NATURAL RESOURCES

& ENVIRONMENTAL
LAW
Right to Health and Environment
ARTICLE II
Section 15. The State shall protect and
promote the right to health of the people and
instill health consciousness among them.
ARTICLE XIII
Section 11. The State shall adopt an
integrated and comprehensive approach to
health development which other social
services available to all the people at
affordable cost. There shall be priority for the
needs of the unprivileged sick, elderly,
disabled, women, and children. The Shall
endeavor to provide free medical care to
paupers.
Section 12. The State shall establish and
maintain an effective food and drug regulatory
system and undertake appropriate health
manpower development and research,
responsive to the countrys health needs and
problems.

COMPREHENSIVENESS - It includes health

promotion, disease prevention, education and
planning.
These are premised on the understanding that
the high level of health of people and of a
country can be achieved only through a
combination of social, economic, political and
cultural conditions.
AFFORDABLE - It is by the effort of the
government through the Generics Law that
the direction of making affordable health
measures available.
The purpose of the Generics Law is to fulfill
the constitutional command to make health
care affordable. Del Rosario v. Bengzon, G.R.
No. 88265, December 21, 1989.
Free medical care should be extended to
paupers, a concept which means those who
have no source of livelihood, or, even if they
have sources of livelihood, live a hand-tomouth existence.
The right to health should be enjoyed by all,
but the Constitution emphasizes its care for
the underprivileged.

Section 13. The State shall establish special

agency for disabled person for their
rehabilitation, self development and selfreliance, and their integration into the
mainstream of society.

ARTICLE II
Section 16. The State shall protect and
advance the right of the people to a balanced
and healthful ecology in accord with the
rhythm and harmony of nature.

The Constitution recognizes the right to

health

The 1987 Constitution was drafted at a time

when there was a growing concern about the
preservation of a healthy environment. The
discussion manifested a clear desire to make
environmental protection and ecological
balance conscious objects of police power.

The Philippine is party to the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights and the Alma
Conference Declaration of 1978 which
recognize health as a fundamental human
right.
As defined Health is the state of complete
physical, mental and social well-being, and
not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
Integrated and comprehensive
and Affordable
INTEGRATION - It connotes a unified health
delivery system, a combination of public and
private sector, and a blend of western
medicine and traditional health care
modalities.

Latest Update on Article 2, Section 15

Senate Bill 2805 and 2812, otherwise known
as Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Prevention
Act and Mercury Thermometer Regulation
Act respectively, both introduced by Senator
Miriam Defensor-Santiago last June 8, 2015
If you want to cultivate peace, protect
creation.
-

Pope Benedict, message for the

World Day of Peace, 2010

OPOSA VS. FACTORAN

G.R. No. 101083, July 30, 1993,

224 SCRA 789
FACTS:
The petitioners, all minors duly represented
and joined by their respective parents, filed a
petition to cancel all existing timber license
agreements (TLAs) in the country and to
cease and desist from receiving, accepting,
processing, renewing or approving new timber
license agreements. This case is filed not
only on the appellants right as taxpayers, but
they are also suing in behalf of succeeding
generations based on the concept of
intergenerational responsibility in so far as
the right to a balanced and healthful ecology
is concerned.
Together with the Philippine Ecological
Network, Inc. (PENI), the petitioners
presented
scientific
evidence
that
deforestation have resulted in a host of
environmental tragedies. One of these is the
reduction of the earths capacity to process
carbon dioxide, otherwise known as the
greenhouse effect.
Continued issuance by the defendant of TLAs
to cut and deforest the remaining forest
stands will work great damage and irreparable
injury to the plaintiffs. Appellants have
exhausted all administrative remedies with the
defendants office regarding the plea to cancel
the said TLAs. The defendant, however, fails
and refuses to cancel existing TLAs.
ISSUE:
WON petitioners have a cause of action to
prevent the misappropriation or impairment of
Philippine rainforests and arrest the unabated
hemorrhage of the countrys vital life support
systems and continued rape of Mother Earth

While the right to a balanced and healthful

ecology is to be found under the Declaration
of Principles and State Policies and not under
the Bill of Rights, it does not follow that it is
less important than any of the civil and
political rights enumerated in the latter. Such a
right belongs to a different category of rights
altogether for it concerns nothing less than
self-preservation and self-perpetuation
aptly and fittingly stressed by the petitioners
the advancement of which may even be
said to predate all governments and
constitutions. As a matter of fact, these basic
rights need not even be written in the
Constitution for they are assumed to exist
from the inception of humankind. If they are
now explicitly mentioned in the fundamental
charter, it is because of the well-founded fear
of its framers that unless the rights to a
balanced and healthful ecology and to health
are mandated as state policies by the
Constitution itself, thereby highlighting their
continuing importance and imposing upon the
state a solemn obligation to preserve the first
and protect and advance the second, the day
would not be too far when all else would be
lost not only for the present generation, but
also for those to come generations which
stand to inherit nothing but parched earth
incapable of sustaining life.
The right to a balanced and healthful ecology
carries with it the correlative duty to refrain
from impairing the environment. A denial or
violation of that right by the other who has the
correlative duty or obligation to respect or
protect the same gives rise to a cause of
action. Petitioners maintain that the granting
of the TLAs, which they claim was done with
grave abuse of discretion, violated their right
to a balanced and healthful ecology; hence,
the full protection thereof requires that no
further TLAs should be renewed or granted.

