In its bid to strengthen its environmental program, Compostela Valley launched its Provincial Greening Program and Value Oriented Leadership Thru Environmental Regreening (VOLTER) Program last June 18 at Barangay San Roque, Maco. This followed on the heels of Executive Order No. 26 issued by President Benigno Simeon Aquino dated February 24, 2011, declaring the implementation of the National Greening Program as a government priority to reduce poverty, promote food security, environmental stability and biodiversity conservation, and enhance climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Dubbed “20Million15 Trees,” the provincial launching was held in time for Maco’s foundation week celebration. “We have already launched as early as 2004 and this is an urgent call for all of us to heed,” said Mayor Arthur Carlos Voltaire Rimando. Earlier on, a tree planting activity was simultaneously conducted at the municipal tree park and all 37 barangays of Maco followed by a “run for a cause” participated in by both government and private sectors.
Sangguniang Panglalawigan member Ruwel Peter Gonzaga, representing Gov. Arturo Uy, said environmental protection had already been one of the administration’s priorities and encourages everyone, from merely planting trees, to also take care of them and ensure their survival.
DILG regional director Ananias Villacorta lauded Gov. Uy and local officials for focusing on the greening program.
Both local greening programs support and complement EO No. 23, an earlier directive of President Aquino, which bans logging in natural and residual forests, as well as Proclamation No. 125, declaring 2011 as the National Year of Forests in the Philippines. It mandates the DA-DAR-DENR Convergence Initiative to be the oversight committee for the program, with DENR as the lead agency.
Its objectives includes climate change mitigation, poverty reduction, sustainable management of natural resources, promotion of public awareness, social and environmental consciousness on the value of forests and watersheds, and harmonization of all greening efforts by the province, civil society and private sector.
The components of the program are production of planting materials (forest tress, fruit trees, rubber, cacao, coffee, bamboo, mangroves and others. It will also rehabilitate degraded areas in priority watersheds and protected areas, rivers, stream banks and other suitable areas and develop tress, forest parks, upland farms (agro-forestry) and greenbelts in suitable sites in urban areas including the maintenance and protection of planted trees and established plantations by partner implementers.
With the target of having 20,000,015 trees planted and grown by the year 2015, the areas to be planted are forestlands, mangrove areas, protected areas, ancestral domains, civil and military reservations, riverbanks, stream banks, urban areas identified by the LGU’s such as parks, open spaces, highways, roadsides, church, schools and office compounds, inactive and abandoned mine sites, other suitable public and private lands.
To ensure maintenance and protection of the planted seedlings, a memorandum of undertaking will be forged among the concern parties and stakeholders. [Rodielyn A. Manugas-IDS ComVal]
