Excellencies and distinguished guests, good afternoon.

The Philippines and the rest of Asia are experiencing rapid industrialization and urbanization. The region has become an international hub for manufacturing, and a production and consumption powerhouse. As a rapidly developing country, the Philippines faces many challenges including unsustainable production and consumption practices, increasing waste generation, and an insufficient solid waste management system.

The DENR’s strategic plans and programs are geared toward maximizing our potential to support our country’s growth trajectory within the context of resilience and sustainable development. This is also in accordance with the President’s statement during his first State of the Nation Address that “the preservation of the environment is the preservation of life and those who extract must follow the law.”

The Department continues to strengthen our partnerships with different government offices, civil society organizations and advocates, industries, and the academe to develop socially-responsible, science-based, and risk-informed strategies to conserve and protect our country’s environment and natural resources.

The Philippine Action Plan for sustainable consumption and production defines “sustainable production” as producing goods with menial ecological footprint. It is the maximization of the benefit that can be derived from using natural resources while maintaining the ecological and intrinsic value of the natural setting. In simple terms, it refers to the practices of producing goods and services in a manner that meets the needs of the present without compromising the future generations.”

In practice, sustainable production of natural resources involves implementing environmentally-responsible practices in resource extraction, production, and consumption. This can include using renewable energy sources, reducing waste and emissions, conserving biodiversity, and protecting ecosystems. In a sustainable production model, there must be a balance between economic growth, social equity and responsibility, and environmental protection.

This balance is at the core of reducing exposure and vulnerability to the impacts of climate change and other hazards.

There have been forests to promote sustainable production in industries such as agriculture and manufacturing. Sustainable agriculture practices look to improve food security and reduce environmental degradation. In the manufacturing sector, our production lines must be cleaner and have reduced harmful emissions, and we must assess the life cycle of products. This involves a holistic evaluation of their environmental impacts from beginning to end of their life cycle. Companies must work to integrate sustainability into all aspects of the supply chain.

Sustainable production is essential to address the disruptive environmental challenges facing the world today, such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, and degradation of natural systems. Additionally, socially responsible and sustainable production practices can lead to economic opportunities in communities and help organizations build trust and positive relationships with their stakeholders. When sustainable production and social development are integrated, it can lead to a more equitable, resilient, and sustainable future.

The President’s statements that the preservation of the environment is the preservation of life precisely underscore the value of our ecosystems as our natural life support and integrated risk governance needs to be not just a whole-of-government endeavor, but a whole of society one. It has become increasingly clear that our current production systems are not sustainable. We are consuming and disposing more quickly and far more than our environment can support, putting our future at risk. Ecosystem integrity and human development must go hand in hand. Our economic development comes at the expense of the rapid depletion of our natural capital and the degradation of critical ecosystem services.

We all have a stewardship role in terms of protecting our environment and natural resources and this responsibility is not solely the DENR’s. The sustainable production and consumption policies we design must therefore be transdisciplinal, time-sensitive, and spatially targeted in order for them to be transformational.

The Philippine Action Plan for Sustainable Consumption and Production is the guiding framework at the national level to steer sustainable behavior and practices among sectors and across all levels of government as we seek to advance the Philippine Development Plan.

Allow me to expound on the DENR’s priorities in resource use, specifically on the issue of production. Foremost, as related to the Philippine Action Plan for Sustainable Consumption and Production, is the mapping of the country’s natural resources through the establishment of a national natural geospatial database. Natural capital accounting is also vital as we need to identify and inventory our national assets to ensure that future generations continue to enjoy what nature offers. In short, this geospatial database will enable us to find and measure what we treasure.

The DENR oversees 15 million hectares of land classified as forest lands. In 2011, our forest cover was 6.8 million hectares but it increased by 5.6% or 7.2 million hectares based on 2020 data captured by the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority. To spur more investments in forestry, the DENR aims to establish a conducive investment climate by developing a real-time, single-point access to forestry investment portal that will provide information and services about forestry investment-ready areas for development and utilization. It will have links to financial and credit facilities of partner financial institutions such as the Development Bank of the Philippines, which supports our agorforestry plantation program. It will also offer access to insurance packages from the Philippine Crop Insurance Corporation for selected tree species in developed forest plantations.

