SUSTAINABILITY

The Bohol Tribune

In This Our Journey

A column by: NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS

In 1987, the United Nations introduced the term “sustainable development” which means “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This definition caught fire among governments and civil society organizations, particularly those seeking UN assistance for their projects. Projects are expected to contribute to sustainable development, which means they have to contribute to environmental concerns apart from other having other objectives, to meet funding requirements of international donors.

All throughout the 90s and the current decade, sustainability has been something to aspire for in development planning and implementation. During the initial years, being sustainable meant that a project had to do something for the environment, perceived as needing more efforts for conservation and protection, to ensure a habitable planet for present and future generations.

Like other buzz words and phrases identified with externally-funded development initiatives, however, sustainability has taken new meanings which reflect other key concerns in a world which is getting more complex from day to day. It has been co-opted by other advocacies that today a project to be sustainable has to reflect interventions that contribute to gender equality, promotion of micro enterprises, human and child rights, and other concerns.

Given this situation, what has been proposed is to adopt a “program approach,” as UNDP promotes, which means adopting an umbrella program to encompass single-motive projects which can deal with specific problems and concerns but taken as a whole, they contribute individually to achieving sustainable development.

A cultural event which I attended recently brought me to thinking about sustainable development in a slightly different light. This was the invitational premier of Teatro Porvenir, meaning Theater for the Future, identified with the hero Andres Bonifacio, in those days of the revolution against Spain. Cultural guru Gardy Labad and his Kasing Sining, staged  the play  in a cockpit in Baclayon  to a crowd of artists, critics and professionals, including several government officials and several personalities from the academe. The two-hour show was considered a tremendous success based on the feedbacks given during the forum after the show.

The novelty of having the show in a cockpit, used as entertainment and gambling venue through the ages, did not escape notice by the discerning audience. Imagine, someone said, if cockpits in the province could be transformed into a community theatre, Indeed it will bring cultural shows to the people and propagate the thinking that culture is not only about movies and Broadway plays and classic music. 

Prof. Mariano Luspo of Holy Name University observed that there was significance in turning a place , where cocks are slaughtered in entertaining brutal cockfights. He wondered aloud if the use of cockpits as cultural venue could lead to forming an organization dedicated to the prevention of cruelty to artists! He noted such organization would have the same acronym as the one for preventing cruelty to animals.

Some comments during the forum were related to sustainability. These feedbacks actually deal with sustainability although not in the sense intended by the UN’s definition of sustainable development, not at a macro context anyway. Those comments expressed by several persons during the after-show forum concerned a basic issue, to my mind: how can you make this cultural presentation survive financially and ensure that it can be shown in cockpits throughout the year? Everybody seemed to agree that this kind of presentation, not necessarily about historical topics, can make use of an existing asset, such as cockpits, and transform it into something developmental, e.g. raising consciousness about social issues related to poverty.

To be sure, it required funds to mobilize more than 40 performers and bring them to a central place for rehearsals night after night for a month. Several resource persons or consultants are needed to assist Gardy Labad in managing these rehearsals for the dance, the dialogue, the various fight scenes. It might be they were supporting Gardy as volunteers but in the future, volunteerism may not be enough to ensure professional technical services.

Most of those in the cast were high school students and I can just imagine the tremendous efforts exerted to turn them into a highly competent and disciplined lot. Future productions may require a core group of performers with a professional support staff if theater production in cockpits will materialize. Selling affordable tickets at Php 130 per ticket and getting sponsors for refreshments and meals during rehearsals may not be, if I can be allowed to use the word, sustainable in the long run.

Some of those who spoke during the forum noted that to raise funds, foreign tourists could be motivated to attend such shows and pay. On this matter, the following suggestions were made: to shorten the presentation, something less than two hours; there must be a Teatro Porvenir “light,” meaning something not too heavy in treatment or that the viewers have to be given a more audience-friendly version of the show.

Atty. Doy Nunag, former head of the Provincial Tourism Council and owner of the Amarela Resort in Panglao, says marketing the show to tourists will require understanding first the actual situation of tourists, their need to explore in depth what is happening in a given place, its products and attractions, but at same time, doing all these efficiently within a given time frame.

From all these discussions after the show, I have come to appreciate the importance of financial sustainability as the driving force behind the advocacy for all kinds of sustainability to ensure that projects can work for a better environment and more progress in other advocacies such as those related to gender equality and poverty reduction. The project and the implementing or proponent organization have to survive first financially before we can even venture into the other elements of sustainable development as a global issue. Indeed we need hard-nosed tourism industry experts such as Atty. Nunag to match the passion and commitment of cultural gurus such as Gardy Labad if we have to achieve sustainable development in the eco-cultural tourism sector of the local economy. ###

NMP/written 01 Feb 2015