The eternal urge to control the uncontrollable

BA'T di nabantayan nang maigi ng mainstream media ang mga proyekto ng DPWH? Hindi kaya dahil . . . sa word-phrase na "street gutter" pa lang, iba na ang pagkaintindi ng Philippine news journalism sa pagkaintindi ng civil engineering?
    At itong mga project engineers naman, nag-ocular inspection naman daw. Pero an "ocular inspection" is an inspection utilizing optical devices (lenses, microscopes, &c). Kaya ba di nila nakita ang kitang-kita na ng naked eye?

MGA kababayan, narito na rin lang tayo sa usapang pag-intindi at pagtingin, . . . sana'y tingnan na rin nating maigi ang concept behind dike (levee) projects itself. Tanong: bakit levee lang ang parating tinitingnan na solusyon o ang tinuturing na pangunahing solusyon sa pagsalba sa ating binabahang mga kababayan? After all, ang mga environmentalists o ecologists, halimbawa, hindi totally supportive sa konsepto ng levees.
    At para sa mga climate change-aware, ang kahit pa up-to-standard na levees na itatayo sa mga "sinking" areas ng bansa ay maaaring mawalan na ng saysay 25 years from now. In short, kung ang perang tinapon sa levees na iyan ay ginasta na lamang sa relocation, mas forward-looking pa sana. Bakit hindi ang mga nakatira sa bahaing lugar ang tanungin natin, in a participatory-budgeting manner? Dahil ang levees sa panahon ng rising seas, walang pinagkaiba sa Dolomite Beach.

On our continuing search for new solutions: a discussion with a security consultant

LET’S HAVE a break from all this debate about extrajudicial killings and about death squads and move to more positive stuff, like community development inputs. Or, perhaps we could move to such positive topics as community development that may actually offer alternative answers to these very problems at the top of the news, both directly and indirectly. Is that possible, please?
    Okay. So who do we talk to, then? Uhm, a politician or appointed government official with a plan perhaps? Hmm. Oh, I know, why don’t we talk to a humble security consultant working on solutions, like many others, from the sidelines of the debate?

    Oh, I know, I know. Security consultant, did I say? I realize, of course, that our impression of security consultants whenever we hear that phrase is either of 1) people behaving like loyal knight warriors to kings and princes corrupt or otherwise and deeply knowledgeable about things to do with security and not much else, or 2) a bunch subcontracted by military agencies to implement operations that cannot, must not, be attached to the name of the military force of the land, especially when it involves securing private corporate interests or assassination. But a few years back, during a meeting about an action-genre comic book project that has yet to see the light of day, I had the opportunity to meet Hubert Posadas, a humble security consultant who debunked either of these popular impressions. His concerns definitely went beyond the usual action-genre defense and offense concerns of security science and art and explored social empowerment dreams we usually associate with social entrepreneurs.

    Recently, Hubert and I crossed paths again on Facebook in the light of current anxieties about the goings-on in the administration of Rodrigo Duterte. Though somewhat sympathetic to the direction the government is currently taking, he is far from being uncritical of its overall management of its operations while critical also of mere criticality. It is in that last, in the criticism of mere criticality, that our conversation led to an interesting zone, a zone where, it turned out, he was presently involved in something that economically empowered besieged niches of society.

    As in our comic book project conversation with painter Marcel Antonio (who was supposed to be the prime artist of the comic book and the one who introduced Hubert to yours truly), Hubert was now, again, not just talking about defense and offense concerns in the security sense but also in the cultural sense and even the economic sense. He was now speaking as a co-stockholder of a community security and permaculture-advocating social enterprise called Dagyaw.

Hubert Posadas of the community security and permaculture social enterprise Dagyaw
(Photo by Vanjoe Clemente)

Hubert with UN consultants

    The concept of Dagyaw as both a community security and permaculture-advocating program formally started in 2015 with the challenge of securing a Mindoro tribe as a client besieged by threats of losing parts of its ancestral domain to certain interest groups. This was all happening in the wake of the killings of Lumad chiefs in Mindanao who lost tracts of their ancestral domain to mining interests. As a security consultant who has been everywhere, however, Hubert has learned that not everything about security involves the use of force by a hired group to counter the force of another (hired) group. Sometimes the concept of security is better served by allowing both sides of a conflict or near-conflict to surrender the concept altogether in order to arrive at a win-win situation for all, without each side giving up a claim to anything. Or perhaps security as a concept is best served by the ultimate medium that should be way, way better than any hired security force: the idea of community security.
    Community security is probably familiar to those who've heard of the OSCE-organized Community Security Initiative (CSI) of Kyrgysztan. Or of the Community Security Trust (CST) of the UK. The first, CSI, emphasized bridge-creation between the police and the community, while the last, CST, was focused on community organizing for self-defense. Corollarily, we might remember that in the aftermath of Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan, barangay governments and their tanods disintegrated into individuals looking after their own families, with other virtual leaders sprouting up to take the place of those original security organizations that momentarily disappeared (the Pareto principle at work); that would be an example of a natural organization of community personnel for community security.

    Now, talking about Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan, earlier than his Mindoro project Hubert was party, along with several foreigners, to a permaculture training project in Antique—like we said, this was in the wake of the problems that arose from the Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan catastrophe. This was perhaps where Hubert’s idea of securing communities or institutions started to expand, to include food security and economic security, for a program that may fit other types of besieged clients, for instance informal settlements.
    And so, currently, in an Antipolo informal settlement site, you would see Hubert’s group focused on introducing a type of community security that 1) augments the government’s anti-drug dealers program and other policing action against exploiters of the inhabitants of the informal settlement, and 2) bridges the gap between informal settlers and owners of idle lands. In the #2 part of this plan, the informal settlers enter into training with Hubert’s group to be empowered to enter into contract with the owners of the idle lands to permaculture-farm those lands with either monetary or produce rent. What results from this is an economic liberation of a percentage of the community’s unemployed, the provision of self-sustenance to a part of the settlement’s food needs, and the liberation from idleness of the idle lands themselves. We must also take into account the fact that the concept of permaculture is itself a form of security from food source annihilation by catastrophes, if only because it is agriculture that emulates the ecological patterns of nature instead of limiting produce to one source, thus providing a community with surviving food sources after a catastrophe like a strong typhoon has hit it.
    Here are parts of our threads of conversation (adapted for this blog):

Me: . . . the Philippine problem with democracy is that "we the Filipino people" have a political culture of always wanting to fight not for our personal causes primarily but for politicians and such personalities, primarily. We would fight wars and die for these in the name of our politician or celebrity or sports team/athlete or favored TV channel. In that sense, "we the Filipino people" are still living in a monarchic system before the occurrence of the events that led to the French Revolution. . . . That is why I’m advocating for the urgent incorporation of direct democracy instruments into government as what could take us out of that state.

Hubert: Ah, but we are growing. All the institutions are being questioned, all crumbling, in the current government. Catharsis begins with these kinds of events, helped by the dawning of awareness given insight by (various people, like you). Frame the positive outcome and prescription and see that the change is already here with (such people as you). Know that it is hard to break old habits but easy to create new ones. That is why the revolution in psychology has been to steer away from talking about the past and more on reframing the positive outcome one wants to produce.

    Conditioned helplessness is the condition wherein one finds oneself constantly complaining without seeing a solution. The mind must work to find a proof of concept, not just to discuss logics.

    The ability to train the mind to see a problem as a situation is the first skill in training the mind to find the solution. That is why we keep changing our leaders without success, because we only know what we do not want without knowing what we need to do. Most Filipinos think that the rationale for a movement is in finding a fault and in asking others to join in agreeing to find fault or to a found fault and to rally behind that negative statement. They are actually talking about a reaction, not a revolution.

