Rory Jay Sta.

Catalina Dacumos 6/3/2014

Sustainable Development in the Philippines

The Philippines has always been part of the global community in as far as promoting
sustainable development is concerned. Starting with its participation in the Rio Earth Summit
of 1992, the Philippines formulated its own action plan, called Philippine Agenda 21 (PA21),
which was patterned after the United Nation's Agenda 21. It consists of social, economic and
environment indicators that the country monitors in order to ensure achievement of
sustainable development. The national PA21 was even 'localized,' that is, indicators were
disaggregated down to regional and provincial levels. After two decades, however,
measurement problems hounded PA21, resulting to less than stellar appreciation from
national and local leaders. The difficulty in measuring sustainable development, especially
environment indicators and how it should be integrated with social and economic indicators,
produced ambiguities on how it could be properly used for policy decision-making. In fact,
only a few leaders have used PA21 and its localized version as an important tool in the policy
decision-making process.
Nevertheless, the Philippines still continued to support sustainable development. In
the recent Rio+20 Earth Summit of 2012 (United Nations Conference on Sustainable
Development 2012), the Philippines aligned with the Group of 77 (G77) countries in pushing
for the formation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including its indicators.
G77 argued that in view of the conclusion of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in
2015, the SDGs should be made and agreed upon by member-states as the post-2015
development agenda. The Philippines, together with the G77 countries, proposed that
technology, knowledge, resources and expertise of member-countries, especially developed
countries, should be pooled in order to come up with attainable and measurable SDGs and its
measurement indicators.
Fortunately, a landmark agreement was made at the Rio+20 Conference, which
resulted in a political outcome document containing clear and practical measures for
sustainable development implementation. The member-states agreed to start the process of
developing the SDGs by using the MDGs as a starting point. In addition, the Rio+20
Conference directed the United Nations Statistical Commission and other units within the
United Nations system, to launch a program of developing realistic and measurable
sustainable development indicators that would better inform policy decisions.
Rory Jay Sta. Catalina Dacumos 6/3/2014

To date, the Philippines has started the process of developing its own sustainable
development goals and indicators. With the support of UN, it has begun stocktaking of its
experience in the past 20 years of sustainable development implementation. From these
lessons learned, a sustainable development framework will be formulated. The framework
will spell out the visions as well as possible scenarios that the country may face, in view of
the challenges faced by many countries today, such as climate change, among others.
Specifically, the framework will build on the Universal Goals that were identified from the
report of the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda,
namely:

"1) End Poverty, 2) Empower Girls and Women and Achieve Gender Equality, 3)
Provide Quality Education and Lifelong Learning, 4) Ensure Healthy Lives, 5) Ensure
Food Security and Good Nutrition, 6) Achieve Universal Access to Water and
Sanitation, 7) Secure Sustainable Energy, 8) Create Jobs, Sustainable Livelihoods,
and Equitable Growth, 9) Manage Natural Resource Assets, 10) Ensure Good
Governance and Effective Institutions, 11) Ensure Stable and Peaceful Societies and
12) Create a Global Enabling Environment and Catalyse Long-Term Finance."

The Philippines is at one with the global community in its desire to come up with
meaningful measures of progress that would complement the current economic-centered
gross domestic product.