Chairperson Conrado F. Estrella, President Manuel M. Lazaro, The Board of Governors, officers, and members of the Philippine Constitution Association; Ambassador Alfonso T. Yuchengco, recipient of this year’s Maharlika Award; delegates of the 1971 Constitutional Convention and members of the 1986 Constitutional Commission; distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:

First of all, I would like to thank the Philippine Constitution Association for conferring this award, “The Great Defender of the Constitution,” which is truly humbling. It is both an honor and a privilege that I address this society in my final year as Chief Justice to talk about the third of the trinity of human rights espoused by the Constitution and championed by the Judiciary – environmental rights.

Evolution of environmental rights

Let me start by tracing the history of how mankind has treated nature, our environment. Prehistoric humans had nothing less than a strong spiritual relationship with their natural environment, glorifying nature with an awe-inspiring reverence for the mother earth.

1. This kinship with nature was known as pantheism – the belief that all on earth were divine, and nature was God.

2. Thus, they worshipped as their gods, the sun and the stars, the rivers and the trees. For a long time, this kinship flourished, based on the understanding that humans and nature are one. They believed that humans were made of the same substance as the rest of the universe; that they developed as part of nature and therefore remained part of the global ecosystem.

The advent of the great religions slowly changed all these beliefs. To be sure, Hinduism and Buddhism in South Asia still emphasize correct conduct and fulfillment of duty, which includes the obligation to preserve the environment. Thus, Hindus regard rivers as sacred, for Hindu theology looks at the world as a manifestation of the divine. Likewise, Buddhists continue to stress the importance of trees in the life of the Buddha.

Similarly, the East Asian traditions of Confucianism and Taoism still link together God, man, and nature. But they do not consider the divine as transcendent; instead, the earth’s fecundity is seen as continuously unfolding through nature’s movements across the seasons and through human workings in the cycles of agriculture. Confucianists and Taoists seek to live in harmony with nature and with other human beings.

(Delivered on the occasion of Philippine Constitution Day, February 8, 2009. See generally E.Goffman, “God, Humanity and Nature: Comparative Religious Views of the Environment” (2005), http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/envrel/review.php.)