    A revolution is a dynamic of change from one state to another. Without a clear scalable proof of concept, it never really becomes a true movement. I think change begins with a small group with clearly defined action that proves a new reality. Often, everything else around is reaction.

Me: That’s true. But who make up that group and what kind of change they’re advocating is crucial. Historian Xiao Chua said, on a Net25 talk show, something like, "I don't blame the Americans for keeping to their interests. Ang problema is how well we fight for ours." Aside from the “how well,” mahalaga ro’n ang “fighting for our interests” part. And in relation to our common concern, sa tingin ko natumbok ni Xiao Chua rito sa sinabi niya ang anatomiya ng lumpenbourgeoisie-ness ng ating lumpenbourgeois politicians na hindi nawawala sa paghahanap ng ibang amo. Kung ang bagong mga amo ng pagka-lumpenbourgeois mo ay mga Chinese creditors and investors at hindi na American o European creditors and investors, yun lang ang nabago; lumpenbourgeois ka pa rin.

Hubert: Tama ka, bro. Ngayon, pa’no natin maooperationalize yung changes pregnant in the situation you exposed? Currently my group is starting a bottom-up approach with some communities, using an initial framework. Maybe you can help us with it. Kailangan ng proof of concept, pero kailangan din i-mekaniko yung conceptual framework derived from real conditions. Nag-umpisa kami sa baseline data gathering, papunta na kami sa community organizing.

Me: Pareho tayo ng paniniwala diyan sa necessity of proof of concept, to depart from the pure utopia level of such political concepts as left libertarianism. I was actually lobbying my mates in a group that was for a moment devoted to the concept of direct democracy, pero masyadong marami ang obsession ng grupo kaya naging kalat. I was lobbying for the formation of a direct democracy party of sorts, not necessarily with the aim of placing candidates in an election but perhaps of endorsing some. But, anyway, I was primarily lobbying for our group to start our rise at the bottom, by educating barangays on the availability of direct democracy options, starting with barangay officials who would want to cooperate or might even encourage their citizens to participate in this cultural thrust. I was thinking, one barangay people’s initiative alone succeeding would be worth covering, if I were a TV network, as it would be a first—as far as I know—and would have the potential of becoming a model for other barangays to emulate. A new culture of participatory democracy could be jumpstarted there, with the cooperation of the media.

Hubert: In our case naman, we have a good framework that is scalable. We introduce the concept of community security to address an immediate benefit and something to exercise direct democracy with. This framework enables what we call our clients to technically increase their property value and create sustainable food security, thereby creating place-based economics, integrate informal settlers into the mainstream economy, mobilize "tambays", and so on. (We even have an internet media program to cover and document their progress.)

    So, this setup enables what we call our clients to immediately address their basic human needs, prepare them to survive and thrive during disasters, and foster back old values and culture like bayanihan and pakikitungo, pakikiisa, etc. We are even incorporating gamifications in order to land social targets that the shareholders agree upon. The program was designed with a psychologist and an organization development consultant to maximize traction on the ground. We are interested in getting more experts on board in essentially a reality show to create a proof of concept.

Me: This is nice. But what I'm interested in is how this can expand to inhabit national space and national culture. The usual way for extending community-specific experiments into adoption by and for the national evolution is through a political ideological framework as vehicle, thus through empathies like those for social liberal structures, socialist structures, direct democracy or participatory democracy structures, even utopian anarchist structures. So, how a social experiment becomes part of a governmental ideological policy is what I’m interested in, to go beyond being a mere isolated project initiated by a social enterprise, to go beyond being the aid product of corporate social responsibility.

    Like, halimbawa, even in international relations between states, there's really no such thing as aid or donation na walang kapalit. And although corporate social responsibility projects may require no “payment” from its beneficiaries other than a sense of gratitude, it either sustains itself through government “recognition” of their actions or through profits from contributions coursed through foundations. So I’m looking for that kind of aid that doesn’t end as a charitable product that was also profitable for its donor, but an aid that evolves and becomes a part of the national culture.

    So, can a social enterprise-initiated culture at the bottom blossom into something that would not just end up being a CNN Hero thing that governments don’t absorb? Can it become part of national policy, in short a part of government culture?

    Now, I know that you have an answer to that query of mine. Pero, before you answer that, let’s talk first about this obsession ng government ngayon, the illegal drug trade, which some are happy to see finally addressed as a priority even while some are not happy to see it take the limelight of sole focus.

Hubert: Ah, meron ding magandang nangyayari dyan. Yung exposure ng malalim na sitwasyong-panlipunan na ito, kasama na ang iba pang sitwasyong-panlipunan na pinag-uusapan na ngayon, ay di dapat maliitin, kahit na medyo di pino ang nangyayaring pag-address sa mga ito.

Me: Yun. Yun din naman ang magandang kontribusyon ng pamahalaang Duterte, at least in terms of pushing our awareness of the problem to the forefront, the debates on how it's being addressed notwithstanding. Kahit pa ito ay mapatumba as a war, kung sakali, mananatili na sa ating memorya ang reyalidad na inungkat ng Pangulo para ito’y makita ng ating matagal nang tulog na mga mata. Kaya if, kung sakali, biglang may mangyari at kakailanganing pumalit ni Leni Robredo sa trono, it would be interesting to see kung ano ang gagawin niya sa war on drugs, dahil hindi niya ito pupuwedeng itapon sa tabi bigla, bagamat puwede niyang tawagin ng ibang pangalan. That, along with the war on other manifestations of elitism by the ruling class which Duterte brought out into the forefront of the conversation (never mind if his still seems partisan and personal in reality instead of truly ideological).

    Afer all, for as long as we are managed by this ruling class, whether it's an opposition-friendly ruling class or a ruling party-friendly ruling class, we are never going to be united, simply because the elements in this niche (the lumpenbourgeoisie) are working for themselves and their factions and not for the nation, thus necessarily dividing us who are easily duped into siding with the factions the way TV viewers have been duped into joining either a kapamilya or kapuso or kapatid kind of brand loyalism.

Hubert: Tama. Tumbok at tumpak.

    Duterte is a reaction to the historical inadequacy of our ruling class. Now, he may not have the right solution, but his reaction should bring about a coherent response from the citizenry. It is about time we disengage from being purely pro or against in our respective stance with regards to this leader, but sift through the destruction of sacred cows and old boxes to propose and act on the changes we want. That is why I for one do not complain but act.

    Extrajudicial killings, for instance, are a reaction to a corrupt judicial system, so in order to correct it I started to promote and train communities on the concept of community security to both address the drug problem and negate extrajudicial killings. Also, I do not cry over dead drug dealers but advocate engaging the PLEB to strengthen the cases against cops killing the innocent. One of my groups has adopted two community test sites and will start training other village security forces to adopt a framework that uses involving all community shareholders to address the problem in cooperation with traditional service providers. This is a highly technical program that is mission-driven to address the problem. We do not complain. We act on the ground.

Me: Right. So, mabalik tayo do’n sa tanong ko in relation to your other social enterprise that combines community security and permaculture training: again, what I'm interested in is how this can expand to inhabit national space and national culture. Like I said, and to repeat it here, the usual vehicle for expanding community-specific experiments into adoption by and for the national evolution is a political ideological framework, thus through empathies like those for social liberal structures, socialist structures, direct democracy or participatory democracy structures, even utopian anarchist structures, and so on.

