Although Nicanor Perlas has never run for public office, he has been analyzing, reframing, and altering the course of national and global events for over thirty years. He has been altering the political landscape without being a politician. A good example of this has been his work in analyzing, reframing, and altering an important aspect of trade liberalization and globalization in Asia and the Pacific.
In 1996, the US government planned to use the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) as a vehicle to advance radical liberalization in Asia and the Pacific. The 18 member economies of APEC, at that time, directly contributed to 52% of the worlds GNP.
Through a strategic understanding of the substance, process, competing paradigms and interests in APEC, Nicanor Perlas convinced, then President Fidel V. Ramos to advance sustainable development as a more appropriate paradigm in APEC. Ramos was Chair of APEC in 1996. Ramos, with the help of Perlas, who was then negotiating with several Cabinet members, then convinced the 18 Heads of State of APEC, including then US President Bill Clinton, the President of China, the Prime Minister of Japan, to issue an APEC Leaders Declaration that introduced sustainable development as the third paradigm in APEC. Even more important, three million rice farmers were spared from the potentially disastrous consequences of radical liberalization. This happened amidst considerable resistance from the US Government.
Perlas was not only able to do this in APEC. He has similarly succeeded altering and/or creating new national policies that advance more sustainable forms of developments.
He was key in keeping the Philippines nuclear free, stopping the government from implementing their plan to build 12 nuclear power plants. He spearheaded the national movement that led to the banning of 32 pesticide formulations that were poisoning millions of farmers. He triggered the creation of a national integrated pest management program that had a budget of P750 million and which served over 100,000 farmers. He mobilized civil society to collectively craft, together with government, Philippine Agenda 21, which became the highest government framework for development under the Ramos administration. The UN also cited PA21 as one of the more promising examples of innovative approaches to sustainable development. Together with government, he succeeded in institutionalizing the societal threefolding approach, inaugurated globally in the Philippines, as part of its preferred approach to solving world problems. As member of the Steering Committee of KOMPIL II, he helped mobilized different sectors to remove Estrada from office.
Nicanor Perlas has the necessary understanding, skills, and experience in key development issues in the Philippines. Whether it is anti-corruption work, moral renewal, poverty reduction, participatory governance, globalization, fair trade, environment, safe energy, genetic engineering, multiple-intelligent education, sustainable agriculture, Nicanor Perlas has been deeply involved in creating some of the country’s leading advocacies and initiatives that address these challenges. Nicanor Perlas had the courage to persevere despite the seeming impossibility of the task including personal danger to his life.
In short, Nicanor Perlas had been inaugurating significant national policies influencing the lives of millions without being directly involved in politics. Perlas achieved significant results and impacts despite the more difficult of having to convince those who held political power to take up one’s advocacies. Significantly more will be done if Perlas would be able to directly mobilize government to advance sustainable development policies.
Here is a brief snapshot of some of the aspects of Perlas’s experience which prepared him for his decision to run for the presidential elections in 2010.
Anti-Corruption
BNPP. As Technical Consultant to the UN Center for Transnational Corporations, the Presidential Committee on the Philippine Nuclear Power Plant and the Senate Ad Hoc Committee on the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP), Perlas helped to uncover the massive bribery and fraud surrounding the purchase and construction of the BNPP. This fraudulent act and corruption resulted in massive safety problems of BNPP which forced the Aquino Government to mothball the plant.
DA/Pesticide Indusrry Collusion. Nicanor Perlas spearheaded the national effort to break the corrupt cabal involving pesticide companies and senior officials at the Department of Agriculture. At the same time, this effort resulted in the banning of 32 pesticide formulations, reducing the chronic pesticide poisoning of millions of farmers. In addition, the ban led to the creation of a P750 million national program on Integrated Pest Management, that reduced pesticide use nationally and that enrolled over a hundred thousand farmers.
Ousting Erap and His Corrupt Government. As leader of three national networks, Nicanor Perlas was present in the meeting of network leaders in Laguna in 2008, a meeting that eventually resulted in the national movement to impeach, oust, or have then President Estrada resign from office. Nicanor Perlas was then Chairperson of the Philippine Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, the Green Forum, and the Civil Society Counterpart Council for Sustainable Development. He then became the Environmental Representative in the Steering Committee of KOMPIL II that developed the detailed strategies that eventually succeeded in removing Estrada from office.
Moral Renewal
Workshops of Hope. Fighting corruption is one thing. Strengthening the moral intelligence of individuals ia another thing. Mr. Perlas was the lead designer and training facilitator for the Workshops of Hope that has now introduced hundreds of professionals from business, government and civil society to rediscover the deep sources not only of their moral integrity, but also the profound source of hope that can creatively face the challenge of moral regeneration and societal renewal.
Poverty Reduction
Family Food Production Program. Perlas helped UNICEF assess its national Family Food Production Program and make it more effective for the tens of thousands of household involved in the program.
Child Development Program. He assisted Plan International assess and refine its national child development program in the Philippines with a focus on sustainable development and sustainable agriculture for rural families.
Sustainable Agriculture. Perlas helped thousands of economically poor farmers and their families in over 25 provinces transition from expensive and destructive chemical farming methods to sustainable agriculture.
Micro Finance. Perlas served as Adviser on Strategy and Integral Sustainable Development and Chairman, Board of Directors, Lifebank, and Member, Board of Trustees of Lifebank Foundation, both of which together help 220,000 economically poor urban and rural families thru microfinance. 1999-2008
Peace and Development
Perlas wrote a manual for use by the government and the United Nations Development Program in the implementation of the Government of the Philippines and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) Peace Agreement of 1996. The manual advances Sustainable Integrated Area Development (SIAD) and state-of-the-art social technologies as an approach to advance, among others, livelihood and small business opportunities for former combatants in both Christian and Muslim areas of Mindanao. The Act for Peace Program served over 15 provinces as of 2007.
Other Activities
All these advocacies are only as aspect of the work of Nicanor Perlas.
In addition, Perlas has written over 300 articles and monographs including an international best selling book, Shaping Globalization: Civil Society, Cultural Power, and Threefolding, translated in over 9 languages. (Other topics, see below.) He was technical writer of Philippine Agenda 21, the official government blueprint for sustainable development in the Philippines as well as technical writer of Sustainable Integrated Area Development (SIAD), A Framework for the Localiation of Philippine Agenda 21. Both were written for the Presidential Council for Sustaianble Development.
Nicanor Perlas also has been a resource Person and keynote speaker in over 70 global conferences and 130 national conferences on a range of topics including culture and societal transformation, integral sustainable development, globalization, technology, corporate social responsibility, science and spirituality, second scientific revolution, multiple intelligence, safe energy, good governance, global warming, social threefolding, strategic microfinance, direct democracy and many other topics.
Perlas has been consultant and adviser to UN agencies, Philippine official delegations to the United Nations, government and donor agencies, and civil society organizations including colleges and universities in the area of human development, organizational transformation, appreciative inquiry, integral sustainable development, civil society, multiple intelligence and other areas of work.
Source: http://www.nicanor-perlas.com
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