RULLING:
Yes. The complaint focuses on one specific
fundamental legal right the right to a
balanced and healthful ecology which, for the
first time in our nations constitutional history,
is solemnly incorporated in the fundamental
law. Section 16, Article II of the 1987
Constitution explicitly provides:
Sec. 16. The State shall protect and advance
the right of the people to a balanced and
healthful ecology in accord with the rhythm
and harmony of nature.
This right unites with the right to health which
is provided for in the preceding section of the
same article:
Sec. 15. The State shall protect and promote
the right to health of the people and instill
health consciousness among them.

YSMAEL VS. THE DEPUTY

EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, THE
SECRETARY OF ENVIRONMENT
AND NATURAL RESOURCES,
THE DIRECTOR OF THE

BUREAU OF FOREST
DEVELOPMENT and TWIN
PEAKS DEVELOPMENT AND
REALTY CORPORATION
G.R. No. 79538,
October 18, 1990
FACTS:
On October 12, 1965, petitioner entered into
a timber license agreement with the
Department of Agriculture and Natural
Resources, represented by then Secretary
Jose Feliciano, wherein it was issued an
exclusive license to cut, collect and remove
timber except prohibited species within a
specified portion of public forest land with an
area of 54,920 hectares located in the
municipality of Maddela, province of Nueva
Vizcaya from October 12, 1965 until June 30,
1990.
However, on August 18, 1983, the Director of
the Bureau of Forest Development (Bureau),
Director Edmundo Cortes, issued a
memorandum order stopping all logging
operations in Nueva Vizcaya and Quirino
provinces, and cancelling the logging
concession of petitioner and nine other forest
concessionaires, pursuant to presidential
instructions and a memorandum order of the
Minister of Natural Resources Teodoro Pena.
Subsequently, petitioners
timber license
agreement was cancelled. He sent a letter
addressed to then President Ferdinand
Marcos which sought reconsideration of the
Bureau's directive, citing in support thereof its
contributions to forest conservation and
alleging that it was not given the opportunity
to be heard prior to the cancellation of its
logging operations, but no favorable action
was taken on his letter;
Barely one year thereafter, approximately
one-half of the area formerly covered by
petitioners TLA was re-awarded to Twin
Peaks Development and Realty Corporation
under a new TLA which was set to expire on
July 31, 2009, while the other half was
allowed to be logged by Filipinas Loggers, Inc.
without the benefit of a formal award or
license. The latter entities were controlled or
owned by relatives or cronies of deposed
President Ferdinand Marcos.
Soon after the change of government in
February 1986, petitioner sent a letter dated

March 17, 1986 to the Office of the President,

and another letter dated April 2, 1986 to
Minister Ernesto Maceda of the Ministry of
Natural Resources [MNR], seeking: (1) the
reinstatement of its timber license agreement
which was cancelled in August 1983 during
the Marcos administration; (2) the revocation
of TLA No. 356 which was issued to Twin
Peaks Development and Realty Corporation
without public bidding and in violation of
forestry laws, rules and regulations; and, (3)
the issuance of an order allowing petitioner to
take possession of all logs found in the
concession area. However, petitioner's
request was denied. Petitioner moved for
reconsideration reiterating, among others, its
request that the timber license agreement
issued to private respondent be declared null
and void. The MNR however denied this
motion.
Petitioner subsequently appealed
from the orders of the MNR to the Office of the
President. The Office of the President, acting
through then Deputy Executive Secretary
Catalino Macaraig, denied petitioner's appeal
for lack of merit. Petitioner filed with the Court
a petition for certiorari, with prayer for the
issuance of a restraining order or writ of
preliminary injunction.
ISSUE:
WON petitioner has the right to seek the
nullification of the Bureau orders cancelling
his timber license agreement and the granting
of TLA to private respondent, which were
issued way back in 1983 and 1984,
respectively.
RULLING:
No. The failure of petitioner to file the petition
for certiorari within a reasonable period of
time renders the petitioner susceptible to the
adverse legal consequences of laches.
Laches is defined as the failure or neglect for
an unreasonable and unexplained length of
time to do that which by exercising due
diligence, could or should have been done
earlier, or to assert a right within a reasonable
time, warranting a presumption that the party
entitled thereto has either abandoned it of
declined to assert it. The rule is that
unreasonable delay on the part of a plaintiff in
seeking to enforce an alleged right may,
depending upon the circumstances, be
destructive of the right itself. Verily, the laws
did these who are vigilant, not those who
sleep upon their rights. In the case at bar,