Hubert: Mas maganda magtagpo, dahil—on the one hand—kadalasan yung political parties and their programs ay nauunsyame sa IRR. Puro theory, walang binti sa lupa. Most current social changes happen on the outlying, grassroots level; kaya nga lumabas yung community security framework, permaculture aid, at iba pa, dahil nauna yung grappling ng proof of concept, tapos napauso pa. Pati sa libro ni Maxwell Gladwell napatunayan na change comes in the form of a virus. The initial cell is important, mapa-Arab Spring man, Orange Movement man, o internet revolution. Proven na rin yun sa experience ko sa community work. Di mo kailangan i-convince ang lahat. Magsisimula ka lang with a small tribe, tapos kunin mo yung parehong group mo. Pano magpakilos ng isang toneladang kalabaw? Kunin mo yung ilong. :-) Anyway, lahat naman ng pagbabago nagsisimula sa maliit, hindi ito putok sa malaki.

    On the other hand naman, yung experience naman ng community security and permaculture aid ay bottom-up, eventually leading to a national level. Three-tier milestone. From one local proof of concept, the cell expands to the municipal/regional level, then national.

    Sa second tier, meron din kasing opening sa local government level. Polity at the bottom is allowed to create policy. Wala lang naggawa ng technical framework to do it. Yung direct democracy din kasi merong inherent weakness in that it is inefficient without an educated and informed electorate, it could lead to the destruction of national resources at an increased rate unless a universal framework is first established based on a national resource management goal, with a proviso that you lock the policy on a sustainable asset management framework for the greatest good of all.

Me: Well, I would like to see how direct democratic votation on initiatives may have a weakness leading to the kind of risks you mention, Hubert, considering that votes on initiatives usually go through six months to three years of debates among all sectors of society affected by the initiatives. An initiative therefore that allows a provincial government to sell public black sand and corals to foreign governments would be debated on by fishermen and their leaders, and I don't see how such an initiative can win among such a directly affected people. In contrast, a representative democracy legislature can easily pass such a bill without the people knowing anything about it.

    Tsaka it is a chicken and egg thing. The people can never be educated about issues unless you involve them in those issues. The alternative is to stick to status quo, where the few representatives of the people decide for the millions.

Hubert: I guess tama ka. Chicken and egg. Kailangan lang i-mechaniko. Let’s keep in touch as we start documenting our pilot program and share it on the Net.

    Pwede ka ba namin mainterview?

    Or guest host kaya sa show?

Me: May show kayo? :) Saan?

Hubert: Yes. Here's a glimpse of "Dagyaw" on YouTube. :)

Me: Baka naman makasira lang ako sa videos ninyo pag may masabi akong parang devil's advocate ang labas. :D

Hubert: Hindi naman. . . . Yung attitude namin accepts that. Asset-based thinking and De Bono's Six Thinking Hats accept that attitude and incorporate it. Maganda rin para ma-juxtapose sa pag-ba-Bagani na prinopromote naming [no relation to the “baganis” accused of killing Lumad chiefs in 2015]. It is important because you have to start with hard facts, then you turn the problem on its head to see the solution. We just pass it through the process, which is to 1) get the "Problem", 2) turn it into a "Situation", then 3) pass it into a gap analysis, milestones and measurable results. Ang dagdag lang namin dito sa lahat ng ito ay yung pag-apply ng ilang theraputic tools and use of normative culture and practice.

    After the introductory episodes, we set into the laboratory site and use gamification to land social targets, like I said. Yung paggamit naman ng mga science ng mass marketing and propaganda ay gagamitin din naman, as in using the tools used against us to redirect them for social change.

    Mas enjoy kasi sa amin ang operators at hands-on ang approach, e. :-) Pati yung problema masarap!

Me: Pero di mo pa ako nasasagot. How could this evolve into a political system that creates its own laws instead of just adapting into the existing system of laws that could in the end swallow it (you know, property laws, for instance, that would conflict with an attitude towards the commons).

Hubert: Hahahaha! Our goals are closer than you think!
    The difference is in the method, something we would rather show in the series than discuss, to create the correct brand and psychological magic that we intend to create. The key words are: the commons, place-based economics, community well-being, etc. Show and tell and approach.
    This includes, on my part as Security Consultant, taking the bull by the horn and signing a contract of service to former rebels, their communities, as well as indigenous peoples with ancestral domain. Sila ang kliyente ng mga consultants, yung marketing vehicle yung show.

    The resultant political system will follow from the organized network of stakeholders in the place-based economics.

    Ngayon pa lang, yung mga exclusive villages are de-facto states and are a polity themselves. I researched legally if I may treat client communities, informal and marginalized, as well as IP (indigenous peoples) communities as . . . if legal ba to serve them itong mga usual service providers. Sabi ng mga lawyers, NICA, and the Left, pwede raw. Wala pa lang nag-isip gawin yun.

Me: It's good that you mentioned the word legal. Kasi, from what I'm reading, everything you're talking about and describing looks good. That's well and good, for as long as we're aware that there are existing political setups that can intervene and contradict your progress. The movie Avatar is a good example. :) But, seriously and realistically, the laws of the land can creep in anytime and stop you.

Hubert: Yup. Pero ang advantage kasi natin as consultants, e galing tayo dun sa dating system na yan. ika nga, na naging enlightened Intelligentsia doing social enterprise. Galing ako sa isang military contractor kaya alam ko lahat ng ins and outs. Mga kasama naman natin, mga galing corporations; pero yung mga dati nilang methodologies e mamimitigate. In fact, when they see the rationale, ma-aaikido mo pa sila. Biro mo, low start-up, high production and increase in property value that benefit all? Using their language, ika nga, pero addressing social needs, empowering the masses as Clients, and not perpetuating a mendicant's mind. (Yes, hindi mendicants or mere recipients of aid, kasi, siyempre), as Client, kasama dun sa package para sa kanila ang education, training, certification, marketing, etc. All kinds of services that will create a place-based economy and professional citizenry.

    Ang dami ng sundalo at rebelde na sawa na sa gera, farming na ang gusto.

    Yung gamit ng “law of the land”, likewise, pwede rin natin gamitin. Tayo rin naman ay pwedeng gumamit ng lawyer at gumapang. Lahat ng skills ng corporations kaya natin, yung internal wealth distribution lang natin ang iba sa kanila.

Me: Ang primary concern ko ay yung property laws, especially those governing land titles. Pero okay yan kung sa ancestral domain na collective na kaagad ang ownership. Pero paano pag lumabas na roon at ibang kliyente na?

Hubert: Several models ang nakikita namin. Yung sa PPP ang pasok natin, to be recognized by DENR. Yung sa normal community naman ay kukunin natin sa "Community Development Plan" na nakapasok sa Development Plan na pinapasa ng isang developer. Meron na tayong partner diyan. Pag nakita ng mga may-ari ng nakatiwangwang na lupa, nung mga informal settlers, at maging ng mga developers na 1) tataas ang property value at the lowest possible cost, 2) meron silang tax break in terms of environmental incentives under the Environmental Act, 3) pwede pala sila immediately kumita with the informal settlers as Clients and Partners at the production base, e di gagawa ka na ng trend. Yung mga middle-income din makakabili ng Farm Lifestyle plots and/or partner with the community.

    So, Communal Corporation? Socialist Corporation? Kahit ano pa itawag mo, yung operation achieves the stated goals.

Me: Interested din ako dun sa variants ng internal wealth distribution.

Hubert: Merit-based, to address the weakness of Communism, with its own privatized health care, housing, education, etc., to address the weakness of the Capitalist System.

Me: Saan kayo nagsisimula, sa public lands or private?

Hubert: Private na merong informal settlers. Napapayag ko yung developer, yung association at yung mga informal settlers na mag-partner imbes na mag-away.

