City government leads Earth ‘week’ celebration

By Joseph B.A. Marzan

The Iloilo City government has lined up activities for the “Earth Day Weekend”, a four-day celebration of the annual Earth Day (April 22), starting today, April 21 to April 24, 2022.

The celebration will start with a beach clean-up led by the City Tourism and Development Office today at Villa Beach area from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m.

This will be followed on April 22 with a morning meditation, another clean-up at Villa Beach, and launching of trash and sand art installation, mural painting, free energy watersports, an eco-bazaar, with sunset sessions with a disk jockey, and an open mic night to cap the second day.

A clean-up activity, this time led by the City Environment and Natural Resources Office, will start the third day. In addition to the trash and sand art installations, water sports, and sunset sessions, activities include beach yoga and conscious moon bathing.

The fourth day kicks off with a clean-up led by the Hugyaw Sta. Cruz Cycling Group, and will include environmental film showing by Fish Rights and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Ian Varona of Villa Varona, one of the key locations of the celebration, said that the event’s theme is “Invest in our Planet”.

“The intent of the event is of course to celebrate the environment and so far highlight whatever the status of the planet is and whatever actions we will be able to take to mitigate any upcoming climate concerns, avoiding climate crisis,” said Varona.

“The spirit of this event is people realizing that we have to make an investment in our planet. And just like in any other investments, it takes a while for this to return your investment. Just like we are planting a tree and that the best time for this is 20 years ago and the next best time to plant a tree is now,” he added.

Varona also said that the activities hope to place importance on investing in preserving the planet.

“I think this is no longer a climate crisis but actually an existential one. We are looking at involving people through various activities. Arts with children on murals, film showing […] to emphasize the message of investing on our planet,” he said.

Other partners in include the University of the Philippines Visayas, UP Validus Amicitia EarthingPH, MORE Power, among others.

UP Visayas Chancellor Clement Camposano said that the event is close to his heart as well as to the institutional advocacy of the university as an educational and scientific institution.

“We will be the first to admit that this problem, the sustainability cannot be solved by science alone. We have to bring in community. We have to bring in people from other fields, we have to bring in artists, businessmen. Sustainability is something that can only come from a convergence of different forces, and this event is really one way to do that,” Camposano said.

Earth Day is regularly celebrated every April 22 and started at an international conference in 1970.