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  PlanetArk 19 Apr 07
Green Prize Winner Urges Asia to Name and Shame Polluters
Story by Koh Gui Qing

Today Online 19 Apr 07
Shaming can lead to change, says Champion of the Earth
Gracia Chiang

PUBLIC shaming might be an outdated practice in some countries, but it has been proven to work in the Philippines when tackling industries that pollute the environment.

The Ecowatch programme, which pushes for public disclosure of a company's environmental performance, helped Mrs Elisea ("Bebet") Gillera Gozun win a Champions of the Earth award, a yearly honour given out by the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep).

In town for the ceremony, the chairman of the Earth Day Network in the Philippines said: "Shame is something that people in Asia respond to." Mrs Gozun worked on a colour-coding system that signalled how much damage a company was doing to the environment. Businesses would be given an initial confidential rating and six months to do something about it, and this usually saw "tremendous changes".

The former secretary for the Philippines' Department of Environment and Natural Resources also cited another public shaming exercise in the 1980s called "Dirty Dozen", where 12 of the most environmentally-unfriendly companies in the country had their owners' names splashed across newspaper front pages.

Out of embarrassment, the children of the owners of one textile company refused to go to school. The impact on the family was so "powerful" that the company went on to set up a voluntary organisation of industries for a clean environment.

Another award winner was Mr Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee since 2001, for his work in advancing the sport and environment agenda.

There are now strict environmental requirements for cities bidding to host the Olympic Games--compared to "10 years ago when the environment had very little to do with sports", said Mr Achim Steiner, Unep's executive director.

The other five award winners are Jordan's Prince Hassan bin Talal, former United States Vice-President Al Gore, Sweden's Ms Viveka Bohn, Algeria's Mr Cherif Rahmani and Brazil's Ms Marina Silva.

PlanetArk 19 Apr 07
Green Prize Winner Urges Asia to Name and Shame Polluters
Story by Koh Gui Qing

SINGAPORE - Asia's environmentally unfriendly firms should be named and shamed into cleaning up their acts, as this is more effective than government regulation in promoting green issues, a UN award winner said.

"It's an Asian thing. We value reputations and names very much. We don't want to be put to shame," Elisea Gillera Gozun, who leads seven environment non-government organisations (NGOs) in the Philippines, said in an interview with Reuters.

"We react more to that rather than the fear of regulation," said Gozun, one of six winners of the annual Champions of the Earth awards due to be presented by the UN to environmental leaders in Singapore on Thursday.

Gozun won the award for her environmental efforts in the Philippines, which include the introduction of a pollution charges scheme and establishment of a public disclosure system for companies' environmental performance.

The 54-year-old mother of two cited the example of a textile firm in Manila which had discharged untreated water into the city's Malabon-Navotas river in the 1990s, and was shamed into cleaning up the effluent after the government named it as one of the "dirty dozen" responsible for polluting the river.

The children of the family that owned the textile firm were so ashamed by this that they refused to go to school. "They said 'we are so embarrassed because now our classmates are saying we are rich, we are making money, but we are polluting the river'," Gozun said.

"That's what woke them up. They cleaned up their act. They now serve as a leader in the community," she said, referring to the family.

Similarly, the "Pasig Poison" awards given by the Sagip Pasig Movement, a Philippine NGO, to the worst polluters of Manila's Pasig river every year have reined in some polluters, many of them food manufacturers wary of being seen by the public as dirty, Gozun said.

"NOT A REAL THREAT"

Gozun, who has worked as a consultant for environmental projects by global agencies such as the World Bank and the World Health Organisation, said bureaucracy often gets in the way of enforcing environmental standards and many firms do not take threats of closure very seriously.

"It's not a real threat, and it's not something that they fear," she said, referring to government regulation.

In the Philippines, firms are fined for dumping waste into rivers -- a scheme Gozun helped to implement in 2005 inspired by similar systems in Malaysia, Netherlands, Germany and Poland.

"Whenever you hit the pocket, people take notice," she said. Gozun, who said she got involved in environmental work after huge floods killed more than 5,000 people in the Philippine town of Ormoc in 1991, said people would become environmentally friendly if they knew how global warming could affect their individual lives.

"Once you do that, I have yet to come across anybody, rich or poor, who would dare not get engaged to think of a solution," she said. "If you really truly love your children, how can you leave them a world like that?"
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