    Pagtakbo nung model, larga ako sa communities on the edges at sa mga IP. Kailangan ipakita na nagwowork. Percentage ng increase in value ang usapan. Yung mga gap sa framework from the baseline data, i-sinub-contract ko sa mga proven organizations, community development experts, at research and academic orgs, para merong template that will be scaleable. Education naman is community-based, para walang perang maipit sa buildings and stockholders—mas magmura sa mga magulang, experiential, and based sa work for the community and the environment, tapos may kita yung mga teacher at module developers.

    Ang kailangan kasi, e . . . engineering stage pa kasi tayo. Yung general principles ay gagawing policy na pasok sa agreed vision, pero without proof of concept and an entrepreneurial spirit, hanggang vision lang yan. Ika nga, Pinoy tayo e. Kung sa kanila hindi pwede pagsamahin ang Socialism and Capitalism, sa atin pwede. Ism lang naman yan e.

Me: Ang old -isms naman ay nag-eevolve. Ang communism ng China ay ibang-iba na ang mukha ngayon, just as the American Dream is in need of a reengineering to keep it from turning into a nightmare.

Hubert: Good. Now, we can look at what is good about both experiences and come up with our own, based on our own ground conditions. That is pure lateral thinking!

    Ang point kasi nito, parang tubig ang kilos natin. Dun tayo sa merong objective conditions to succeed. Pag umabot sa point na uso na, e di labanan sa market of ideas; pero at least meron nang produktong madaling bilhin, which is yung samahan. Yung economic engine at yung political party iisa.

    Meron pang sweat equity na pang-bayad ng community shares, so ang labas ng tao hindi mendicant. Binayaran niya yung services ng training, certification, benefits. Hinde siya lalabas na kawawang tupa.

Me: One additional question, pre. How do you avoid conflicts between your chosen community leaders and the barangay leaders as well as between your community security force and the barangay tanod? Or is the barangay always involved in the organization of the community security forces? Tsaka what's your concept of community security outside of besieged client communities---is it to build rapport between the police/tanod and the community, thus lessening police abuse, as with the OSCE’s Community Security Initiative in Kyrgysztan?

Hubert: Excellent question.
    The first priority is to establish rapport and gather information about who the community leaders are, to include the informal leaders, NGO heads, and/or, in some instances, the gated community Association Board members, etc. Of course it is easier to work with a gated community or with a subdivision Association, because they already are an organized polity given recognition by the HULRB/Magna Carta for Homeowners' Associations.
    Following the prescribed formula of Saferworld, the community development approach, and from practical experience, the survey proper and needs analysis come first. This part includes interviewing members of the community and stakeholder representatives what "insecurities" they have. Now, the common opening is usually on addressing common pains such as disaster preparation, water, sanitation or even crime issues.
    The dialogue then leads to a workshop to empower these communities. I have yet to come across a community or barangay that did not appreciate and accept the initial workshop, as it constitutes free technology for them to effectively address issues. Usually, bringing a third party technical expert is enough to open the door. The approach is critical in that one has to establish what the relationship is and what it is not. This is also critical in that it is the first reframe.
    Back in Barbaza, Antique, after the Yolanda disaster hit the municipality, I assisted a permaculture aid specialist team that did not bring any relief supply. In fact, the mayor told us the first time he met us to "Please do not give any more relief goods to my constituents as they are becoming like mendicant rats," to which we replied, "Good, we did not come here to give relief goods, but to give knowledge." So we immediately went to Sitio Cadiao and had a dialogue with the Kapitan and the Elders. This was Day 1. After assessing from them their situation, we made a deal to stay and help them if they would meet us as a community early in the morning to do "dagyaw," which is Visayan for bayanihan. In the beginning the men hemmed and hawed, saying they had to work on their respective houses; but Steve Cran, the head of the team, convinced them by asking them how much work they can accomplish as individuals in one day. We then asked them to try us out for one day. By day two, within only 4 hours of work, we were able to clean the mountainside of debris, sort and segregate usable materials, teach them permaculture principles, and, more importantly, taught them with their participation how to plan and execute a structured and prioritized plan of action in an achievable timeframe. We were able to organize them according to their skill sets and turned what was once a feeling of hopelessness into an excited and focused energy that started them on to address their situation. By day 3, two more sitios asked for our help. By the end of the 5th day, we had a project going with the barangay and the school in the area. So, the above example leads us to three crucial principles, 1) the community knows what it needs, 2) the assets are already in place, and, more importantly, 3) the approach: authority by demonstration. This goes both ways, in gaining trust, and then in pinpointing your Pareto principle concerning people on the ground. The immediate hands-on work will bring these out.
    Going further on this, the important initial group to work with is your basic community, along with the Association head if it is a gated community, the Kapitan if it is a sitio, or the Barangay Captain if it is a barangay without a gated community. Get the basic unit of community first. From there, once an agreement is made and signed after a workshop, strengthen this basic unit by experiential education, meaning to say help them by giving them best practices, a workshop, and consultation on what their vision for the community is, how it is related to policy, how policy is related to rules and regulations, and how plans are related to the whole. Basic knowledge on how to conduct a meeting, how to document a meeting and a project, how to form committees, etc. are given.
    Now, here is an important point: walang libre. I learned this from Steve Cran who has proven, as one who has worked on UN-sponsored programs in conflict zones, that it’s better to work with the basic unit of a community as partners, or, better, as clients. Kahit seedlings or sweat equity for workshops ang pambayad, dapat meron silang bayad—because you want to cultivate a mindset of both ownership and non-mendicancy. They take the meetings seriously because they "paid" for it.
    Now, this process, one that organizes them according to their skills set (from a capacity inventory survey), immediately seeing them turn out a group who has the skills and a group that has the planning capability, etc., both working for the low hanging fruit that will give the maximum impact, creates the community esprit de corps, so to speak. You make them aware that, 90% of the time, most communities will argue about the 10% of the things they do not agree on. So the trick is to immediately make them realize that it is better to work for the 100% immediately, on the things they agree on, whatever the percentage, and to empower them further by documentation and recognition of accomplishments as a community and as individuals qua community champions. After the basic community is thus empowered, then and only then do we teach them how to liaison with the next tier of the wider community and what is called the "Traditional Security Providers," the barangay government and the PNP.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Hubert: Now, as for your other last question, . . . the community, agreeing to adopt a community security policy, is thus empowered legally, as by law any community may do this provided they do proper coordination in matters of apprehension, crime reporting, etc. Also, a community may also want to enter into a valid contract with a third-party service provider to be thus empowered, especially if the service provider and community know the law relating to this.

    To tell you a story, nung executive director ako sa FORA SECNET, I handled the security problems that ordinary security agencies could not handle for 40 exclusive villages. Dahil naka-lock kami sa valid policy, rules, regulations and contract, hindi basta makapasok ang PNP, dahil empowered by awareness yung mga communities and backed up by documentation process. Yung mga Security Commanders, Security Committeee Chairmen, maski ako, parang mga hepe inside the community. Hinde basta makapasok yung PNP! But because we pro-actively worked with the PNP, we were able to select and work with the police personnel assigned to our area and they became part of the community and looked after the community’s interest. They became friends with the community and dared not do anything to destroy their good name, and the community took care of them.
    When I realized that the principle may apply to the communities of the less fortunate, I asked around first if the principle applies, and I found out that it does but has not been fully explored. That moment of realization was when I set out developing the technical skills to do it, providing this kind of service to the communities of the masses. There is a provision in the Magna Carta for Communities to federate. And once I get a number of gated communities to adopt communities peripheral to their area, to include informal settlers, then we may expand to gated farming communities. Our ultimate goal? IP communities.
    Now, conversely, the setup also aids the PNP and the barangay government. We "help" the PNP and the barangay government by making them do their job efficiently and effectively with the community, by reminding them that the Community ultimately is the Client. We give them recognition of accomplishment, and address their problems, professionally or personally, as part of the Community, which they are also a part of, after all. This acts like a magnet on iron filings!
    So, you see, positive conditioning is the key! [S /-I]

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PRIVATE SECTOR OR TO CONCERNED LOCAL GOVERNMENTS

My grandma's house in Tolosa, Leyte, 100 meters from the sea. Thanks to Noel Rosalia for the photo.

November 14, 2013

Dear private sector groups and concerned local governments:

LET me skip the usual greetings and head straight to the meat of this.

     I am from Leyte and would like to help my Typhoon Yolanda disaster-stricken ka-rehiyons of Leyte and Samar islands.

     I have a proposal for you.

     As you may be aware, lots of donations have been stalled by several factors affecting distribution. Your donations may have reached the drop-off capital, but their distribution may yet have to be quickly implemented or spread equitably in the wide area; again, due to various logistical reasons (roads closed due to debris and fallen trees and electric posts; security risks; etc.).

     You may also be aware that the scope and breadth of the disaster area would leave any government distressed by solutions that may prove un-actionable or constrained. You would certainly have heard of the fact that many of the local government units (LGUs) in the affected areas have ceased to function for several reasons (LGU personnel, vehicles and equipment disabled; etc.).
     With police personnel and their families counted as victims of the disaster themselves, there has been a breakdown of law and order in some parts of the city and the neighboring towns, with reports of looting, burglary, robbery, even rape, coming in, not to mention mass hysteria.

     Clearly, the national government can’t do the relief job in the area alone. Conversely, the national government must accept the fact that it cannot do the tough task of covering all the areas of disaster alone.

     The private sector as well as other concerned LGUs in the country not affected by the disaster must chip in. The national government, meanwhile, must facilitate for the entry of corporate entities and LGUs from other parts of the nation into the sphere of distribution.

     And so, at the risk of being called crazy which is all right with me, here is my 4-point proposal:

1.) As someone who speaks the language of Leyte and Samar, I am willing to be dropped off and embedded (optionally, maybe with a few men and women volunteers) in a town I grew up in, namely Palo, Leyte, where I have friends and am known by not a few people, so that I and my crew can be left to organize a temporary tanod force (in the absence or insufficiency of an existing one). Organizing a temporary tanod force would enable any sponsoring corporation or donor-LGU to establish a relief base and tent headquarters there, as well as a secured cleared area to serve as a helipad. (In Palo's case, the lawn of Saint Mary's Academy is a perfect spot for a helicopter landing). Once the tanod force is established and orderly relief distribution is guaranteed, I and my crew can communicate by sat phone the practicability of starting the relief work there with the guarantee that helicopter shipments (or seaplane shipments via Palo's Red Beach) can start to flow in and smooth distribution can ensue.

2.) This process of embedding people and organizing temporary barangay governments and then establishing relief bases can be duplicated in another area, and in another area, and in another, so that we'll have a multiplicity of relief bases.

3.) Just as these bases are there to augment the national government’s own, our tanod forces must be there to likewise merely augment existing government forces. Every private-sector relief base’s security, along with its tanod force, may be commanded by an Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) platoon. After establishing the temporary tanod force and the relief base, the first helicopter shipment can carry with it a platoon of AFP personnel to oversee the tanod force.

4.) Having established multiple relief bases across the wide disaster area, the relationship between relief donor and recipient town/large barangay may be strengthened by applying an ADOPT A TOWN or ADOPT A LARGE CITY BARANGAY program. This will not only enable donor corporations or donor LGUs to focus their donations (and even rehabilitation efforts) on an adopted area, the relationship between donor and recipient can also be made long-standing. In the case of donor-LGUs, they may likewise send augmentation tanod forces from their towns/cities/provinces to facilitate the relief (and rehabilitation efforts) of their adopted bases, and thus establish twin-town partnerships. In the case of corporate sponsors, they would have practically locked an edge into a market, if not officially (because that would be illegal), at least by virtue of the town's possible collective feeling of gratitude.

There you go. That’s my 4-point proposal.

     I leave this plan to any of you in the corporate world or among the concerned LGUs to use, refine, enlarge, and what have you, for what they may be worth. Simply e-mail me at jojosoriadeveyra@gmail.com or message me on Facebook (my public account is “Jojo Soria de Veyra”) should you need me. I am ready to be your first embedded agent.

     Thank you for reading,

Yours,

JOJO SORIA DE VEYRA

The now-roofless cathedral in Palo, Leyte. Photo borrowed from http://roilogolez.blogspot.com/2013/11/yolanda-aquino-declares-state-of.html

How to give God a hard time

1. Ketsana

IN the immediate aftermath of the flash flood wrought by typhoon Ondoy (Ketsana), Metropolitan Manila Development Authority chairman Bayani Fernando had the media-perceived strategic gumption to pin the blame on everyone, including himself. His take was wisely leveled against himself primarily—for failing to convince developers and "informal settlers" (squatters) to get out of the waterways and relocate in what he deemed a necessary move for his department's flood control mission to work. Unwittingly, or so he made it appear, he had actually backhandedly leveled the primary blame on these very developers (who had acquired permits to build real estate subdivisions on wetlands from the government). Fernando also implied these projects' having in turn bred squatter zones at the subdivision's sides as parallel developments in their own right, with these squatter developments often starting as a few construction workers' shacks cropping up during the construction of the subdivisions. It was as if Fernando was saying, I know how to work this, but the government that I work for doesn't have the intelligence to address the problems and solutions that I see.

     The subdivisions and squatters Fernando was referring to were those placed right smack in the middle of erstwhile esteros or waterways (natural and man-made), incursions he says he had always known to prevent the unobstructed flow of such flashflood water as what poured from the mountains of Luzon's Sierra Madre on the night of September 26. To his credit, Fernando did mention in passing the logging in those mountains (which have also acquired permits, legal and not; the legal from the government and the illegal from the protection of corrupt government people that Fernando is either working for or with). In short, while Fernando is the kind of disciplinarian that believes there is no society that disciplines itself, this time he points his finger at our lack of self-discipline, as party to the blame, otherwise—by subtle implication—to the lack of intellectual discipline in the government that he works for or discipline among the corrupted government officials he works with.
     The populace, meanwhile, looked somewhere else. Many pointed to the dams of La Mesa, Angat and Ipo as the culprits in the flashfloods that visited Quezon City, Marikina City, Pateros, the Pasig River-side parts of Makati City and many towns of Bulacan province. And although Angat Dam was quick to deny having released water of such catastrophic volume, it released two meters of water a day after the flood to prevent "a similar occurrence" in case the anticipated new typhoon Pepeng (Parma)—expected landfall, October 3 or 4—brought in a similar mass of rain cloud cover.
     Then there were the government-controlled channels. National Broadcasting Network Channel 4, RPN 9 and IBC 13 kept on harping on typhoon Ondoy's rain cloud cover as a manifestation of nothing but climate change, the sole gist of their lip service being that everyone should be informed of these effects and—by implication—should henceforth participate in the fight to turn back the climate change momentum. Putting aside the absence of other factors that could have minimized the scale of the catastrophe, the message was noble. Except that this was being pushed even as the very same government the channels were paying lip service for have also been sparing no effort to advertise the nation's need to add more coal power plants to the national energy grid as well as to further the fossil fuel industry in Palawan, all this side by side nothing in the direction of a renewable energy program apart perhaps from a desire to resuscitate a nuclear power plant near a rising sea level.
     Now, all of the above dams do merit mention as real culprits. However, it eludes the imagination of Fernando—a presidential or vice-presidential aspirant for the 2010 elections—as it does the government channels' climate-change lip-service spinners to examine the root of the evils they so readily point their fingers at. Failing to do so brings us back to the habit of stoning criminals whose crimes may have been nurtured by the very systems we have for so long accepted as natural and defensible.

