Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Blinders and tunnel vision

Blinders and tunnel vision



Updated 02:05am (Mla time) Dec 14, 2004
By Juan Mercado
Inquirer News Service


Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the December 14, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.


FLOOD detritus from logs and mud to smashed shacks blocked a 13-km Angat water tunnel for Metro Manila. "A mile of logs" clogged the entrance into typhoon-devastated Real's bay, delaying Philippine Navy rescue vessel DF 317.

These reflect failure, by government, to curb the ravaging of forests.

Even those who doubt whether illegal loggers are the culprit agree that despite logging bans, secondary forests are still dwindling at the rate of 480 hectares daily. The death toll and wreckage have stoked public fury.

Unfortunately, that anger will subside quickly. It often does. We are a people with short memories. Few memories of the flash floods in Ormoc, Caraga and Southern Leyte remain. And the media are always shuffling on to the next headline.

Denuded forests cannot be re-greened overnight. It takes a couple of hours to chainsaw a hectare. But even fast-growing species take years to grow. So, the next flash floods are inevitable. Postponed reforms make that a given. More people will die. That's a given too.

So what can be done? The answer perhaps is offered by the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Wangari Maathai, the 64-year-old environmentalist who received the award this week in Oslo. The award cited her for launching the "Green Belt Movement" that planted 30 million trees across a denuded Kenya.

Maathai is the 12th woman (and the first from Africa) to win the peace prize since the awards started in 1901. She bested 194 nominations, including former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix.

In the teeth of Philippine-like corruption, she organized thousands of groups, primarily of women, to plant trees. In the process, they've re-greened Kenya -- and empowered citizens in democratic governance.

"The environment is very important because when we destroy our resources that become scarce, we fight over that," she told BBC. Her bottom line is: Citizens, not government, will reverse degradation. All these stem from a vision that sees beyond today's multiple crises.

Time is not on our side. Writing laws into the books is not enough, Maathai told CNN. Soil or forest rehabilitation has cycles that do not bend to parliaments or armies. "My life is my message," she said.

Tunnel vision here blinds us to lethal problems beyond reckless logging. One is massive soil erosion, which will wreck future food supplies.

In China, Mesopotamia, Egypt, North Africa and Greece, states crumbled as erosion emptied granaries. Do our leaders heed historical lessons?

In Latin, erodere means to "gnaw away." When tree cover is stripped, the soil is "gnawed away" and becomes vulnerable to heavy downpours. In its uncultivated state, topsoil -- "a crustal fragile membrane that provides a foothold of life on earth" -- is only seven to 25 centimeters deep.

In some Philippine uplands, topsoil depth is less than 10 cm. "At a soil depletion rate of 0.75 cm/ha/yr, it will take only some 13 years for the topsoil to be depleted," a Food and Agriculture Organization study reveals. "If one assumes a topsoil depth of 15-25 cm, as some respected Filipino soil scientists believe, then it will take 20-33 years for this layer to be removed."

To form an inch of top soil from decayed leaves and other vegetation takes a century or more. "But a single climactic event can wash away this irreplaceable and fragile carpet which needed eons to weave."

Have pork-obsessed legislators asked how much of this invaluable asset is being "mined" or lost? They should. For Ormoc, Caraga or Real are only dress rehearsals for what is ahead for other provinces.

Nationwide, only 18 percent of forest cover is left, out of the original 92 percent in 1575. But our political leaders' time scales rarely go beyond the next elections. Few seem aware of post-flash flood danger.

Even before today's deluge, erosion already blighted "more than half of the land area in 13 provinces," sapping their capacity to feed growing populations, the Philippine Council for Agricultural Research and Development points out.

Provinces with land whose productivity is being "gnawed away" are: Batangas, Cebu, Ilocos Sur, La Union, Batanes, Bohol, Masbate, Abra, Iloilo, Cavite, Rizal, Marinduque, Capiz. These 13 provinces have 50 to 90 percent of their areas eroded, says the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. The worst are: Cebu -- 386,717 ha; Bohol -- 271,739 ha; Masbate -- 269,147 ha; Batangas -- 262,762 ha; and Abra -- 258,410 ha.

"Overall, 75 percent of croplands is vulnerable to erosion of various degrees." In the Visayas, about half (1.12 million ha) has moderate to severe erosion. Of Mindanao's 3.44 million ha, about 3.36 million are "gnawed away." For the country as a whole, some 2.87 million ha have moderate to severe erosion.

"Erosion is not an invisible disease stalking the land in search of soil to destroy," says soil scientist T.F. Shaxson. "It is a foreseeable ecological response to inappropriate land use and management." It can be reversed.

An array of technology is on the shelf since wind erosion devastated parts of the US in the 1930s. Thailand's King Bhumibol campaigns to use vitiver grass to hold back the soil. In 1985, the Ramon Magsaysay Award cited Davao-based the Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center for Sloping Agricultural Land Technology.

"You can read the skies," the Master from Galilee once said. "You hypocrites. Why can you not read the signs of the times?"

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