Lupac, Lenette C.

JD2 NARELAW FINAL EXAMINATION

1. The Writ of Kalikasan is a legal remedy when such constitutional right or any
environmental policy or law is violated. The writ is a laudable self-executing
provision since it protects the Filipino right to a healthy environment. Employing
the lens of social ethics, it can ensure the environmental integrity by focusing on
some generic cases involving environmental damage of such magnitude as to
prejudice the life, health or property of affected inhabitants. It informs about the
recently written writ which relevantly empowers Filipinos to legally assert their right
to environment in order to obligate their own government to act.

2. The Writ of Continuing Mandamus can be used as a remedy for the separation of
powers and it should be used when any agency or instrumentality of the
government or officer thereof unlawfully neglects the performance of an act which
the law specifically enjoins as a duty resulting from an office, trust or station in
connection with the enforcement or violation of an environmental law rule or
regulation or a right therein. In the case, MMDA vs Concerned citizens of the
Philippines with G.R. Nos. 171947-48 is a concrete way by which the Filipino
people through its judicial system responds to the challenges posted by the
environmental pollution and environmental destruction in the present world. The
challenges posted in the writ of continuing mandamus is in line within the context
of caring and conserving manifested in the encyclical Laudato Si by Pope Francis.
The writ calls for the different sectors of the society to act and do their respective
parts in order to clean up, rehabilitate and preserve Manila Bay, and restore and
maintain its waters to SB level 2 to make them fit for swimming, skin diving and
other forms of recreation. It is a call to the Filipino people to help the earth heal.

3. Pollution currently poses one of the greatest public health and human rights
challenges, disproportionately affecting the poor and the vulnerable. It is not just
an environmental issue, but it affects the health and well-being of entire societies
especially the poor communities in which they are burdened with a
disproportionate number of hazards, including toxic waste facilities, garbage
dumps, and other sources of environmental pollution and foul odors that lower the
quality of life. All around the world, members of minority groups bear a greater
burden of the health problems that result from higher exposure to waste and
pollution. This can occur due to unsafe or unhealthy work conditions where no
regulations exist or an enforced for poor workers, or in neighborhoods that are
uncomfortably close to toxic materials. In order for the poor communities to
become aware of the effects of the environmental threat that is being posed, we,
the students having the privileged to know these kind of issues must educate them
and engaged them in campaigns which can enable them to avoid many of the
harmful consequences of pollution and leapfrog over the worst of human and
ecological disasters and to provide planning processes that prioritize interventions
against pollution, that link pollution control to protection of public health, and that
integrate pollution control into development strategies are critical first steps in
fighting pollution. In this way we cannot totally eliminate the risk posed by our
environment but we can lessen it by giving them some strategies that are not cost
effective such as for the outdoor air pollution we can give them the idea that instead
of reducing open burning for agriculture they may opt to use new ways of dealing
with farm waste. In line with this, with the help of the government this issue should
be prioritized and there should be an increase investment in pollution cleanup and
control which presents an extraordinary opportunity to save lives and grow
economies.