The Philippines was one of the first countries to give intent to the Agenda 21 process initiated during the Earth Summit in Rio Janeiro in 1992, by formulating its own national agenda 21 in a highly participatory manner. As the Philippines advances gradually toward sustainable development, it faces three broad environmental challenges: urban air and water pollution, natural resource degradation, and the declining quality of coastal and marine resources. This report presents a snapshot of key environmental trends in the Philippines. An attempt has been made to create an Environmental Scorecard for the Philippines, which benchmarks some key indicators of production, consumption, pollution and ambient quality. The indicators are classified under " brown, " " green, " and " blue " agendas. The " brown " agenda is a term commonly used to describe the pollution caused by industrial, urban, transport, and energy sources and their single or collective impacts and protection measures. The " green " agenda is used to describe environmental impacts caused by agriculture, deforestation, land conversion, and destruction of protected species and related protection measures. " Blue " agenda refers to all forms of water resources management. The scorecard will be the basis to record future improvements or declines in environmental quality.
(With permission from the World Bank Group)
