The Rotary Club of Manila had a brilliant, unique guest speaker at its last weekly members’ meeting at the Manila Polo Club — the famed, internationally acclaimed author, lawyer, environmental activist, and recipient, in 2009, of what is regarded as the Nobel Prize of Asia, the Ramon Magsaysay Award (non-category), Antonio Oposa Jr.
For about an hour and a half last Thursday, 21 September 2023, RC Manila members, officers and guests at the MPC’s Turf Room alternately stood up to sing along and listen to Oposa’s telling of “good stories,” his way, he said, of promoting and creating awareness for his advocacies and his passion for the environment.
Oposa earned a law degree from the University of the Philippines College of Law. For a short time, he worked in a law firm, until he realized that his heart was not in the practice of law but rather with nature and the environment.
He traveled to Norway and enrolled in a course on energy and the environment at the University of Oslo’s summer program and afterwards, to Boston, where he pursued and later obtained his LLM at the Harvard Law School in 1997.
In 1993, Oposa made global headlines for the landmark case, Minors Oposa v Factoran where the Supreme Court ruled that the 43 children counseled by Oposa, who filed legal action against the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, seeking cancellation by the agency of existing timber license agreements and stopping the issuance of new ones, ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.
“The case was brought to court amid the government’s then granting over 90 logging companies permits to cut down nearly four million hectares of old-growth forest when only 850,000 hectares remained. And forests were being logged at a rate of some 200,000 hectares per year! I told the Court how my son, only three at that time, would no longer see these forests by the time he was 10. I couldn’t help thinking, that if this wasn’t stopped not a single old-growth forest would remain for him and future generations to enjoy,” Oposa said.
The case had initially been dismissed in trial court on the ground that there was no legal personality to sue. Oposa elevated the case to the Supreme Court, and in a much-hailed case of intergenerational responsibility, the Supreme Court upheld the legal standing and right of the children to initiate action on their behalf and on behalf of generations yet unborn.
What was so remarkable about the case is that Oposa sued on behalf of generations yet unborn and today that milestone case is known in Philippine and global jurisprudence as the “Oposa Doctrine.”
For its part, the Philippine Supreme Court, too, carved a permanent niche for itself in environmental law with its promulgation of Oposa v Factoran. It secured its place in history, earning praises from the international environmental community and a reputation as a champion of the right to a healthy environment.
Oposa also recounted at this talk at the RC Manila meeting last Thursday another epic landmark case involving the legal tussle he waged against 11 government agencies for the cleaning up of severely polluted Manila Bay.
In December 2008, a decade after he filed that case, the Supreme Court issued a decision in his favor. In a continuing mandamus ruling, the Supreme Court ordered all defendant agencies to implement a time-bound action plan that would clean up Manila Bay and to give the Court a progress report on the matter every three months.
Oposa talked about the Island Sea Camp he organized in 2001 in Bantayan Island where he gave children lessons on coral reefs, snorkeling and sustainable practices.
In 2003, 2004, while holding weekend training camps for children in the Sea Camp “we noticed the rampant illegal fishing going on. Dynamite fishing and commercial fishing intrusions into prohibited coastal zones went unchecked. Something had to be done,” related Oposa. Thus, was born the Visayan Sea Squadron.
“I organized a strike team with crack enforcers from the National Bureau of Investigation, Navy, fishermen, sea watch volunteers, lawyers, law students and even a few foreigners. The target was not small fishermen but crime syndicates and operators behind the sale of blasting caps and dynamite powder. Seizures and raids followed,” he said.
Operations were so effective that word went out that his friend Jojo de la Victoria, the fearless Cebu City Bantay Dagat (Sea Watch) chief, and Oposa were targets of assassination. A local newspaper interviewed De la Victoria, revealing an intelligence report about illegal fishing operators putting up a P1-million bounty for him and Oposa.
In 12 April 2006, 48 hours after he was interviewed, De la Victoria was felled by a hired gunman outside his house in Cebu City.
“Jojo’s life was not in vain. After his funeral, a core team met for dinner to regroup. The tide of illegal fishing started to turn. Exploits of the Visayan Sea Squadron — and the courage and synergy of the men and women who made it happen — became known far and wide,” Oposa said.
He continued, “Four years after Jojo died, Visayan Sea Squadron co-founder Alfredo Marañon was elected governor of Negros Occidental province. He gathered the other governors in the region to begin a restorative plan for the Visayan Sea which encompasses an area of over a million hectares. The governors passed a landmark joint resolution declaring the entire Visayan Sea a marine reserve.”
For his valiant work as an environmental warrior, Oposa has been the recipient of many award in recognition of his valiant work as an environmental warrior.
Aside from receiving the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2009, he was given the equally prestigious Center for International Environmental Law Award in 2008. Earlier, in 1997, he was conferred the United Nations Environment Programme Global 500 Roll of Honor, the highest UN honor in the field of the environment.
Asked if there was anything about his attainments that gives him the most satisfaction, Oposa said, “My biggest achievement is not that I caught this violator and that violator when we were busy with our Visayan Sea Squadron operations; it is that I have turned my adversaries into co-advocates. Some of those who had opposed me are now supporting me in my advocacies. And what could be more inspiring than to see their own children helping us out there, protecting the sea?”