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Dagupan's best practices showcased in UN meet
- Source:http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php?nid=2&rid=897926
- Thursday, June 23, 2016
- (PNA), BR.PGL/LVM/LVMICUA/1505/RMA
DAGUPAN CITY, June 23 (PNA)-- Mayor Belen Fernandez, back from the United States on a speaking engagement in the United Nations from June 13-17, revealed it was the best practices of Dagupan that compelled the world body to invite her as one of the panelists to the United Nations Open-ended Informal Consultative Process on Oceans and the Laws of the Sea.
In an interview upon her arrival on Wednesday, Fernandez said it was the Ambassador of Peru who took the cudgels of extending the invitation to her through the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) after seeing her presentation in the International Ocean Conservancy Convention in Chile last year and the ministerial conference of the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in Cebu earlier.
The UN meeting, attended by leaders and also of various non-government organizations of different countries, focused on the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of marine debris, plastics and microplastics, as well as progress made in preventing reducing, and controlling pollution from all these challenges, lessons learned and best practices.
Fernandez said she was the lone delegate from the Philippines and was surprised she had to be picked to represent and speak for the country. She was told by the Peru ambassador that they wanted her to share how her city is coping with the problems on plastics and pollution.
Among the best practices of Dagupan that Mayor Fernandez shared with delegates of the convention were the collection of plastic materials from homes of pupils and students and the recycling of these materials to school desks and tables; the ‘Gulayan sa Paaralan,’ which makes use of plastic bottles of softdrink that are opened on one side and used in growing vegetables; and the conversion of plastics into pavers that can be readily harnessed as pathways during the flood season.
She admitted telling the delegates of the convention that every school children in Dagupan has been told by their teachers not to recklessly throw awasy their plastics and instead save them as these can be sold to the junkshops for conversion into many useful materials in homes as well as in offices and even outdoor.
The mayor said this is something similar with the ‘kinder energy’ program in various advanced countries where children at a very tender age are being taught to save their plastics as these may eventually go down and clog the drainage systems and in the end flow and settled in the oceans.
In that convention, Fernandez cited the efforts of her administration in removing illegal fish pens from the rivers numbering more than 390 to date as a means to prevent marine debris.
These 390 fish pens are growing milkfish that need 1.4 million bags of feeds annually, at least 20 percent of these are actually not consumed by the fish that drops in the bottom of the river and rot, thus causing pollution.
"Since we already have an ordinance banning fish pens, we have to remove these structures and replace them with more environmentally-friendly structures such as fish cages, fish traps and oyster beds and props," she said.
Asked what she will do with fish pens in rivers whose owners insist they have titles over the areas covered by the structures although they are inside rivers, she left the matter to City Administrator Farah Decano and City Legal Officer George Mejia who are both lawyers.
She said these structures are fish pens and have to be removed too as they do not have dikes unlike fish ponds, but is leaving this matter to the lawyers.
"In that international convention, it was stressed that prevention of potential marine pollution is easier and less expensive than removing the cause of pollution, that is why we are now banning the construction if fish pens and demolishing those that are still standing in the water, " Fernandez said.
At the same time, Fernandez was assured by the delegates of their full support so that Dagupan can get an 80 million dollar grant to bankroll a project that will convert garbage into diesel fuel and biogas under the Waste to Worth Program backed up by the U.S. State Department, Asian Development Bank and Procter and Gamble.
Up until the last day in office of President Benigno Aquino III, Fernandez is still hopeful a presidential proclamation will be issued segregating a portion of land at Tondaligan area as site of the Waste to Worth projects.