LET us start with climate change.
     It is now common wisdom that climate change was processed by two things: industry and consumption. But, putting aside the fact that the conservatives of the world are denying it ever exists or that industry and consumption have nothing to do with it, it's still a common belief that's been taken for granted. Here's looking at it again:
     The majority of economic planners agree that a good economy is propelled by consumption which in turn oils the machines of production. The vicious cycle is not declared vicious at all but is in fact regarded as the very stuff that makes the world go round, the absence of which could stop the planet or threaten the momentum of its orbit around the sun. Likened to nationalist-cum-protectionist economics that defies globalization, holistic economics of austerity teaching "buying only what's necessary," along with other like-minded Thoreau-esque libertarian economic utopias, are seen as either too Middle Ages-y or New Age-y, thus anti-industry, anti-trade, anti-production, and in the long run anti-consumer, too. As if anti-consumerism is equal to anti-consumer. Yet the economics of the vicious cycle is the very economics that churns out more private cars for space-poor roadways, more fossil fuel barrels, more styrofoam on the fastfood table, more plastic bags in kitchens and the garbage bins, and so on. It is this very economics that, while encouraging some governments to look for alternative energy, also cannot argue against overproduction's (surplus production's) imposing its philosophy on the advertising industry to promote further consumption, being itself a product of such a philosophy. And the machine wheels of consumption-driven economics have been turning faster and faster since the Industrial Revolution, a philosophy no different from the Catholic Church's mission to increase and multiply the population in its orphanages.
     But the economics that manufactured—is continuing to manufacture—climate change is not the sole social science at odds with its prayers for a better natural environment. There is also the long-standing (since the beginning of time) human proclivity to create population centers.

SINCE the beginning of time, the human propensity to centralize further and further all aspects of societal living has spiraled ever faster as well. Sucking everything center-wards like a whirlpool, as a matter of course, cities created the metropolis that created the cosmopolitan megalopolis, and around these the suburbs and "urban fringes" or "surrounding provinces" as their unofficial extensions that make up what is now known as the urban agglomeration. We know megalopolises as those composites having overly-populated towns and cities within its embrace and "on its outskirts."
     Apart from being the facilitator of cultural exchanges, our center-moving proclivity has proven itself to be healthy fodder for industries, the very reason why it has survived urban citizens' impatience with their daily urban struggles. As long as a citizen has for himself an industry, it makes no sense to remove himself from the more populated areas of the world where the bigger market is. And the industries that have blossomed out since the time of Eridu, Uruk and Ur have become so various and sophisticated.
     In our time, suburbs have proposed semi-private short-distance railway systems for the transportation industry. And, undoubtedly, the megalopolis has saved a lot of money for the manufacturing industry, an industry wont to gather around a port-of-call center, thereafter mapping a spider web of delivery routes for its trucks, ships, or air cargo expenses; the nearer a population is to the point of manufacture, the lower the shipping cost. And where's the biggest market? Almost always it's in the megalopolis, the point of manufacture.
     Industries also benefit from the population center's populace of strugglers in competition. Seeing these strugglers as denied of the comforts of provincial contentment, city industries can haggle with the cost of their labor.
     Other industries, such as government profit-making ones, have also invented projects that grew from metropolitan necessities. One of these products is … the dam. When there are millions and humongous industries to be fed water and provided electricity, there is the industry to be made in the supply of that water and the harnessing of electricity from the pressure in the dam structures. It is even possible for the control of dam sites to lead to another industry altogether—the control of the forests near a watershed or mountain lake can be managed to harness forest farming activities better known as "logging concessions."
     In short, the economics of agribusiness and manufacturing or creating domino effects of consumption has a lot in common with the sociology of spiraling inwards towards a population center. The two long-standing concepts have been feeding each other since the time of Alulim. The economist Paul Krugman has amply demonstrated this further in his theory on economies of scale which, combined with lower transport costs, create processes whereby "regions become divided into a high-technology urbanized core and a less developed 'periphery'." It was for these "discoveries" that he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2008.
     Now, of course this partnership between the sociology of upward and inward mobility was seen as an ideal for Thackeray's London, and continue to be for a progressive European Union or an ever-expanding Metro Manila. But not anymore if we're to stop blabbering about geographic inequities (e.g. Manilacentrism), or—now—about turning back climate change to previous ideal levels and conditions. This dual mobility should be okay if we're not constantly gabbing about minimizing casualties from either "acts of God," man-made catastrophes (such as dam breakage and explosions or oil-depot-within-a-city accidents), or urban epidemics.

IS it possible to create a new millennium that would reverse the above human proclivity, towards real decentralization? In the age of the Internet and a "global community," in the age of Skype conferences and Facebook bulletins, is it possible?
     Let us consider examples from the present.
     A California ad agency operates an office center rarely visited by its employees, most of whom meet each other and clients everyday via the Internet. Another ad agency, based in Portland, Oregon proves that it is possible to be one of the country's leading creative shops without locating its offices in Manhattan. More recently, not a few companies all over the world have realized that it is possible to base its customer service call center in Manila or Bombay, its main factory in Shenzhen, and its main office somewhere in London's outskirts. So, why not a Makati office with departments scattered all over the Philippines? Why this supposedly-obsolete habit of creating more business centers, terrorist-friendly shopping centers, factory rows beside a river ditch, or flood-prone university belts? Why transport thousands of employees each day to the Makati financial district and Ortigas Center, with a lot of these workers waking up as early as 4:00 a.m. to be able to reach office (through traffic and the Metro Rail Transit's skin-to-sweating-skin horde) by nine, when work and efficiency can be achieved otherwise, without the obsolete bundy clock's standard of measure? If the aborted NBN-ZTE broadband project of Gloria Arroyo had to have a believable philosophy behind it that might have convinced all senators, it could have been this: that a company (private or government) need not operate its departments from around the esteros/arroyos/waterways of Pandacan alone.
     But what would be gained from such a scheme? What would be lost? Decongesting megalopolises to create a scattering of mini-cities—at best a scattering of mere towns—may have to do away with the necessity of building new metropolis-bound elevated roads, for instance, or the necessity of humongous dams. Or if giant dams have to remain, it would be easier to manage the towns below the dam's spillways considering that these would be mere small towns and not an unmanageable, irreversible mini-metropolis growth like eastern Bulacan. At present, should a 7.5 earthquake hit Angat Dam and crack it, the casualty toll within the province from the flashflood will be in the hundreds of thousands.
     What would be gained? For every loss is a corresponding gain, goes some common belief, and so with the loss of manufacturing centers and a corresponding dispersal of operations there shall be created a redistribution of employment opportunities. There shall result a de-saturation of land, nay, properties' liberation from the former distinction cutting between industrial hectares and agricultural ones; a farm can now be seen beside an LCD TV factory, and—besides—factories getting dispersed thus would be easier for the populace to monitor for abuses including lack of water treatment facilities and other pollution law offenses. It would also be hard for factories to recruit and import cheap non-unionized labor from the provinces since the concept of a "province" would already have been passé. The concept of urban and rural would have gone away, since everywhere would be urban as well as rural.
     As for the benefits of de-saturating the country's city areas, it must be noted here that not a few flood victims inhabiting unlivable areas of Metro Manila or its outskirts who got interviewed on TV in the aftermath of the typhoon Ondoy calamity had provincial twangs or accents. It was not hard to imagine or directly hear Tagalog viewers commenting like Nazis that very day: "go back to your provinces, don't squat in the city's idle lands and you’ll be spared from another typhoon Ondoy." This city-bred view, of course, would be coming from a lack of an understanding of the whole complex system that encourages such migrations (or, in some cases, such subtle importations) of cheap labor and, oh yes, electorate votes [my churchworker friend M- was quick to remind me—see his comment below]. The assumption of those voicings is that life in the provinces is so okay, that there's much idle or development or converted land by, say, a senator or pretty famous billionaire where the provincials could still plant sweet potato on for their daily meals. These Nazi-like critics should try, along with their professional practice, living in the provinces today.

