How many times has your Government introduced a new law, leaving you to wonder just what planet they live on? How many new laws have been introduced in your lifetime that make no sense or serve no purpose other than to diminish your quality of life or freedoms.

For once, here is a law recently introduced in the Philippines that I think anyone with any measure of sense can get behind. Perhaps even to the point that its introduced into the laws of other countries. What a refreshing and forward thinking law; one we can all applaud and force our governments to emulate.

 

  • Students in the Philippines must plant at least 10 trees in order to graduate from elementary school, high school, and college, CNN reported.
  • The initiative comes from a bill passed by the Philippine Congress earlier this month.
  • The trees can be planted in either forests, mangroves, reserves, urban areas, abandoned mining sites, or in indigenous territory, according to the bill.
  • Its goal is to help promote “inter-generational responsibility” over environmental protection.

 

Here’s one way to plant 175 million trees within a year: get young people to do it for school.

On May 15, the Philippine Congress officially passed a Bill stating that all students from elementary school, high school, and college (roughly equivalent to primary school, secondary school and university) must plant at least 10 trees in order to graduate, CNN reported.

The trees can be planted in either forests, mangroves, reserves, urban areas, abandoned mining sites, or in indigenous territory, according to the Bill.

According to CNN, the trees must be also appropriate for the area’s climate, and indigenous tree species are preferred.

The Bill – named the “Graduation Legacy for the Environment Act 2016” – was introduced by congressman Gary Alejano to promote “inter-generational responsibility” over environmental protection.

“While we recognise the right of the youth to a balanced and healthy ecology… there is no reason why they cannot be made to contribute in order to ensure that this will be an actual reality,” Alejano wrote in the Bill’s explanatory note.

He added that the initiative would see at least 175 million new trees planted every year, totalling over 525 billion additional trees “in the course of one generation”.