Road Revolution

(Originally published in my sports page column Self-Propelled

in the Jan 22 to 29, 2012 issue of the Baguio Chronicle

--- a weekly newspaper based in Baguio City, Philippines.)

IT was such an honor getting invited to a forum aptly titled Sustainable Transportation: Advocating Change at the School of Urban and Regional Planning (SURP) of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City.

The topics are undoubtedly very relevant at this present time when almost every city in the country, Baguio not exempted, is grappling with their transport and traffic problems and the political issues that hinder their search for eventual solutions.

I do not consider my attendance in the said forum as coincidental (it is more of an appointment with destiny) just because we went to personally invite one of the speakers in the said forum, Atty. Antonio Oposa, Jr., to share us his insights on Road Revolution to a similar forum called “Recreating People-Friendly Session Road” which will be held on January 27 at the University of Cordilleras at 9 o’clock in the morning. The public is cordially invited to the said forum.

Conceptualized out of previous small-group discussions of which I am proud to be part of, it aims to promote and popularize the use of public space for the majority and for the common good (the concept of road sharing), more known as Road Revolution.

Atty. Oposa, who received his law degree from the University of the Philippines and earned his Master of Laws from the Harvard Law School, where he was the commencement speaker of his graduating class, is the legal adviser and international environmental negotiator of the Federated States of Micronesia to the Montreal Protocol and to the climate change negotiations. He is an Environmental Law consultant to various international development agencies while he teaches Environmental Law at the University of the Philippines College of Law and is a visiting lecturer of universities around the world.

He is the author of three books on the Philippine Environment and has won major cases in the Philippine Supreme Court, one of which is the case that established the right of children and of future generations to take legal action to protect the remaining virgin forests of the Philippines which eventually became known as the Oposa Doctrine in Philippine and in international jurisprudence. Another is the case he filed to compel the Philippine Government to clean up Manila Bay and, after more than a decade legal battle, the Supreme Court ordered 12 government agencies to clean up Manila Bay and to report its progress to the court every 90 days.

The Cebuano lawyer is considered as one of Asia’s leading voices in the global arena of Environmental Law. He is the founder of the School of the SEA (Sea, Earth and Air) in the white-sand shores of Bantayan Island in the Central Philippines. The school is totally powered by renewable energy, completely recycled water and solid wastes, and is a physical demonstration of the working principles for sustainable living.

Together with volunteer fishermen, enforcement operatives, scuba divers, scientists, lawyers, and ordinary citizens, he organized the Visayan Sea Squadron --- a seaborne team that helps local communities establish a network of marine sanctuaries around the Visayan Seas where he led some of the most daring enforcement operations against environmental crime syndicates.

For his work, he received The Outstanding Young Man of the Philippines (TOYM) award, and the highest United Nations award in the field of the Environment --- the UNEP Global Roll of Honor. He is the only Asian to receive the International Environmental Law Award from the Washington DC-based Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).

In 2009, “for his path-breaking and passionate crusade to engage Filipinos in acts of enlightened citizenship that maximize the power of the law to protect and nurture the environment, for themselves, their children, and generations yet unborn,” he received the Ramon Magsaysay Award.

In the said forum held at the University of the Philippines, Atty. Oposa said that Road Revolution simply means “to review the basics for transportation: why do we need transportation? why do we need roads?”

“Is the city made for people or for cars?” he asked. “Review the fundamentals; revise to make it more fair and to turn it around from having a priority for cars to priority for people,” he added, describing it as plain “madness for cars”.

“There are about a hundred million people in the Philippines and about 3 million motor vehicles, yet we are giving three million vehicles 99 percent of the road whereas these people do not even have a space to walk,” he said. “It is not about air pollution; it is a question of social justice.”

“The road is for everybody; not just for the car owners,” he declared. “Not because you have a car, the road is yours!”

“When you allow a motor vehicle to park on a prime public space on Session Road occupying 12 square meters, parking there the whole day, that’s unjust enrichment,” he argued. “When you benefit yourself at the expense of others.”

Road Revolution “restores sense of community,” he said. “It restores our sense of fun; when you have open spaces, people have spontaneous combustion of sense of fun.”

“We (the Filipinos) have among the best brains in the world but look what happened to our country,” he lamented. “Look at the traffic!”*