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Atienza spoils population-health-environment confab with pro-life bombast
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TAGAYTAY CITY, Philippines - Environment Secretary Jose Atienza Jr stuck out like a sore thumb during last weekend's 3rd Population Health and Environment Conference here when he insisted that the unabated population growth is not the root of the poverty problem of the country.
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Atienza in his keynote speech said that the high poverty rate in the country was caused by mismanagement and not by the high population.
Although he agreed that the population, health and environment should be integrated, Atienza insisted that the "sacredness of the human life" should be the main priority.
"You talk about environment, how about the environment of the human body? All life is sacred especially human life," he said to the more than 300 social scientists, policy makers, NGO representatives and scientists who attended the three day seminar at Taal Vista Lodge.
Atienza, who heads the Catholic-backed organization, Couples for Christ, said that other countries are now paying the price for violating the "sacredness of life" because their population is now declining and becoming older.
"We are now the source of manpower for these countries," said Atienza to the very quiet audience. A fourth of the audience instead went outside to smoke or drink coffee.
"It is rare to have your keynote speaker invoking contrary views to what we are advocating," said Ramon San Pascual, executive director of the Philippine Legislators' Committee on Population and Development (PLCPD), one of the organizers of the conference.
"Life is sacred not only when a child is about to be born but when they are born. Sacredness of life also means planning well your family," said San Pascual.
"There is a huge evidence that poverty remains a huge problem because we have failed to come out with a consistent population policy," he added.
"We look into his (Atienza's) view and I look into mine and see what's best," said Cebu Rep. Nerissa Soon-Ruiz, who followed Atienza's speech.
"PHE are scorching issues and I believe that population is the most pressing of these issues," she said.
"Poor Filipinos have big families not because they want to but because they have no access to population services," she said.
She said that the Millennium Development Goals committee, which she chairs in the House is looking into 57 legislative measures, which seek passage.
Richard Skolnick, a director of the US-based Population Resources Bureau, said that 20 percent of deaths in the country are environmental in nature and surely preventable.
He said that he agreed with Atienza that poor governance is partly at fault for the problems in the country but he said that the Arroyo administration should look into the "proper reduction" of the population rate and improve the environmental state of the country.
Skolnick said that he was a high school exchange program in Laoag in 1966 and saw worsening population and environment problems whenever he visited the area.
"There were 33 million Filipinos in 1966. Now we have three times as much," he said.
source::
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