Author: Julius Mariveles

REBLOG: Satellite images as proof

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This article was first published on PCIJ Founding Executive Director Sheila Coronel’s site Watchdog Watcher.

By Sheila S. Coronel

IN THE past week, three stories on three very different issues showed once again how satellite images, until recently confined to the weather report, are now the stuff of front-page news. All three are important stories with wide-ranging implications on public policy. But they also raise questions about the reliability of satellite imagery as proof and the ability of journalists – and their audiences – to make sense of them. Just like photographs, satellite images without context can distort the truth. And like photography, interpreting satellite imagery is as much art as it is science.

In recent years, there have been a number of journalistic projects that made good use of the wealth of satellite imagery, which is increasingly freely available. The 2006 project Vanishing Wetlands by the St. Petersburg Times, is a good, early example. Comparing satellite photos taken in the late 1980s and in 2003, the report showed how 84,000 acres of wetlands in Florida had vanished in the previous 15 years right under the noses of regulators tasked with protecting them. But the learning curve for using satellite images is steep, and for the most part, journalists have lagged behind other users, including NGOs, in making full use of them.

On Thursday, NATO released five satellite photos from an independent company called Digital Globe that purport to show Russian combat troops and artillery crossing into the Ukrainian border, contradicting Russian and Ukrainian separatist claims that no such incursions had taken place. The images are dated August 21, 2014, and they appear authentic, but most news reports published the photographs from the NATO press release without independently verifying their provenance or the reliability of the NATO interpretation. The best roundup was from the Washington Post, which pieced the images together with reports, videos and photos from the field in a story that asks a question without giving a definitive answer, “Has Russia invaded Ukraine? Here’s what we know.”

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On the same day, August 28, the ninth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Pro Publica and the New Orleans nonprofit news site The Lens unveiled “Losing Ground,” an interactive map using satellite imagery that showed how nearly 2,000 square miles of coastal land in southeastern Louisiana had disappeared in the past 80 years as levees, canals and oil wells and pipelines were built. Given the current rate that the sea is rising and land sinking, the story said, most of southeastern Louisiana would be under water in 50 years.

In satellite imagery as elsewhere, our capacity to aggregate, analyze and interpret is outstripped by the quantity and speed of information being produced and made freely available. If anything, all these projects demonstrate the need for a new literacy in satellite imagery, not just for journalists or others in the information space but also for citizens who are likely going to be served more and more of these images as part of their daily diet of news.

READ ON AT SHEILA CORONEL’S WEBSITE

It’s the business of businesses to prepare for disaster: OCD official

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By Cong B. Corrales

IS YOUR business ready for the “ber” months? With the onset of the typhoon season in the country, an official of the Office of the Civil Defense reminded businesses prepare for the oncoming typhoons.

“Natural hazards cannot ultimately be controlled and avoided; however, the underlying factors and pressures that cause the vulnerabilities can be managed so that the disaster risks can be reduced,” Romeo F. Fajardo, OCD administrator said.

TACLOBAN CITY AFTER THE STORM. Photo taken a week after Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines | Photo by Julius D. Mariveles

TACLOBAN CITY AFTER THE STORM | Photo taken a week after Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines | Photo by Julius D. Mariveles

Drawing from the experience of typhoon Yolanda (international codename: Haiyan), Fajardo said businesses that were not fully prepared closed shop resulting to instant massive unemployment in the affected areas and making affected communities harder to recover and rebuild.

Fajardo pointed out that during typhoon Yolanda many private hospitals stopped operating, which in turn denied victims of the storm much-needed medical assistance. The reason: most, if not all, of the small to medium enterprises (SMEs) did not have continuity plans.

“Once businesses are affected the local economy of the affected area will also be affected,” he said. Had the privately-owned utilities – water, power, transport, and communications – drawn up their continuity plans before the storm, these basic lifelines could have less affected.

Business Continuity Plans include the concepts of recovery time objective (RTO), or a company-set deadline on how fast their company can recover.

AFTER THE STORM | Village 88 in Tacloban City in ruins a week after Typhoon Haiyan struck. This photo was taken a week after the storm hit the Philippines, killing close to 7,000 people according to the official count | Photo by Julius D. Mariveles

AFTER THE STORM | Village 88 in Tacloban City in ruins a week after Typhoon Haiyan struck. This photo was taken a week after the storm hit the Philippines, killing close to 7,000 people according to the official count | Photo by Julius D. Mariveles

A Business Continuity Plan does not end with the company’s employees and families but also the surrounding communities, Fajardo said.

Based on the data from the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA), the typhoon season in the country usually begins in June and peaks in October with at least three tropical cyclones per month, on the average.

