The Green Pinoys

With the Philippines having the most number of people participated in the recent Earth Hour, environmental awareness is getting a headway. Could this be due to the untiring effort of the Filipino environmentalist to draw attention to environmental issues in the Philippines. The list of Filipino well known environmentalist include:

* Von Hernandez - former literature professor, activist, environmentalist, and Greenpeace campaign director for Southeast Asia. As “Heroes of the Environment”, he is in the same list as Al Gore, Prince Charles and Mikhail Gorbachev.

* Loren Legarda - 1st Filipina environmentalist to receive the Global Award of the Priyadashni Academy for outstanding contributions to Environment and Afforestation (2004). She is also the author of the Ecological Solid Waste Management Law and the Tropical Fabric Law, which is consistent with her advocacy for indigenous fabric. Recipient of the United Nations Environment Program Award (UNEP), in Turin, Italy, in 2001 for her outstanding work through Luntiang Pilipinas (Green Philippines). With this program, she planted over two million trees all over the Philippine archipelago.

* Amina Rasul-Bernardo - she was one of the founding member of Bantay Dagat (Watch the Seas) Movement, an NGO which supports protection of the seas and coastal resource management. She has been responsible for the production of a 30-minute cartoon designed to teach young people about the symbiosis between the health of the seas and productivity of fish industry. She has served on the board of the National Greening Movement.

*Maria Carminia Lourdes Cynthia Gutierrez-better known as Chin Chin Gutierrez, is a Filipino actress and environmentalist. Chin Chin, who is a vegetarian, starred in an ad for PETA ASIA-PACIFIC in which she said that "fish are friends, not food. Featured as one of TIME Asia's "Asian Heroes. Recipient of the TOWNS (The Outstanding Women in Nation's Service) Award for her environmental advocacy.

*Malou Babilonia -form the Babilonia-Wilner Foundation, setting up offices in the Philippines and in the Bay Area. She recruited Filipino environmentalists and put out a Tagalog-language newspaper that has helped draw attention to environmental issues in the Philippines. Fought the startup of a coal-fired power plant built by a consortium of multinational corporations, including Bechtel of San Francisco, in the Quezon town of Mauban. The foundation she formed is also working with a U.S. coalition of environmental and church groups pushing for the cleanup of suspected toxic and hazardous materials left by the U.S. armed services at the former Subic Bay Naval Base and Clark Air Base in the Philippines.

There may be more out there that I failed to mention. Please note that I only enumerated those people that I saw through print, radio, tv and Internet media and their work is so compelling the it keeps lingering to my memory. But if you think someone deserve to be on the list, please let me know by filling out the comment field below.

Earth Hour is a good sign.

I am very glad to know that Philippines has the most number of people participated in the Earth Hour last March 28, 2009. On that night, here in our neighborhood only few people switched off the light, it is very refreshing to know that in some place of the Philippines many still voted for earth.

You can now see in the news that some group have the initiative in cleaning some of the polluted river in the Philippines and some are planting trees. And even the pound for pound king Manny Pacquiao shed some of his winnings for environmental cause. This is a good sign and I hope that more and more Filipinos become aware of the global warming.