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The Philippines started celebrating Earth Day in the 1980s by individuals who were aware of the celebration. In the early 1990s, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) started leading the celebration on behal of the Philippines Government. Soon, a number of Earth Day events have been reported in the country albeit scattered and uncoordinated.
In 1999, in preparation of the Millenium Earth Day celebration, Mark Dubois of Earth Day International, visited the Philippines and met with environmental leaders at the residence of Ms. Odette Alcantara in Blue Ridge. There, he encouraged the local environmentalists to form a coalition of the green advocates and form Earth Day Network Philippines. Ms. Alcantara, Tita Odette or Odettesky to her friends, along with former DENR Sec. Bebet Gozun, Garbologist Dr. Met Palaypay and more than eighty (80) environmental leaders decided to form the environmental coalition/network which will push for the celebration of Earth Day in the country. They called coalition “Earth Day Network Philippines”. It is the official local partner of Earth Day Network International for the celebration of Earth Day.
With the birth of EDNP, preparations for Earth Day 2000 were underway. After months of network-building and planning, the biggest national Earth Day network was assembled with over two thousand members from the cross section of society. Since then, EDNP became the primary civil society partner of the DENR in the preparation and coordination of Earth Day.
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