My New 7 Wonders of Nature

Puerto Princesa Underground River trek circa 1994

Have you cast your vote for the New 7 Wonders of Nature? You have about 10 days left to vote if you haven't done so. Voting ends November 11, 2011 (that's 11-11-11 for you).  I just sent my own verdict a while ago, through the New7Wonders website. You may not be interested with my picks, but here they are nonetheless in no particular order, each with snippets of the wisdom behind my vote:

1. The Amazon of South America. The largest rainforest is found here. Sadly, among the fastest rates of deforestation also happens here. The Amazon rainforest produces 20% of the earth's oxygen, earning for it the monicker "The Lungs of the Planet". This tropical ecosystem is shared by nine countries.
2. Great Barrier Reef of Australia and Papua New Guinea. This is the "Amazon" of the coastal and marine ecosystem in terms of size. The reef is the biggest single structure made by living organisms and can be seen from the moon.
3. Galapagos Islands of Ecuador. This is where one finds the biggest concentration of endemic species. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection was born here. Without Darwin, there would have been fewer atheists and agnostics, and society would have been a lot boring.
4. Komodo National Park of Indonesia. The earth's largest living lizards - the Komodo Dragons - call the Komodo and nearby islands home. Their only home; so unlike their cousins who are also able to survive in Congress.
5. The Dead Sea of Israel, Palestine and Jordan. The lowest point on the earth's surface. No creatures (except for some microorganisms) live in its waters because of its high salinity (saltiness, in our terms); hence the name. What's more fascinating is that one can float on it without really trying. Click here and watch. Bad location for mafiosos to dump dead bodies.
6. Halong Bay of Vietnam. I was there two years ago. The mysticism of the place is just overwhelming. Simply awesome.
7. Underground River of Puerto Princesa, Philippines. But of course!

There are more of the finalists that deserve my vote, but since I am being limited to voting for just seven, I am sticking with my list above. I have never been to these places, except for the last two; but I have always been fascinated by them since childhood and have continued to get awed as I read and hear stories about them time and again. I hope you will also find them amazing and will also include them in your own list.

Halong Bay, Vietnam circa 2009

Related article: Vietnam and the Philippines united by nature

AVATAR: Poorly Written, Visually Stunning. Go Watch It

There should be two or more agenda for a visit to Gensan to proceed; I remember sharing this personal carbon footprint-lessening policy in a previous post. I am happy to note that the policy is holding. This morning, I and my small family went to Gensan to grace my inaanak's (godson) birthday. We had another purpose: watch the movie Avatar.

My 10-yo kid Anakin, who is not a fan of watching movies in theaters (he'd rather watch videos at home), was not at first keen on the idea. But two hours and forty-five minutes later, like us he came out of Robinsons Movieworld mesmerized; overjoyed by the visual feast he just went through.

Technically speaking, Avatar is a movie like no other that I have seen. To say that the visuals were outstanding is an understatement. I have heard that cutting-edge visual effects/cgi technology was employed to make this movie, ushering in a new era in film-making. I am reminded of the pioneering sci-fi's of the likes of Spielberg and Lucas in the 1970s and 80s (Star Wars trilogy, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, etc.); the ooohhs and the aaahhs of the audience awed by the never-before-seen visual FX, never mind the tunog-lata (tinny) sound reproduction of the local moviehouse.

But Avatar is no Bladerunner, the Ridley Scott masterpiece which in 1982 provided us both award-winning visual production and good narrative. Avatar's plot is just so over-simplistic. Well, I know it's simply a fantasy film, a fiction; and the bad narrative might have served the film well -- the audience gets to focus more on the enormous visual canvas, gets a thrill ride and goes out of the moviehouse smiling (even coming back the next day to watch the movie again).

But I also heard Director James Cameron and company confirming Avatar's discernible desire to get an anti-war and pro-environment message across. It would have elevated the movie some notches higher on the billboard of appreciation if the plot approximated the real stories of current advocacies in the area of peace and environment. Because these stories do not usually have happy endings.

The concept of the avatar program, I like. I appreciate the parallelism of the avatars (more that of  Grace, etal than Jake's) to the development workers of the real world. The latter (well, at least some of them; sometimes called community facilitators or community relations officers) are usually employed by institutions like government and private companies and deployed in the front lines to clear the way (diplomatically, that is) for "development" projects on the ground. They immerse with the communities, establish cordial relationships with the people, and help find alternatives for those that may be displaced by the "projects". In mining companies, they are usually the most sincere in as far as goodwill and the promise of genuine upliftment for the communities are concerned; and like in Avatar, they usually become sacrificial pawns in the arena of development aggression.

