Advocate group Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment (Kalikasan PNE) blasts the Commission on Appointments’ (CA) confirmation of Roy Cimatu as the Department of Environmental and Natural Resources (DENR) secretary, citing the decision as “the biggest and clearest stamp of approval the Duterte administration can give to him.”
According to Clemente Bautista, national coordinator of Kalikasan PNE, the former Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) secretary’s lack of credentials in environmental science is completely overlooked since the CA did not even question his track record of “corruption and human rights violation.”
“In spite of Cimatu’s corrupt-laden and stained human-rights violations record as government official during [former President Gloria Macapagal] Arroyo’s regime, he was allowed to become the secretary. He has no whatsoever experience on environmental protection and natural resources management, but he was chosen, nonetheless, by President Duterte,” he said.
Bautista also cited the speedy confirmation as a total reversal of former DENR secretary Gina Lopez’s regulations on land reclamation, which favors mining enterprises, resource plunderers, and environmental polluters.
“As the environmental policy and programs of Duterte remain anti-people and pro-big business and foreign capitalists, we expect faster resource depletion and graver ecological degradation under President Duterte and DENR Secretary Cimatu’s term,” Bautista said.
“Being a hypocrite is apparently not a problem when your lobby money is already making a hefty return on investment,” he added.
Meanwhile, Cimatu pledged before the members of the CA to institute reforms and environmental protection programs during the confirmation hearing last Wednesday.
“This gives me enough inspiration to carry out the seemingly gargantuan tasks of protecting the environment and ensuring sustainable use of the country’s rich natural resources in the face of climate change and dwindling natural wealth of the nation,” Cimatu said.
The newly appointed DENR chief is also echoing Duterte’s support to the much-debated open-pit mining ban, which Gina Lopez initially piloted.
“We will eventually abide by the instruction of the president to stop open-pit mining in the future,” he said.