The DENR also has an estimated area of 960,068.52 hectares for production areas. This is open for public private partnership to develop the area suitable for timber and agroforestry production. It is important to delineate and map-out the boundaries of protection and production of forests as we cannot sustainably manage what we are not able to know on the ground. We are applying a combination of remote sensing and ground-based verification in this regard.

Further, the forestry sector can be a potential source of nature-based offsets in carbon trading and offsetting schemes that could generate climate finance from carbon market mechanisms through voluntary markets, compliance markets, and “results-based payments” through REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Degradation and Deforestation). We are working closely with development partners to quantify enhanced carbon storage in blue and green forests and the value of avoided emissions by reducing deforestation and forest conversion. Our forests also deliver co-benefits for adaptation and disaster risk reduction by ensuring ecosystem services are available such as soil erosion control, floods (storm surge) management, and energy, food, and water security.

In the mining sector, the Mines and Geosciences Bureau has initially identified approximately nine million hectares as potential mineral areas. Our priority is to build both as strategic and responsible industry that includes the development of mineral processing and value-adding enterprises, while at the same time intensifying the enforcement of environmental safeguards and targeting social development components in mining operations to address vulnerabilities. We will be reviewing mining laws to ensure that standards are updated and that the provisions and IRR take full advantage of remote sensing and innovations in artificial intelligence.

Under the mineral investment promotion program, the Department will strategically address illegal mining, waste management, and its environmental practices. We will design and implement a strategic education communication plan for mineral resources and geosciences development in accordance with the Philippine Socio-Economic Agenda.

For this industry, the DENR plans to adopt a strong system of governance based on the established mitigation hierarchy of avoidance, mitigation, rehabilitation, and compensatory actions.

Central to today’s event are opportunities to scale up the circular economy and pursue growth while moving away from the unsustainable cycle of the “take, make, dispose,” model. In the first nationally determined contribution (NDC) submitted by the Philippines to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), we committed to a projected Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions reduction and avoidance of 75%, of which 2.71% is unconditional and 72.29% is conditional, representing the country’s ambition for GHG mitigation for the period 2020 to 2030 for the sectors of agriculture, wastes, industry, transport and energy. We aim to strengthen the resilience and adaptive capacity of the country, especially on the implementation of NDC policies and measures, through green systems, processes, the uptake of circular economy, and sustainable consumption and production practices.

The cabinet cluster on climate change adaptation, mitigation and disaster risk reduction (CCAM-DRR), which leads the effective integration of policies and programs on climate risk management, disaster risk reduction, and sustainable development, adopted a resolution in January 2021 called the “adopting the principles of circular economy and sustainable consumption and production, towards regulation and phase out of single-use plastics and a responsible transition to the use of environment-friendly products.” It recognizes and builds on the initiatives of its member agencies such as the Philippine Action Plan for Sustainable Consumption and Production, to support and accelerate targets of sustainable development goal 12 on responsible consumption and production and the Philippine Development Plan of 2023-2028.

On the part of DENR, we are leading the implementation of the Extended Producer Responsibility Act of 2022, which aims to establish or phase in EPR programs for plastic waste reduction, recovery and diversion. We are proud to announce that the DENR just released its implementing rules and regulations, and plans are underway to start implementing its various provisions in order to scale up waste reduction, recovery and recycling, and the development of environmentally-friendly products that will catalyze circular economy approaches to reduce plastic pollution.

Allow me to close by saying that sustainable production and consumption requires investments in building resilient communities and actual consideration of the efficient use and conservation of natural resources from ridge to reef. There isn’t a perfect approach or solution to tackling the environmental challenges we face. However, the DENR is committed to continued dialogues with stakeholders to bolster cooperation and understanding so that we can overcome the challenges of coherence and implementation as we work towards sustainable development.

SDG 12 on responsible production and consumption does not stand alone. It significantly intersects with the 2 SDGs that are at the core of the DENR’s mandate – SDG 14: Life below water and SDG 15: Life on land. The DENR would like to congratulate you for spearheading this event as it begins a journey that we all need to go on together.

On this note, I thank you once again for this opportunity to share the DENR’s vision of how economic growth can be pursued within the context of sustainable production and consumption towards resilient and sustainable development.

Thank you and good afternoon.###