One Billion People on Earth are Hungry Including 13 Million Filipinos
What a crazy world we are living right now! To rectify mankind’s collective insanity, tens of millions of people of all ages in 183 countries around the world have joined the climate strike, buoyed by a clear vision of a world that is sane and that’s not just survival but thriving. Indeed, “civilization is being sacrificed out of the greed of a very few numbers of people making enormous amount of money. It is the sufferings of the many for the luxuries of the few.” The highly-skewed pyramidal global economic structure where only one percent composed of the super-rich 1,000 corporations called the “Masters of Mankind” who are greedily controlling the economy as their combined wealth is greater than the total assets of the 99% of the world’s population of 8 billion people. Don’t you know that the combined wealth of 8 richest families in the United States is greater than the total assets of 4 billion people? This truism is also true in the Philippines where big businesses reign, controlled by conglomerates, monopolies and cartels and where 70 % of the Gross Domestic Products (GDP) goes to the pockets of only some 300 families while some 13 million Filipinos are living in hunger and extreme poverty.
The culprit is the contemporaneous development paradigm called the Neo-Liberal Capitalism now known as Corporate Globalization that is sacrificing GAIA (Mother Earth) and the people to the altar of greed and profit. Indeed, as concluded by an OXFAM Study, “so much veneration to the profit-motive has already captured the mindset of all governments, all institutions, all universities and even of religious groups.” The so-called Regime of One Percent has put the earth in the precipice of its 6th extinction, described by thousands of concerned scientists as just “one minute before midnight” or end of life on earth. That Regime has put “the blue planet (our home) on fire.” While people around the globe are protesting called “climate strike,” we Filipinos are still so buried in social and ecological apathy, immersed in the fallacies of life by politicians and the profit-driven mainstream media especially in this forth coming “big circus” called Philippine elections, highly characterized by political dynasties, in gross violation of the 1987 Constitution. Why are the Filipinos still in deep slumber, politically, socially, economically and ecologically despite the truism that like the “Sword of Damocles,” ecological disasters have already transformed the once “paradise on earth” into hell? Well, the then US Secretary of State Henry Kissenger was correct when he once said, “CONTROL THEIR STOMACH AND YOU CONTROL THEIR MIND.” For the have-nots, the state of poverty and hunger has made the people apathetic and passive to resolve pressing issues because they are so pre-occupied on where to get the next meal. For the “have-ones,” they are too busy on earthly matters, bombarded by gospels of materialism and consumerism and in effect, producing a “throw-away” society including the non-stop emissions of greenhouse gases. These dreadful social realities are exacerbated by patronage politics, making the people more socially dependent and powerless. We must also reckon with a development paradigm in pursuance of corporate globalization, anchored on growth-at-all-cost development strategies that have degraded our ecological base and consigning many to live in the slum areas, digging garbage for left-overs.
Indeed, social change should now be in the offing as time is of the essence as exemplified now by the tens of millions of concerned people in 183 countries participating in climate strike. In our country, we must with sense of urgency, pay homage to GAIA (Mother Earth) who sustains life yet, has been abused, its dipterocarp forest raped, its biodiversity massacred, its wealth below the ground illegally mined by Koreans and Chinese nationals carrying only tourist visa, its archipelago described before as the “center of the center of marine life on earth” has become a dumping ground of toxic garbage from Canada, Australia and Korea and its 10 of the 13 major bays now biologically dead because of industrial pollution and commercial fishing, to the detriment of coastal communities now living in hunger and poverty and its 15 of the 25 major rivers in the country now polluted or dried-up. We are now in the 24th year of the 21st century but we are not anymore certain if we can reach the 22nd century as the earth warms and the oceans rise. We must now contend with ecological disasters. i.e., earthquakes, tsunamis, super typhoons, drought and floods – which are becoming more horrible and fatal, as our country is the 4th hardest hit country in the world by climate change, according to United Nations – Food and Agricultural Organization (UN-FAO).
Globally, our accelerating drive towards ecological disasters is further aggravated by the non-stop destruction of ecological base and climate crisis that must feed, cloth and house the exponentially growing world’s population. The 10,000 or so earth’s inhabitants had grown to 3.3 billion in 1900 after one hundred thousand years but that 3.3 billion has doubled to 7.2 billion in year 2,000 after only one hundred years. Today, we have now 8 billion people on earth after only 24 years and by 2050, there will be 9.3 billion people world-wide, according to UN demographers, which is only 26 years from now. The tremendous increase in world’s population cannot be matched by food production. On the contrary, food production is decreasing because, according to well-known scientists,” for every 1degree Celsius increase in earth’s temperature, there will be a corresponding 10% decrease in yields of wheat, corn and rice.”
Indeed, one billion people on earth are hungry, mostly Asians including 13 million Filipinos. The impending occurrence of famine is now predicted as the Himalayan glaciers (the 3rd Pole) are melting. As an adverse consequence, it is feared that Mekong Delta that irrigates millions of hectares of rice lands in India, China Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia will dry-up and instead be inundated by the rising of salty water. When this happens, some 30 million Filipinos will go hungry as we are now importing some 2.5 million metric tons of rice annually for 115 million Filipinos, the biggest rice importer country in the world. China is only importing 1.5 million metric tons with a population of 1.5 billion Chinese. Why is this so? Because we have transformed 70% of our choicest of land in Mindanao into massive high value fruit plantations to supply the consumerist lifestyle of the people in advanced countries at the expense of our food security through corporate globalization. These massive plantations are using toxic chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides many of which are already banned in other countries such as Puerto Rico and Costa Rica which are disallowing these corporations to enter their countries. It is so puzzling why our government is prioritizing foreign corporations to transform Mindanao into massive plantations, coercively evicting thousands, if not millions of Indigenous Peoples in Mindanao which this column has previously narrated with a puzzling question: who should be the primary beneficiaries of developing our resources? The Filipinos or foreign investors?
While we must be conscious of the state of the environment globally, it is imperative for us to be aware more so locally. Indeed, from being a paradise on earth before when the Indigenous Peoples were the ones in control of the commons (resources i.e., land, water, etc. which are means to life) that they use in the spirit of service and sharing to one another as they had exemplified oneness with nature and with all life. They are maybe primitive but they are culturally and spiritually advanced, contrary to the new order who maybe technologically and economically advanced but are primitive spiritually, the reason why we are now living in a crazy world whose imperialistic distorted worldview is to have dominion over the earth and whose religious belief is “market is always right” or “market knows best” that is now killing GAIA and putting civilization to extinction. We can no longer keep exploiting the resources of the earth as it is common sense that we cannot survive if we keep working against nature. But this painful truism is hidden from us as indeed we have been bombarded by the fallacies of life whose priority is to maximize profit and consumer goods and never to maximize values. The call now in paying homage to GAIA is to live a different way of life, to debunk the mundane and go to the sublime where the Universal Intelligence governs and not the Satanic EGO. Thus, let us come together as one collective force and shout, WE LOVE YOU GAIA! Then, connect with that Unseen Being, to the Ocean of CONSCIOUSNESS WHICH IS ALL THERE IS – all for God’s greater glory!