petitioner waited for at least three years

before it finally filed a petition for certiorari with
the Court attacking the validity of the assailed
Bureau actions in 1983 and 1984.
Considering that petitioner, throughout the
period of its inaction, was not deprived of the
opportunity to seek relief from the courts
which were normally operating at the time, its
delay
constitutes
unreasonable
and
inexcusable neglect, tantamount to laches.
Accordingly, the writ of certiorari requiring the
reversal of these orders will not lie.
There is a more significant factor which bars
the issuance of a writ of certiorari in favor of
petitioner and against public respondents
herein. A long line of cases establish the
basic rule that the courts will not interfere in
matters which are addressed to the sound
discretion of government agencies entrusted
with the regulation of activities coming under
the special technical knowledge and training
of such agencies. More so where, as in the
present case, the interests of a private logging
company are pitted against that of the public
at large on the pressing public policy issue of
forest conservation. For this Court recognizes
the wide latitude of discretion possessed by
the government in determining the appropriate
actions to be taken to preserve and manage
natural resources, and the proper parties who
should enjoy the privilege of utilizing these
resources. Timber licenses, permits and
license agreements are the principal
instruments by which the State regulates the
utilization and disposition of forest resources
to the end that public welfare is promoted.
And it can hardly be gainsaid that they merely
evidence a privilege granted by the State to
qualified entities, and do not vest in the latter
a permanent or irrevocable right to the
particular concession area and the forest
products therein. They may be validly
amended, modified, replaced or rescinded by
the Chief Executive when national interests so
require. Thus, they are not deemed contracts
within the purview of the due process of law
clause.

HENARES VS. LTFRB

G.R. No. 158290
October 23, 2006
FACTS:
Petitioners challenged the court to issue a writ
of mandamus commanding the respondents

Land
Transportation
Franchising
and
Regulatory Board (LTFRB) and Department of
Trade and Communications (DOTC) to require
Public Utility Vehicles (PUVs) to use
Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) as
alternative fuel.
Asserting their right to clean air, the petitioners
contend that the basis for their petition for a
writ of mandamus to order the LTFRB to
require PUVs to use CNG as an alternative
fuel lie in Sec. 16, Art. II of the 1987
Constitution the state shall protect and
advance the right of the people to a balanced
and healthy ecology in accord with the rhythm
and harmony of nature, ruling in Oposa VS
Factoran the doctrine of intergenerational
responsibility and Sec. 4 of RA 8749 or the
Philippine Clean Air Act of 1999.
ISSUE:
WON not the respondents can be compelled
to require PUVs to use CNG through a writ of
mandamus.
RULLING:
The writ of mandamus commanding the
respondents to require the PUVs to use CNG
is unavailing.
Petitioners were unable to pinpoint the law
that imposes an indubitable legal duty of the
respondents that will justify a grant of writ of
mandamus compelling the use of CNG for
PUVs.
Petitioners invoke the provisions of the
Constitution and the Clean Air Act in their
prayer for issuance of a writ of mandamus
commanding the respondents to require PUVs
to use CNG as an alternative fuel. Although
both are general mandates that do not
specifically enjoin the use of any kind of fuel,
particularly the use of CNG, there is an
executive order implementing a program
on the use of CNG by public vehicles.

Executive Order No. 290, entitled

Implementing the Natural Gas Vehicle
Program for Public Transport (NGVPPT)
took effect on February 24, 2004
Paragraph 1.2, Section 1 of EO 290 cites as
one of its objectives, the use of CNG as a
clean alternative fuel
for transport.
Furthermore, one components of the program
is the development of CNG refueling stations

and all related facilities in strategic locations in

the country to serve the needs of CNGpowered PUVs.

WON the ordinance approved by respondent

is valid.

Most significantly, par. 4.5, Section 4 tasks

the DOTC, working with the DOE, to develop
an implementation plan for "a gradual shift to
CNG fuel utilization in PUVs and promote
NGVs [natural gas vehicles] in Metro Manila
and Luzon.

RULLING:
Valid. Because the tremendous event
happened near the area which many were put
into danger, the Manila Municipal Office shall
do its ministerial duty to protect all property
and health of those people who lived in the
vicinity and nearby cities. The court ordered
the transfer of Pandacan Terminal within a
non extendible period of 90 days. The life of
the people shall be the utmost priority of the
government in terms of its security, though the
business will lose billions of money, the
municipality cannot sacrifice its people.

