Senate OKs PENCAS bill on 3rd reading

The Senate on Wednesday approved on third and final reading the proposed Philippine Ecosystem and Natural Capital Accounting System (PENCAS) law.

Senate Bill 2439 garnered 23 affirmative votes, zero negative votes, and zero abstention.

In her sponsorship speech, Senate President Pro Tempore Loren Legarda said the bill provides indicators that will integrate the concerns of nature in planning, policy making and budgeting, adopts the international standards under System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA), and ensures interagency coordination to link natural capital information with the performance of agency mandates.

The proposed measure includes the recognition of natural ecosystems as an integral part of our patrimony and heritage, ensuring that our economy opens its eyes and reduces its blinders.

The bill defines Natural Capital as the stock of renewable and non-renewable resources, including plants, animals, air, water, soils, ores, and minerals, that provide a flow of benefits to people and living things. Natural capital includes but is not limited to ecosystem services such as air and water filtration, flood protection, carbon sequestration, pollination of crops, and habitats for wildlife.

“By institutionalizing a PENCAS, we hope to integrate environmental inputs and outputs in the determination of national income accounts to reflect a more accurate state of development and economic performance of the country,” Legarda earlier said.

“In addition to the Gross National Product and other usual indicators, our citizens will be informed of nature’s contribution to the economy. Our bill shall ensure that we have a list of officially designated statistics on the depletion, degradation, and restoration of natural capital, environmental protection expenditures, pollution and quality of land, air and water, environmental damage and adjusted net savings,” she added.

The bill tasks the Department of Natural Resources, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Energy, to ensure the generation of necessary data on natural capital and use them in decision making.

The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) is designated in the bill to oversee PENCAS implementation and create the Environment, Natural Resources and Ecosystem Account Service (ENREAS) under their Sectoral Statistics Office. — BM, GMA Integrated News