planet philippines

Planet Philippine hosted by Richard Gutierrez, a famous actor of GMA7 is a documentary film about saving the environment. It reveals the country’s best-kept secrets of the natural world as well as providing information on creating awareness among the people. It motivates the people to act — simply by saving what is left of the environment.

After seeing the documentary, there was that one word that kept ringing on my mind. “Sayang” is the word I’m talking about. Sayang because we have lots of treasures to be proud of but we became pathetic and ruin it slowly. We say we want to preserve these treasures but then our actions contradict what we say. From the biggest creatures down to the smallest ones, people became cruel. In line with this, the documentary has mentioned a lot of times the term “biodiversity hotspots”. The term refers to the areas in the world where species decline and habitat losses are at alarming levels. The Philippines belong to the so-called “biodiversity hotspot” countries. This serves as a caution to our country and to the whole world. Time will come that we will be left with nothing. Our pennies can’t surely bring our natural resources back. We must not only motivate the act, but we must act.

Planet Philippines isn’t the first environmental documentary hosted by Richard Gutierrez in GMA7. There was “Signos” before it. Signos’ aim is to give awareness to the people about one of the big environmental issues — climate change. It also provides measures that must be taken to prevent its disastrous consequences. In the Signos’ blog that I have visited, it was stated there that lots of people appreciated the efforts of GMA Network in spreading environmental awareness. These appreciations have encouraged them to bring more relevant programs and documentary specials. With this, “SIGNOS: Banta ng Nagbabagong Klima” was not only replayed on May 24, 2008 but the GMA Public Affairs produced Planet Philippines.

Richard Gutierrez as the host is undeniably GMA’s most prized talent. He is an active environmentalist and Greenpeace advocate which makes the documentary suitable for him. As a very famous actor, Richard will be a big help to influence the minds of the people. Therefore shifting the minds of the people from passive to active thinking.