In the movie, aggression comes in the form of direct military invasion; as management of the mining company becomes impatient over the "slow" progress of diplomacy and integration as espoused by Jake, Grace, etal. This is where the movie becomes OA. The love affair between the Na'vi's Neytiri and Jake (or his avatar for that matter) is more believable than the portrayal of aggression as the unleashing of military hardware. In the real world, the more telling aggressions on the environment are done subtly and discreetly: hiding records, undervaluing compensation, legal compromises, etc. like what big business did (or tried to do) in Erin Brockovich (2000); and classic in the Philippine context, paying off people.

But I do agree that development aggression, especially that done in behalf of business, is planned; its planning based not on the preparedness of communities but dictated by markets. In Avatar, you have a "little gray rock that sells 20 million a kilo" (I presume "million" here is in dollars), what business sense is there to wait for diplomacy to fully work before you mine?

The central character of Jake Sully is lame. It does not even help that the character itself is played out as a paraphlegic marine. For why is a paraphlegic still sitting on a wheelchair in a world where technology can already make humans travel from Kansas to Pandora? Nonoy Zuniga already got his prosthetics during Marcos' time! Cameron should have built on the character of Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) and her team, if Cameron indeed wants to deliver a statement on the environment. The story of many development workers on the ground tasked to mediate between and among communities, government and private entities is represented by Grace in the movie. It is a story that does not always end happily but one that poses challenges to old premises in environmental and development advocacies.

Well maybe Sigourney Weaver already had her time with Gorillas In The Mist (1988).

Meanwhile, Jake Sully is only incidental to the whole plot. He accepts the challenge to serve in Pandora in honor of his dead brother; finds himself addicted to his avatar who can walk unlike him; is lost in the jungle while in his avatar and rescued by a Na'vi princess; immerses and learns the ways of the Na'vi people in the service of military intelligence; falls in love with the princess; changes heart and rallies the people against the establishment; eventually calls to Pandora's deity Eywa for help, which the latter heeded. The classic outsider-becomes-hero saves the day for the entire village. Corny.

But forget about the story, for Pete's sake. We all know better that war and conquest do not justify any end, and that nature does fight back when pushed to its limits; though its own viperwolves, titanotheres and thanators do not specify particular villains but rather target all humanity.

Go watch the movie for the visual carnival. To enjoy it more, watch it if you can in a top-notch theatre that offers 3D or at least a qualified surround sound. Robinsons Movieworld in Gensan is not one (at least, as of this writing).

If you work for a mining company, all the more you should go watch it... please.

A win-win proposition for the coal power plant debate in Sarangani

I originally posted this as a comment to one of the blogs I encountered a couple of days ago. But somehow my comment got lost along the way and never got itself published, so I might as well just put it in my own blog. The comment, of course, was a lot shorter than this.

The context was the frequent brownouts (power curtailments) this region of Mindanao is currently experiencing. Some sectors are forecasting dire times ahead as the energy needs of Mindanao are climbing rapidly for power supply to catchup; hence the need for more investments in power infrastructures -- e.g. power plants.

Now, we all know that a coal-fired power plant is to be put up in Barangay Kamanga in the town of Maasim, Sarangani Province. Project proponent Conal Holdings Corp. (a company partly owned by the local Alcantara Group), in trying to allay fears of environmental havoc, has been assuring the public that a cleaner technology will be utilized for the plant's operations. Environmentalists and their allies, of course, are not about to buy the idea. Needless to say, two opposing sectors are currently slugging it out to win the hearts and minds of the public and the government who, in the final analysis, have the final say whether the power plant pushes through or not.

Last Sunday, I came across a feature article in the Inquirer Mindanao section of PDI, which contained one of the most interesting and witty proposals which, for me, can finally end the debate. This came from one Chris Dearne, an English conservationist based in General Santos City, who was quoted in the article as having "...dared the company (Conal Holdings) to put up the facility (coal power plant) side by side with the sprawling aquamarine farms of the Alcantara family in Alabel if it believes that it is really environmentally safe." (A. Zonio. "Saving Sarangani Bay's coral reefs" Philippine Daily Inquirer, 24(104): A19, March 22, 2009).

I know the above proposition may have been thrown in sarcasm, but don't you think it's a fairly brilliant idea?