Opening today at the Catanduanes State University is the three-day 2024 Bicol Regional Science, Technology and Innovation Week (RSTIW), back-to-back with the 2024 AbacaNobasyon, with Secretary Renato Solidum of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) gracing the event.
With the theme “Siyensya, Teknolohiya at Inobasyon Kabalikat sa Matatag, Maginhawa at Panatag na Kinabukasan” and subtheme “STI for Green & Blue Economy Towards Smart and Sustainable Communities,” the celebration highlights the utilization of science, technology and innovation (STI) in advancing and sustaining Catanduanes’ main source of livelihood – the abaca industry.
It will likewise push for adoption of various technologies and innovations in the green and blue economies and, in the long term, create Smart and Sustainable Communities.
A simplistic explanation of these two concepts goes this way: a blue economy looks after the ocean and its inhabitants while a green economy focuses on the land’s natural resources and make sure they are abundant enough for the human population.
These two economies, it is said, are the key to ensuring a safe, sustainable, and equal environment for the people and in preserving the world’s resources by preventing harmful human actions that contaminate Planet Earth.
A distinguished academic and geologist, Dr. Mario A. Aurelio, has studied the concept of blue and green economy frameworks, focusing on the sustainable use of marine resources.
In an interview with DOST scientist Glenn Ford Tolentino, Aurelio opined that the Philippines, being an archipelagic nation with vast marine wealth, has a great potential to harness its oceans to fuel economic growth while preserving its fragile ecosystems.
He takes a different approach with regards to the basic perception of people that the blue environment is water, fishes, and marine biodiversity, arguing that the non-living component – the marine subsurface, the seabed, and the subsurface – are just as important.
He points out that deep seabed mineral resources such as cobalt-rich ferromanganese crust and the hydrothermal polymetallic sulfides are all found in the Philippine Rise, which lies just a hundred kilometers north of Catanduanes.
There are also critical minerals and rare earth elements which are not found in the surface but very abundant in the deep seabed, notable along the Philippine trench 100 kilometers to the east of the island province.
Surrounded by the sea and hosting the largest remaining forest land in the Bicol region, Catanduanes is uniquely positioned to take advantage of its geographical location and still verdant land in utilizing STI to its benefit.
There is a need then for local leaders to interact with DOST, scientists, researchers and innovators to be able to clearly understand how STI would fit in their development plans for their respective local government units.
There are a lot of science-based ideas and technological innovations, however small, that can be utilized in the governance areas of livelihood, basic education, disaster risk reduction and management, health and nutrition, and water and sanitation.
The fact that Catanduanes accounts for the most super typhoons to make landfall and is highly vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis should convince local officials to change their minds about science, technology and innovation.
For many decades now, politicians have had a generally dismissive view about science in general, that it is only for nerds and useful only in the classroom.
With the effects of climate change now being felt in the province, it is high time that they embrace the inescapable truth that only science, technology and innovation, and its application to our everyday lives, would save humanity from extinction.