DENR Chief's 'Sustainability Plan' Raises Eyebrows — Is It Just Another Broken Promise?

Wazzup Pilipinas!?

In a world teetering on the edge of environmental collapse, words like “sustainability” echo through the halls of government like hopeful whispers against a roaring storm. And yet, in a recent turnover ceremony at the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Environment Secretary Raphael Lotilla dared to rekindle that fragile flame. Declaring his commitment to the triad of economic, environmental, and social sustainability, Lotilla acknowledged the brutal complexity of balancing progress with preservation — where one pillar inevitably strains under the weight of another.

But beneath the polished rhetoric lies a haunting vagueness, a familiar cadence of ambition without clear direction — a melody we’ve heard too many times before. The promise to safeguard resources “for future generations” sounds noble, yet dangerously incomplete. We’ve seen what happens when such promises go unfulfilled.

Who can forget the fire of the late Gina Lopez, whose legacy burned with clarity and purpose as she urged DENR officials to be more than enforcers — to become warriors of the common good? Or President Duterte’s blunt command to Roy Cimatu: “just do your duty” — a call stripped of pleasantries but heavy with responsibility.

Lotilla now stands at a crossroads, between aspiration and action, between the inertia of bureaucracy and the urgency of a dying planet. The question is no longer whether we should act — it’s whether we have the courage to move beyond recycled declarations and confront the future with bold, decisive change.

History is watching. So are the forests, the rivers, the children not yet born.

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