     Sure, it is high time we create revolutions and reverse man's city-prone movement hand in hand with his reversing his habit of creating environmental decline. But it would not be as easy and simple as the government's present Balik-Probinsiya placebo program thinks it is. Such a program must guarantee relative non-returns to points of congestion. Therefore, the dispersal must happen naturally; that is to say, not through a Maoist conscription of individuals transported to new points for acculturation but by the sowing of investments that will lead the way out of Egypt, coupled with a comprehensive environmental management plan as well as a sound population control policy. I am not talking about federalism, but simply about giving everyone an elbow room and about discouraging everyone from congregating in special points of concentration. I'm talking about scattering the prey to scatter the predation.

     Nor am I talking about the annihilation of city culture, as the cities will simply be pushed outwards while the rural areas are being pushed inwards to meet the cities halfway. Nor should I be talking, as per my friend economist P-'s advise, about urbanizing all the squares in the archipelagic map to create another Los Angeles-like sprawl. I am talking about spreading the population in the archipelago while controlling the population so it wouldn't turn the new territories into metropolises themselves. I may even be talking about everyone being required to plant subsistence food if they can help it.

     Are these impossible dreams? Is it true that Marcos, too, dreamed of this? Or are these simple products of a present need to find long-lasting solutions? Simple-minded? Perhaps, but wary of status quo. If Fidel Castro was successful in instituting urban farming in Havana, is it possible that we could be, too?

WHAT would be gained? What would be lost?
     I leave these questions for social scientists and government planners to better mull over. All I can leave my reader with is an imagined utopia wherein during moments of catastrophe, be that catastrophe due to climate change (with its unpredictable thick raincloud cover resulting in dams' brimming to scatter their water load), estero/creek/waterway asphyxiation and lack of metropolitan drainage efficiency, some officials' or (who knows?) a senator's unguarded logging concessions uptown, viral epidemics, or whatever else or a combination of some or all of the above, casualties would be relatively minimal and/or manageable. And with such a distribution of the population's numbers, God's "wrath" (through typhoon Ondoys) would have to cover the entire country to effectively depopulate it.



Photo from http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//090929/ids_photos_ts/r490447765.jpg/

2. Parma (added October 20)

TYPHOON Pepeng's (Parma's) rainclouds wreak havoc: in Benguet with landslides, in Pangasinan with broad strokes of flashfloods reaching a depth of 14 feet in certain towns, and in various other provinces with more of the same. It is a state of calamity and disaster all over, and I don't mean in bureaucratic state terms, which take hours or days to declare.

     Some would say it was a different issue here. Sure, it was by the thick rainclouds of new typhoons by climate change, but—wait, who else is to blame? It wasn't a matter concerning squatters and subdivisions impeding the flow of water from the cities' over-exploited mountains overlooking the metropolitan sprawl. Sure, it may be by the relentless enthusiasm of unchecked logging, but—wait, who else to blame? It wasn't a matter to be solved by either looking for invisible loggers. Or sending squatters back to their provinces—after all, these were the provinces. Sure, the rains were a result of climate change, but climate change is just too academic for even mayors (who have been refusing any form of change for far too long) to comprehend.

     In Baguio, many say it was more a matter of the age-old physics concerning water mixing with soil and rocks, nothing more. In Pangasinan, many say it was more a matter of a dam. Nothing more.

     In fact, everything was a matter of more. And because of this more matter, more is to come. The more I think about it, the more I feel its certainty.

MORE. In her essay "In Paradigm Shift 1: A Long Look Back," the columnist Sylvia Mayuga wrote about the history of local government corruption and the national government's leaning towards the time-proven (read: old) solutions to 20th-century problems. In "Diary of Revolution V: Another Strange Column," she wrote about government's dismissal of NGO pleas to keep Mt. Banahaw out of South Luzon Expressway's tentacles. Also, in "Paradigm Shift 2: New Vision in Government," about government's ignoring then-DENR secretary Fulgencio Factoran's Ancestral Domain Law bill in favor of the Congress-favored IES bill mandating popular consent to such projects as the coal-powered Hopewell power plant in Pagbilao, Quezon. And today in the Philippine Star, columnist Jarius Bondoc's essay "Corruption: Direct Cause of Storm Ruin" chalked up more corruption data that led to the catastrophe ("The purchase of seven brand-new radars took so long because an admin congressman had tried to block it when he was eased out as secret supplier").

     More. Alexander Martin Remollino of Bulatlat.com—an online magazine—in "Dam Nation: A Bloody History of Struggle Against Dams" waxed nostalgic and defiant towards the struggles of such martyrs as Macliing Dulag and the Dumagats in the futile fight against the construction of the World Bank-funded Chico River Dam, implying the enormity of such revolts, since one is running against such respected institutions including the Japan Bank for International Cooperation and the Asian Development Bank.

     And all this history comes back to us now, in the present hunger of the citizenry not just for somebody to hang (the dam engineer who made supposed misjudgments, for one) but for solutions to prevent a similar occurrence, or otherwise to prevent similar results in case the return of the same occurrence cannot be mitigated.

     And so we rejoice as when, on October 9, 2009, an American cinema actor and philanthropist named Brad Pitt is reported about on the Net to have unveiled in New Orleans his flood-surviving float house for the Make It Right Foundation. We happily rejoice at the criticisms and proposals of the Filipino architect and urban planner Felino Palafox, who is no sooner on our TV screens, interviewed left and right for free TV's explanation-hungry angry citizenry.

     I, too, posted Pitt's house's picture on Facebook.

     To which posting my friend copywriter A- made a not-so-satisfied comment, providing ample ideas in his wake, to wit: "The idea of working on designs for the real world I like, but those two designs for floating houses are downright ugly. Ugh. Our squatters have more design aesthetics than those architects who couldn't even show some modicum of respect for the people they envision living in those ugly houses. In my opinion, a houseboat on a barge has more charm and design aesthetics. And that's a floating property, not just a house. The barge the house is on is one's land area. And the house of course is the floor area. And if everyone in ... say, a small community had the same idea, they could moor their 'land areas', their barges, together; and when the floods come, they all rise (of course they have to be anchored to land with a slack of 15 feet), and when the flood waters recede, they're landlocked again. Nasa lupa lang at kalsada ang kalat, wala sa mga bahay-bahay.

     "Hey Jo," he added, "why don't we look for a student architect to partner with and build one? For energy we'll use solar. For food, they can go hydro for veggies and raise doves and bantam chix for meat. There's rain water, but that will have to go through some filtration because of what might be in the atmosphere."