A thorough reading of the executive order

assures us that implementation for a cleaner
environment is being addressed. To a certain
extent, the instant petition had been
mooted by the issuance of E.O. No. 290.
RULLING:
Mandamus is available only to compel the
doing of an act specifically enjoined by law as
duty. Here, there is no law that mandates the
respondents LTFRB and DOTC to order
owners of motor vehicles to use CNG.
Mandamus will not generally lie from one
branch to a coordinate branch, for the obvious
reason that neither is inferior to the other.

Social Justice Society, et. al. vs.

Honorable Jose Atienza, Jr.
G.R. No. 156052
February 13, 2008
FACTS:
Chevron is engaged in the business of
importing, distributing and marketing of
petroleum products in the Philippines while
Shell and Petron are engaged in the business
of manufacturing, refining and likewise
importing and marketing of petroleum
products. Petitioners sought to compel Mayor
Tienza to enforce Ordinance No. 8027 which
was enacted by Sangguniang Panlungsod of
Manila and became effective upon approval
by Mayor Atienza. This ordinance reclassifies
the area described from industrial to
commercial and directed the owners to cease
and desist from operating their business
within 6 months. Among the business is the
Pandacan Terminal of the Oil companies. Oil
companies intervened in the issue attacking
the validity of the ordinance.
ISSUE:

MMDA VS. CONCERNED

CITIZENS OF MANILA BAY
G.R. No. 171947-48
December 18, 2008
FACTS:
On
January
29,
1999,
respondents
Concerned Citizens of Manila Bay, with Atty.
Oposa as their lawyer, filed a complaint before
the Regional Trial Court in Imus, Cavite, for
the clean up, rehabilitation and protection of
Manila Bay.
The
complainant,
Metropolitan
Manila
Development Authority, alleges that the water
quality of Manila Bay had fallen way below the
allowable standards set by law, specifically
Presidential Decree No. 1152 or the Philippine
Environment Code.
That the continuous neglect of the petitioners
in abating the pollution of Manila Bay
constitutes a violation of:
a. Respondents constitutional right to
life, health and a balanced ecology
b. The Environment Code (PD 1152)
c. The Pollution Control Law (PD 984)
d. The Water Code (PD 1067)
e. The Sanitation Code (PD 856)
f. The Illegal Disposal of Wastes
Decree (PD 825
g. The Marine Pollution Law (PD 984)
h. Executive Order No. 192
i. The Toxic and Hazardous Wastes
Law (Republic Act No. 6969)
j. Civil Code provisions on nuisance
and human relations
k. The Trust Doctrine and the
Principle of Guardianship
l. International Law

Inter alia, respondents, as plaintiffs a quo,

prayed that petitioners be ordered to clean the
Manila Bay and submit to the RTC a
concerted concrete plan of action for the
purpose.
ISSUE:
WON the cleaning and/or restoration of Manila
Bay a ministerial act of the petitioners that can
be compelled by mandamus.
WON pertinent provisions of the Environment
Code (PD 1152) relate only to the cleaning of
the specific pollution incidents and do not
cover cleaning in general.
RULLING:
Regional Trial Courts Order to Clean Up
and
Rehabilitate
Manila
Bay
On September 13, 2002, the RTC rendered a
Decision in favor of respondents. Finding
merit in the complaint, the Court ordered
defendant-government agencies, jointly and
solidarily, to clean up and rehabilitate Manila
Bay and restore its waters to SB classification
to make it fit for swimming, skin-diving and
other
forms
of
contact
recreation.
To attain this, defendant-agencies, with
defendant DENR as the lead agency, are
directed, within six (6) months from receipt
hereof, to act and perform their respective
duties by devising a consolidated, coordinated
and concerted scheme of action for the
rehabilitation and restoration of the bay.

The Court of Appeals Sustained the RTCs

Decision.
it was that in Oposa v. Factoran, Jr. the Court
stated that the right to a balanced and
healthful ecology need not even be written in
the Constitution for it is assumed, like other
civil and political rights guaranteed in the Bill
of Rights, to exist from the inception of
mankind and it is an issue of transcendental
importance with intergenerational implications.
Even assuming the absence of a categorical
legal
provision
specifically
prodding
petitioners to clean up the bay, they and the
men and women representing them cannot
escape their obligation to future generations
of Filipinos to keep the waters of the Manila
Bay clean and clear as humanly as possible.
Anything less would be a betrayal of the trust
reposed
in
them.
By a Decision of September 28, 2005, the CA
denied petitioners appeal and affirmed the
Decision of the RTC in toto, stressing that the
trial courts decision did not require petitioners
to do tasks outside of their usual basic
functions under existing laws.