As a partner of Haribon Foundation for biodiversity conservation, Pamana has been helping with Haribon's campaign to gather one million signatures from all over the country to call for a ban on commercial logging and mining in natural forests. The campaign is named “Boto Para Sa Inang Bayan,” after the highly successful signature campaign of Haribon in the 1980's that resulted in a government-imposed total log ban in Palawan.
Pamana secretariat coordinators for Visayas and Mindanao went the rounds of Mindanao and Visayas in the later part of January until the first week of March to distribute campaign materials and signature forms to Pamana's members in the area. Aside from coordinating with the representatives in each ecosystem-based chapter, the staff also met with several school officials and diocesan authorities to be able to generate signatures from teachers and students, and from parishioners that come from barangays not included in the Pamana member sites. In Cebu City , signature forms were distributed to several secondary schools with the approval of Cebu City Schools District Superintendent Dr. Leonilo Oliva. Other partner NGOs of Pamana, like FORGE and Project Seahorse, as well as other well-meaning individuals, have worked together with Pamana staff in gathering more signatures in different barangays in Cebu City .
The signature forms distributed in Visayas and Mindanao are targeting a total of around 255,000 votes. To date, hundreds of forms have been returned to the Pamana office in Cebu and forwarded to Haribon, bearing approximately 24,400 signatures. We are still awaiting the return of many forms stil with staff at visited sites.
Some people have been hesitant to sign the petitions, for a variety of reasons:
-Fear of losing their positions if they are identified with any campaign that seems like an “anti-government propaganda”;
-A misconception that they might get jailed or blacklisted;
-Simply not caring because they believe that the disasters have not happened, or are not likely to happen, to them – and these, particularly, from the residents in the cities or lowland areas.
What they fail to realize is that they stand to lose more by not putting in their signatures. Disaster can strike anywhere, at any time, to anyone; without discrimination on gender, age, or position in society. It doesn't matter if the people in Cebu or Surigao have no relatives where tragedy struck in Quezon Province; what matters is that it happened as a result of indiscriminate logging and mining. And what plagues a province can rock the whole nation.
It takes only a few minutes of one's time to add to the growing list of people who care, for today and for the tomorrows to come. Pamana will work to keep the list growing!
Get involved in the campaign: