Davocol, Jan Arkie T.

2A2

Catholic Social Teaching (CST) is the Catholic doctrines on matters of human dignity and common

good in society. In order to uphold the common good, it is needed that we as Catholics take a stand on the
most pressing societal issues we are facing today, with none being bigger than our environmental woes.
The environment has been the subject of humanities’ negligent usage of God’s gifts for our own benefits
so much that we caused a cataclysmic man-made climate change that is bound to affect us for the years to
come.

It is saddening to witness how the Philippines, a predominantly Catholic country, failed to care for the
nature. Mining leading to massive deforestations, and conversion of forests into farms or residential lands,
and massive pollution – these are the merely the tip of the iceberg, it happens and is continuously
developing as we speak and as Catholics we have to answer the calls of the CST in order to take a stand
to fight for our environment against big companies and people who do not care about saving it. In line
with this, one of the recent issues is the construction of the Kaliwa Dam. The China-funded dam
construction plan would not only violate legal processes but would also render thousands of indigenous
peoples homeless as the scale of the dam covers their ancestral domain. According to the law, indigenous
peoples should own their ancestral domain, for it is where the people and their fathers and their fathers
before them thrived and lived, and as Catholics we need to take a stand in order to prevent an onerous
project from taking these away from the people.

Furthermore, the project will pave way for a long-term, permanent environmental damage to the Sierra
Madre and its biodiversity. The Kaliwa Watershed where it is to be constructed on, is a forest reserve,
national park and wildlife sanctuary where around 130 species, including the critically endangered
Philippine Eagle, are to lose their home and 300 hectares of forested area in the Sierra Madre will be
permanently flooded. Hundreds of thousands of individual lives will be endangered due to heavy flooding
caused by its construction and maintenance especially those living in the low-lying areas.

It is our prerogative as Catholics, imbued with the CST, to fight for the rights of our oppressed and
marginalized brethren and for the environment – because it is God’s will that we do, because we have the
voice and we united shall stand stronger.