     To which great ideas I replied, thusly: "This is adaptation. This is Darwinian adaptation. Hereon in, typhoons will be bringing in tremendous cloud cover the likes of which we have never seen before. It happened in Bombay in 2005 that got featured on Discovery Channel and still the oil industry-backed Right is saying climate change is a myth, even as Bombay reacted with dikes and better drainage. The same thing with the conservative Republican-American TV network Fox News: in early 2008, where one female anchor even expressed something like, if Arizona is to have ice and snow the whole year she'd welcome it, and if North Dakota is to have melting ice, fine, great. Then her co-anchors went on about the virtues of an extensive US offshore oil drilling, echoing John McCain's going against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's championing the need to tap sustainable and renewable energy.

     "In our country, with the typhoon's evolution, dams filled to the brim should begin to see their obsolescence, except in the possible drought of summers. Each barangay has to shift to mini-dams and barangay waterworks systems of this kind both for drinking and irrigation. But I was also talking to my Bulacan neighbors in the flood of August 2007 about Badjao houses and how we should adapt with houses on concrete or iron stilts, and everyone just smiled at me, a crazy Waray, saying, 'hindi iyan uso rito.' And yes, even floating houses, with moorings to fight the current; I was talking about these like a crazy drunk at a streetcorner birthday party. Or, people looked at me like I was a crazy drunk.

     "And Pitt's prototype for New Orleans—not exactly a houseboat like the ones we see on HGTV's show on strange houses and great vacation homes and hideaways—may be a tad better than the houseboats of Hong Kong, but henceforth the floating house must be a new genre in 21st-century architecture. We must launch design contests for floating houses.

     "If we fail to adapt and we die," I aimed for a closing, "good riddance! Let's make room for a better species."

     Great exchange, it was. But, like this essay's Part One's pleas with an unknown readership, is this to be read as just another literary banter with the ghosts of reform? After all, who—among businessmen with resources, or leaders with clout—would even initiate such adaptations that dare go against the old contractor's specifications?

THE main headline in today's (October 20's) Philippine Daily Inquirer front page reads: Mayors damn the dam. The headline news item references a PHIVOLCS report saying the dam in question rests near a fault line, which fact alone would truly bring back visions of Noah's flood into the Pangasinense landscape. The mayors are crying for a decommissioning of the dam. But.

     Knowing government, that will never happen.

     Oh, me, a cynic? No. More. A student of history. To appropriate Mayuga's essay, I dare attach the reading that almost all governments around the world today have leaderships sponsored—directly or indirectly—by corporate interests, by big business, by local and international banking systems. Governments will always side with big business, and if we are to follow the philosophy of the 2009 Nobel Economics laureate Oliver Williamson, big business can in fact resolve a conflict by dealing with another big business, and if I may add, even topple the other big business' interests. So, to bastardize or bawdlerize Williamson by a converse reading of his thesis, only big business can successfully sponsor opposition to the interests of the other big business, and thus instigate change. That seems to be the only possible fight in times present, then—windmill and solar energy corporations sponsoring a new government to topple the centuries-old oil and coal and hydroelectric power plant parties.

     Sure, there have been triumphs of civil society against big corporations, but those have always proven to be short-lived or temporary. The monster manages to come back everytime. Thus the Williamson thesis' significance.

     For even if such entities as mayors or even mayors' leagues are to clamor for change, such clamor will—corruptibility aside—often be devoid of alternatives. For instance, who among the mayors of Pangasinan would now promise to do away with the benefits of big hydroelectric power plants in favor of small barangay-level hydroelectric plants, micro-windmills, solar power cooperatives?

     Who would want to arm themselves with the argument that solar power is only expensive today because it has a lot in common with twenty political posters from a printing press that could decidedly be costed way, way lower if produced in bulk by the twenty-thousands? None, I suppose.

     My friend the UN consultant Lila Shahani talks about solar energy in Cuba. My friend the church worker M- talks about village impoundments. "I’m still an advocate of small-scale water impoundment projects," he writes on a Facebook thread. "If every community in the nation had its own small lake or pond (size depending on population), a certain amount of land would be lost, but the benefits, in the reduction of soil erosion, improved groundwater levels for deep wells and even small scale power generation, would more than make up for the loss. It’s no substitute for forests as a mitigator of runoff, but in cases where the forest is already gone, it can be a helpful alternative. But no one even talks about it." In his Oct. 6 comment to Part One of this essay (see below), M- mentions the hydro plant of Villa Escudero Plantations resort farm, and the little power plants of the Sierras in California.

     But who among the mayors of Pangasinan is ready to counter the giant San Roque Dam hydroelectric power plant's argument that closing the dam now might mean selling un-irrigated farms to land developers? None, I suppose.

     In short, we are all like my Bulacan neighbors. We will continue to lean on the tried-and-tested convenient slogan, "hindi iyan uso rito e."

AND so, I promise you: a year from now we will not see a President Noynoy Aquino or Gibo Teodoro or born-again Erap Estrada or Manny Villar (estate development stalwart) or a Vice President Loren Legarda (claiming to be a proponent of environmentalism) making any difference in the area of doing away with the dams in favor of micro-electrification and micro-water systems and micro-irrigation systems that have been proposed by many a genius from Africa to England to Texas to Luzon on the moving pages of CNN and ABS-CBN and GMA Network, geniuses we've refused to listen to because of big business' charm.

     More.

     Is it hard for us to imagine such refusal among our leaders, us being faithful followers of certain candidates' supposed competence? Well, such refusal is present in our very selves. How many of us would want to give up our cars in favor of public transport, for instance? None. Who among us would be willing to boycott McDonald's pancakes served in styrofoam? None. Who among us would be willing to give up beef and rice for chicken and sweet potato so as not to contribute to the atmosphere's warming with the methane coming from cows' farts and shit and from the rice paddies' evaporting water? None.

     Tilt the camera up. Now, imagine yourselves as those leaders up there. Who among those politicians would work hard and work fast at improving public transport systems so even CEOs would want to ride on trains? Who among them might work hard at pushing for (or at least encouraging) alternative sustainable energy sources that may render fossil fuel use obsolete in, say, ten years? Work hard and fast to spread the population, control population growth, even render giant dams for urban areas and farm zones obsolete? Equally none.

     Meanwhile, the planet's atmosphere is working twenty-four hours a day at melting the polar ice to produce warmer oceans that produce more efficient typhoons for a disposable humanity that refuses to evolve (many still even refusing to believe in the "theory" of evolving) after Darwin and the dams' increasing damnations.

SO, what am I proposing? Equally none. Because I know that nothing will be done, nothing much will be created or demolished to service the fight against climate change, dam threats, uncontrolled logging.

     More. We will continue to build foreign bank-funded corporate dams, which are actually fourth floors of all our houses serving as water storage tanks. If you think that's bad architecture, don't say a word. Even if you say "no, I don't think that's good at all," still we all latently approve of it. Nobody would want to give up the benefits that the dam brings, because no one would want to be bothered with the adjustments that micro-electrification and micro-water systems and micro-irrigation demand. We are all reliant on big business to do our water-fetching for us, along with our farming, our gardening, our cooking, and so on and so forth. Everybody latently thinks a fourth floor serving as water storage tank is good architecture, in the final analysis.

     What am I proposing? None. If I am to propose anything at all, it would be to say, let's teach our kids how to ride it out. Make them learn how to swim. Let's not bother making it hard for God to depopulate the planet of human dinosaurs. None of Williamson's firms are going to do anything about it for us.

     And besides, at the back of our minds we knew this was coming. More now—we know it's what we'll continue to get. [END]

Photo from http://www.lugaluda.com/2009/10/09/sm-rosales-pangasinan-have-come-under-water-no-thanks-to-typhoon-“pepeng”-continuous-rains/

Acknowledgment: Sylvia Mayuga featured this blog essay as a "guest column" in her Philippine Star Online column Only One World of October 25, 2009. It was a tremendous honor, Sylv.