This slightly ebbs down by November with two tropical cyclones per month. According to the World Risk Report, last year, the country is ranked third in the world most exposed and at risk to natural hazards. The Philippines has been ranked ninth and sixth in the years 2009 and 2010, respectively.

“For the Philippines, the study’s findings are simply grim: Of the 173 countries surveyed, the Philippines ranked No. 3 in its ‘most high-risk’ list. It is also the country that is the most vulnerable to risks in Asia.”

READ THE FULL REPORT ON OUR MONEY POLITICS WEBSITE

The country is vulnerable to almost all types of natural hazards since it is situated in the Pacific typhoon belt, volcanic ring of fire and the continuing climate change brought about by the greenhouse effect. “The private sector has to survive a calamity in the country, one way or the other; thus the need for a Business Continuity Plan. This is still a new concept,” Fajardo said.

In a study by Young Won Park entitled Supply Chain Lessons from the Catastrophic Natural Disaster in Japan, last year, even if diversifying the locations of business ventures would “increase flexibility and abates risk, information ‘portability’—or the ability to quickly disseminate design and operations data along the supply chain—is also crucial to bouncing back from an unexpected catastrophe.”

OLD MAN BY THE SEA in the village of Anibong. People were killed here after their houses were crushed by cargo ships dumped on the shore by the storm surges | Photo by Julius D. Mariveles

OLD MAN BY THE SEA in the village of Anibong. People were killed here after their houses were crushed by cargo ships dumped on the shore by the storm surges | Photo by Julius D. Mariveles

“One major lesson from Japan is that companies need to disperse the flow of information along with the physical location of production. Developing ways to capture and share information throughout an existing or expanding supply chain can benefit the overall manufacturing process in addition to mitigating risk,” the same study reads in part.

Takahiro Ono, a Business Continuity Plan manager of Mitsubishi Corporation, said that Business Continuity Plans ensure continuity of operations and services; businesses could restart operations quickly within a tolerable period and can avoid going bankrupt.

‘The Beetles’ to picket PCA office

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Peasants to demand fast tracking of assistance for storm-ravaged coconut farms

By Julius D. Mariveles

PEASANTS in beetle costumes will dump coconut trunks outside the office of the Philippine Coconut Authority tomorrow, September 3, 2014 in Quezon City to dramatize their complaints over the delay in the rehabilitation of coconut farms damaged by storms, among them Typhoon Yolanda, last year.

“They have not yet received any assistance from the PCA after successive typhoons that left them jobless, homeless, and starving,” Task Force Mapalad deputy coordinator Lanie Factor said.

IMAGE from http://termirepel.com/

IMAGE from http://termirepel.com/

Factor said that despite the P2.8 billion fund released several months ago to the PCA for the rehabilitation of coconut farms hardest hit by Yolanda, these coconut lands remain idle. Coco farmers have yet to receive a single centavo from the PCA, Factor added.

The effect of the storms have been made worse by pests such as coconut leaf beetles and rhino beetles, known as uwang in the local language, some of which have grown as big as cigarette packs.

Rhino beetles are damaging to coconut trees and other palms in the South Pacific and other coconut-growing countries. It is described as an accidental introduction into Samoa from Sri Lanka in 1909. For more details on rhino beetles, see this research.

Armando Jarilla, TFM national coordinator, told the PCIJ that the PCA rehabilitation plans consist of four -components: clearing of debris, fertilization, re-planting, and inter-cropping.

“The plan looks good but the problem is implementation,” he said.

He pointed out, for instance, that in the clearing operations phase, the PCA recalled the chainsaws for cutting down coconut trees since “the plan has yet to be studied again,” Jarilla said quoting officials of the PCA.

There is no supply of fertilizers, on the other hand, while re-planting has been halted because there is no no cash yet for the “cash-for-work program for farmers who have been telling me that there is work but they were told that there is no cash yet.”

Seedlings for inter-cropping, meanwhile, have not yet reached the ground and “we have seen seedlings just stocked at the PCA office,” he added.

Data from the PCA showed that there are at least 3.2 million hectares of land planted to coconut from 1990 to 2005, the highest hectareage in the Bicol region with more than 400,000 hectares. For the full list click here.

TFM added that around 100 farmers from the provinces of Quezon, Batangas, Leyte, Samar, and Davao Oriental under the Coalition of Coconut Farmers in the Philippines are expected to join the picket that would start around 10 a.m. at the PCA Central Office at Elliptical Road in Quezon City.

JOURNALIST’S TOOLBOX IJ: Defining the Craft

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Investigative Journalism: Defining the Craft

Reblogged from the Global Journalism Investigative Network website

While definitions of investigative reporting vary, among professional journalism groups there is broad agreement of its major components: systematic, in-depth, and original research and reporting, often involving the unearthing of secrets. Others note that its practice often involves heavy use of public records and data, with a focus on social justice and accountability.

