a catastrophic scarcity on most of essential needs such as food,
water, power, housing and medicines as the national and local governments were
caught unprepared to deal with the colossal impact of Haiyan. And we still have four or five more typhoons
coming within this year, according to official weather forecasts.
The poor suffers the most
It is the poor, the army of low-income,
unemployed and underemployed people, who suffer the most in every
disaster. It is because they lack the
means to protect themselves during calamities and the ability to survive and
recover thereafter. Most of the poor,
both in rural and urban areas, live in hazard zones (slums, riverbanks, creeks,
coastlines, mountain slopes) which are prone to both natural and man-made
disasters. Their houses are made of
light materials just enough to cover them from sunshine and rains and not for
surging floods, landslides, or tidal waves.
Moreover, the country’s biggest employer, the agriculture sector, is
also first to suffer from the impact of both La Niña (floods) and El Niño (long
drought) which are now the common phenomenon due to climate change, endangering
further the country’s food security and employment opportunities.
Regrettably the poor don’t even
know why nature is so unkind to people, most especially to them. They have not been informed that today’s
wrath of nature is more man-made rather than which they usually consider as
natural phenomenon. They have yet to
understand that it was capitalism that exploited and destroyed this planet
beyond its limits, creating in effect a destructive fusion of economic, social
and climate crisis.
Philippines getting nature’s wrath
The Philippines
has the highest stake and the strongest case to bring before the on-going
United Nation’s Climate talks in Warsaw,
Poland. Previous climate talks produced nothing as
the process is dominated by developed countries which are known for committing
something yet doing nothing. The timing
is indeed ‘tragically ironic’, one writer has pointed out. The 19th Conference of Parties
(COP) in Poland opened right after the Philippines was hit by the Earth’s
strongest typhoon in recent history, leaving thousands of dead from more than
four million people who suffered from what scientists consider as a monster
storm.
We welcome all international aid
and solidarity work coming from Northern countries. This is the least they could do – put their
one cent to climate emergencies such as the Philippines. But we demand more. We want climate justice. Capitalist countries must be held accountable
for climate crisis. They must be forced
to pay the climate debt they owe to poor nations.
Capitalist countries, we
emphasize, were responsible for climate crisis.
They emit more carbon to the atmosphere many times over what the poor
countries do. It is the greenhouse gases emitted from capitalist industries
which drove global temperature to rise to new levels. This causes climactic reactions like warmer
and rising sea levels and which eventually lead to the formation of monster
typhoons as in the case of Haiyan.
For over a century, capitalists
profited from nature by monetizing it rather than in protecting its rich
natural resource.
And it is the poor people and poor nations who suffer the most from the
climate crisis created by rich nations.
The Philippines
is among the topmost vulnerable countries.
In fact we have suffered enough from devastating typhoons such as Frank
(Fengshen, 2008), Ondoy (Ketsana, 2009), Sendong (Washi, 2011), Pablo (Bopha,
2012), and now Yolanda (Haiyan, 2013).
The worst may yet to come.
State of corruption and free market
What makes the crisis more
devastating is that Haiyan struck the Philippines when Filipinos are
still reeling from recent earthquake that killed hundreds of people. The monster storm also came when Filipinos
are fighting massive corruption scandals involving huge amount of public
service funds. Corruption in the Philippines
reduces the ability of both the national and local governments to respond to
climate emergencies of this magnitude as billions of public funds are lost to
official scams.
But more than that, the ruling
class’ full embrace of free market ideology since the 80’s made poor people
more vulnerable to present realities.
They therefore are equally responsible and must be held accountable for
the peoples’ miserable condition. Neoliberalism made government rely completely
on the private sector in creating employment.
Public services such as water and power were privatized. Prices of goods and services were
deregulated. These resulted to massive
unemployment and underemployment (close to 30%). Social infrastructure and services are in
poor state. Poverty incidence remains at
28 per cent while hunger incidence affects 19 per cent of the population.
Just imagine this number of poor
people living in one of the country’s poorest regions facing the wrath of
super-typhoons. The post-Haiyan images would speak more of their miserable
situation. They really are in dire need
of immediate aid and rehabilitation. Many have already resorted to confiscations
of available supplies in several stores and malls. We consider those as
justified actions and much better if collectively organized to isolate criminal
elements and individual push for survival. Where the government fails, the
people should collectively rise up.
We therefore warn the government
to avoid using force against our helpless people. The people need food, water and homes to
stay, not a police force to quell their spirit to survive. In the first place, a government that fails
to eradicate high level corruption has no justifiable reason to use force in
supressing the peoples’ desperate struggle for life.
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