by Lisa Ito

The Center for Environmental Concerns-Philippines developed and piloted a new course for environmental educators, campaigners, and workers. Entitled the Environmental Cadres Course (EnviCore), the training stressed the value of the environment as a cross-cutting concern among basic social sectors and aimed to deal with problems encountered by people's organizations on the ground. This article documents the story of how it all began.

Rooted in RENEW

Since its inception in 1989, one of CEC's core programs has been the provision of relevant and responsive environmental education and training for Philippine grassroots communities and peoples organizations. This thrust led to the conceptualization and piloting of the Restoration Ecology Workshop (RENEW) in 1989 among different social sectors, including peasants, indigenous peoples, workers, women, fisherfolk, and urban poor folk.

RENEW started as a basic training module on restoration ecology. After periodic assessments and a process of “progressive contextualization” by the center's pool of trainers, it evolved into a dynamic and flexible course which introduces basic frameworks of analysis for environmental concerns, relevant environmental science concepts, linkages between local, national and global issues, and action planning. It remains CEC's basic environmental education course up to the present.

Creating EnviCore

EnviCore was conceptualized as a second-level or a follow-up course for RENEW graduates and environmental workers—a step further towards equipping campaigners and educators with more precise knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to engage in environmental education, research, and advocacy work.

A curriculum development workshop was held by CEC staff in March 2010 in order to conceptualize the course objectives, program, and content. As a more intensive course, EnviCore aimed to develop the capacity of environmental cadres of CEC network partners to respond to arising environmental issues and problems.

Developing “green cadres”

Among the main ideas introduced by EnviCore was the concept of “environmental cadres.” Defining this concept proved to be the more challenging aspects of conceptualizing the curriculum. Should this be a training course for environmental educators? Facilitators? Campaigners? Technical staff?

The composition of potential participants for the course was considered. Some were environmental NGOs. Some were sectoral institutions, representing a specific constituency such as farmers. Some were regional alliances or networks, whose members were composed of a broad base among the people. But all were engaged in multitasking between education and training, campaign, projects, research and advocacy work on differing, but overlapping levels.

Delimiting this characterization of target participants was a crucial concept, since this would be setting the expectations from the training graduates and the reality of the tasks that they fulfilled on the ground. Environmental cadres seemed to be the precise term which could capture the scope of the tasks and mandates of CEC's partners and constituency. From the discussions, environmental cadres were perceived to be people belonging to people's organizations, who have a high level of commitment to and practice in environmental struggles, a holistic grasp of basic environmental concepts and concerns, and capacity to educate, organize, and lead their respective constituents. Thus, they take on various roles and competencies as facilitators of change: leadership and advocacy, skills in education, training and information dissemination work, skills in networking, solid grasp of organizing and campaign work, and a facility to oversee researches.

Piloting the first batch

After months of preparation, the first EnviCore training was piloted at the staff and national level from 29 June to 4 July, 2010 at the Religious of the Good Shepherd (RGS) training center in Tagaytay City. Target participants for the pilot batch included CEC staff, national sectoral organizations, and members of CEC partner organizations who have previously completed RENEW courses.

The course produced 16 graduates from among CEC staff and nine national sectors: women, urban poor, workers, indigenous peoples, fisherfolk, and youth. Participants included representatives from the rural womens federation Amihan, the Center for Womens Resources, Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research, urban poor organization Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap, Kalikasan People's Network for the Environment (KPNE), Kabataan Sectoral Partylist, indigenous peoples federation Kalipunan ng Katutubong Mamamayan ng Pilipinas, Katribu Partylist, and national fisherfolk federation Pamalakaya. Most were working with these organizations as education and training officers, campaigners, community organizers, or writer-researchers.

The multi-sectoral composition of the pilot batch of participants and their diversity in terms of organizational background, age, gender, and interests highlighted the awareness of how environmental issues are connected across and within sectors.

For most of the participants from sectoral organizations, it was first time to undergo a formal training in environmental work. It was also an opportunity to broaden and deepen their understanding of the links between environmental issues and their respective concerns—which ranged from labor union education, education work among urban poor communities, gender education, indigenous peoplescampaigns, and involvement of students and youth in ecological concerns.

