ABSTRACT
The Aquino government continued the Marcos tradition ot building environmentally destructive "development projects." The Philippine National Oil Corporation, whose large-scale energy projects rely mainly on external funding, plans to build a geothermal plant on Mt. Apo, the sacred mountain of the Lumads in the southern island of Mindanao. According to Kalaw, the poor who are most affected by environmental degradation comprise the natural constituency of the green movement. Only one-fourth of Philippine coral reefs are in good condition, and fisheries production has dropped by half as a result of cyanide, dynamite, and other destructive forms of fishing. Debt-connected poverty has driven fisherfolk to resort to such desperate methods, just as the landless rural poor try to eke out a living by encroaching further and further into forest lands. In the decade of the seventies, wanton destruction of Philippine forests and other natural resources reached its height.