Story-Based Inquiry, an investigative journalism handbook published by UNESCO, defines it thus: “Investigative journalism involves exposing to the public matters that are concealed–either deliberately by someone in a position of power, or accidentally, behind a chaotic mass of facts and circumstances that obscure understanding. It requires using both secret and open sources and documents.” The Dutch-Flemish investigative journalism group VVOJ defines investigative reporting simply as “critical and in-depth journalism.”

Some journalists, in fact, claim that all reporting is investigative reporting. There is some truth to this—investigative techniques are used widely by beat journalists on deadline as well as by “I-team” members with weeks to work on a story. But investigative journalism is broader than this–it is a set of methodologies that are a craft, and it can take years to master. A look at stories that win top awards for investigative journalism attests to the high standards of research and reporting that the profession aspires to: in-depth inquiries that painstakingly track looted public funds, abuse of power, environmental degradation, health scandals, and more.

Sometimes called enterprise, in-depth, or project reporting, investigative journalism should not be confused with what has been dubbed “leak journalism”–quick-hit scoops gained by the leaking of documents or tips, typically by those in political power. Indeed, in emerging democracies, the definition can be rather vague, and stories are often labeled investigative reporting simply if they are critical or involve leaked records. Stories that focus on crime or corruption, analysis, or even outright opinion pieces may similarly be mislabeled as investigative reporting.

Veteran trainers note that the best investigative journalism employs a careful methodology, with heavy reliance on primary sources, forming and testing a hypothesis, and rigorous fact-checking. The dictionary definition of “investigation” is “systematic inquiry,” which typically cannot be done in a day or two; a thorough inquiry requires time. Others point to the field’s key role in pioneering new techniques, as in its embrace of computers in the 1990s for data analysis and visualization. “Investigative reporting is important because it teaches new techniques, new ways of doing things,” observed Brant Houston, the Knight Chair of Journalism at the University of Illinois, who served for years as executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors. “Those techniques blend down into everyday reporting. So you’re raising the bar for the entire profession.”

CIMA ReportExcerpted from Global Investigative Journalism: Strategies for Support, David E. Kaplan, Center for International Media Assistance, 2013. Kaplan is executive director of the Global Investigative Journalism Network, an association of more than 100 nonprofit groups in 45 countries that work to support investigative reporting.

How much for the taxman?

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A PETITION that seeks to lower the income tax for Filipinos was launched recently on the online platform change.org.

Initiated by LowerTaxPH, it is titled “Lower Income Tax Rates In the Philippines, Now Na!” and is addressed to President Benigno S. Aquino III, Senate President Franklin Drilon, and House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. It has been signed by more than 4,700 petitioners as of September 2, 2014.

http://moneypolitics.pcij.org/2013/12/37-countries/

http://www.talkmoneyblog.co.uk/

“The existing income tax rates in the Philippines is INJUSTICE (emphasis by petitioner) to the honest taxpayer. Pinoys are paying the highest income tax rates across ASEAN yet we see our taxes being stolen by Napoles-like shenanigans and in cahoots with evil, thick-faced, no-good government officials.”

It added that the while Filipinos are paying the highest income tax in Southeast Asia, “the taxpayer does not get high returns in terms government services which are mostly targeted for social beneficiaries.”

The petition also added that the existing income tax rates in the Philippines is “unfair” because the middle-class pay the same rate as billionaires. The rates are also “outdated by almost two decades” since it was last updated in 1997 without provision for peso devaluation “making the rate irrelevant to inflation and today’s value of money.”

“No wonder our countrymen risk their lives and family life by working abroad just to make ends meet, because staying means not only getting underpaid but deducted one-third of salary due to soaring high income tax,” the petition added.

Filipino worker earning P500,000 annually, (32%), Vietnamese worker earning equivalent of P500,000 (20%), Cambodian worker earning equivalent of P500,000 (12%), Malaysian worker earning equivalent of P500,000 (11%),

Thai worker earning equivalent of P500,000 (10%), Singaporean earning equivalent of P500,000, (2%), Bruneian worker earning equivalent of P500,000 (no taxes).

Last year, PCIJ’s MoneyPolitics focused on the personal income tax. How much is the highest and what is the breakdown? Click here for a link to our Data A Day “What is the highest personal income tax rate in the Philippines?“

You can also click on this link to view more data on income tax across the world on tradingeconomics.com.

The Philippines has also signed agreements with 37 countries in the world that prevent double taxation for Filipino workers in these nations. What are these countries? You can click on this link to “37″ on our MoneyPolitics website.