During the sharing of experiences facilitated by Che Dominguez, one realization was that there were many sectoral issues and campaigns on the ground that were directly linked to ecological concerns, such as offshore mining, the pollution of Manila Bay and Laguna Lake, waste mismanagement, impacts of pesticide use, oil spills, continuing foreign control over Philippine resources, and the devastation of urban and rural poor communities due to calamities (typhoons) or development projects (dams and large-scale mining). Responses to these realities ranged from direct action and services (such as distribution of relief goods and clean-up drives), information-dissemination and propaganda work, education and campaign activities, and legislative advocacy.

Intensive and comprehensive

The six-day training included various inputs aiming to introduce and enhance basic compentencies of environmental cadres.

The primary component of EnviCore laid stress on analytical frameworks for practice. KPNE National Coordinator Clemente Bautista, Jr. set the general situational context with inputs on the current state and challenges facing the Philippine and global environmental movements, laying stress on the state of crisis facing the people. Philippine Climate Watch Alliance spokesperson Meggie Nolasco followed up this segment with a discussion on climate change. CEC-Phils Executive Director Frances Quimpo gave a discussion of the frameworks and principles of CEC's environmental work. Lastly, CEC board member and Agham chairperson Dr. Giovanni Tapang gave the round up discussion of frameworks for analyzing environmental and scientific issues.

The second part of EnviCore focused on enhancing the participants knowledge of relevant scientific and legal aspects to environmental work. CEC Training and Community Services Coordinator Ric Saturay led the review of basic ecological concepts and processes. Dr. Emerlinda Regis, head of Ateneo de Naga University’s Institute for Environmental Conservation and Research, also talked about her experiences in environmental assessment and monitoring methods. Atty. Tonette Ramos of the Legal Resources Center gave an input on the general framework of environmental laws, led the special discussion on the Environmental Impact Statement law and Republic Act 7942 (the Philippine Mining Act of 1995), and gave an update on the rules of court related to environmental legislation and the green courts.

The last component of the EnviCore training focused on enhancing competencies and skills for practice and sharing experienes related to these.

A large part of this involved the gathering of data. Atty. Ramos led the workshop on gathering and documenting evidences for environmental cases. CEC Research, Education, and Advocacy Coordinator Lisa Ito-Tapang facilitated the session on tools in issue analysis and documentation, research, and profiling. Former CEC Executive Director Allan Mesina shared the center's experiences in conducting environmental investigative missions (EIM) and maximizing these as opportunities for advocacy work, laying stress on EIMs as a tool where scientists and experts to respond to the concrete realities of grassroots communities in environmentally-critical areas.

Another aspect was the focus on campaign and networking to achieve results. Bautista facilitated the session on environmental campaign planning and administration while CEC board member and veteran development worker Josephine Dongail capped the period with a session on networking and resource mobilization for environmental campaigns.

The pilot batch of participants drafted individual one-year forward plans with their organizations, where learnings from EnviCore could be integrated into actual practice.

Strengthening the environmental and peoples movement

Though this is still an ongoing journey and experiment, the results and feedback from the pilot EnviCore training graduates affirmed the need for strengthening the links and collaborations between environmental organizations and organizations representing the basic social sectors of Philippine society. It highlighted the need to develop awareness and competencies not just in the people from within environmental organizations, but from sectoral organizations whose constituencies are the first to be affected by ecological disasters and problems. A second EnviCore training will be held for Luzon-based organizations this year, while the training will be piloted in Visayas and Mindanao in 2011.

As all birthings go, this EnviCore training had its share of labor pains and experiments. But the diversity of the participants, their willingness to expand their comfort zones of learning, and the ecological values shared by the nuns of RGS Compound, and reflected in the training center's policies and atmosphere, also contributed to creating this space of learning.

In closing, the EnviCore hopes to contributing an emerging batch of Philippine environmental cadres who can effectively educate more learners from the grassroots and help emancipate more communities, who can bring more people to realize that the struggle for the environment is the struggle for the people.