The year was 1960. Primitivo Besenan, from Cebu, had decided to migrate to Kialeg, then a far-flung barangay of Bansalan, Davao del Sur. At the time of his arrival, food was not a problem; rice was in abundant supply, vegetables and fruits were aplenty and the environment was most ideal. Rainfall was constant and the town had a thick forest cover.
Raising livestock, like pigs, was a profitable venture. People never spent more than a few hundred pesos because “feeds” could be had for the taking in the nearby verdant forest cover. “When I started my own livestock project,” Besenan recalled, “I had no problem whatsoever. I simply went into the forest and harvested what I needed from it.”
Dionisio Geronda, also a farmer like Besenan, agreed. Born just five kilometers away from the town proper, he admitted: “We didn’t have any problem as to what we would eat in those times.”
In his own farm, Geronda never used pesticide to get rid of insects and pests attacking his crops. “We didn’t use pesticides then but our harvests produced plenty,” he said. In fact, he also had no need for fertilizers. He used livestock manure to give the much-needed nutrients to his still fertile lot.
A decade later, the scenario has completely changed. Fewer animals were raised. More farmers had to rely on pesticides and commercial fertilizers. Because of this, income went down compared with that of the 1960s.
This is now a common reality in Magsaysay, as it has now become a town and separated from Bansalan. A lot of farmers are now living in harsher conditions as drought becomes a way of life during the summer months.
The usual culprit: deforestation. The wanton felling of forest cover has resulted in making what used to be forest land into barren, rock-covered and unproductive farm lots. It is happening not only in this town but in other parts of the country as well.
“Most of the “Philippines’) once rich forest are gone,” said a study, Sustainable Forest Management, done by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). “’Forest recovery, through natural and artificial means, never coped with the destruction rate.”
“Where have all our forests gone?” asked Jethro P. Adang, the new director of the Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center (MBRLC) Foundation, Inc. American President Theodore Roosevelt lamented that a person without a child faces a hopeless future; in the same manner, “a country without trees is almost as helpless.”
The Philippine Statistics Authority defines forest as a “land with an area of more than half hectare and tree crown cover of more than 10%.” Those young natural stands and all plantations established for forestry purposes are included under forest.
Every year, the Philippines is losing approximately 47,000 hectares of forest cover each year, according to the data provided by the Forest Management Bureau (FMB) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).
In 2003, the country had about 7.2 million hectares of forest cover. But in 2010, the figure went down by 4.6% or about 6.8 million hectares. About 4.5 million hectares (67.18%) were classified as open forest and 1.9 million hectares (28.28%) as closed forest; the remaining 310,593 hectares (4.54%) were categorized under mangroves.
Open forest refers to all lands with tree cover canopy density between 10% and 40% while closed forest denotes those areas with tree canopy coverage of 60% to 100%. Mangroves are those group of trees and shrubs that live in coastal intertidal zone.
In terms of land area, Palawan and Isabela have the biggest forest cover with 693,931 hectares and 378,637 hectares, respectively. Also included in the top ten provinces with biggest forest cover are Cagayan (342,994 ha), Agusan del Sur (342,736 ha), Surigao del Sur (226,805 ha), Quezon (226,193 ha), Apayao (223,121 ha), Aurora (218,588 ha), Bukidnon (202,322 ha), and Nueva Vizcaya (193,708 ha).
The island province of Guimaras, with only 776 ha, has the least forest cover. Also in the bottom list are Siquijor (903 ha), Batanes (1,819 ha), Metro Manila (2,120 ha), Cavite (2,540 ha), Batangas (4,256 ha), Camiguin (5,718 ha), La Union (5,880 ha), Masbate (6,778 ha), and Pampanga (7,465 ha).
When Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan “rediscovered” the Philippines in 1521, forests blanketed 95% of the country. When the Ormoc City, Leyte tragedy happened in 1991 – which left 8,000 people dead – timber cover was only 18%.
From 1934 to 1988, the FMB says the country lost around 10 million hectares of forest cover. That’s equivalent to 227 million basketball courts.
Logging – whether legal or illegal – is one of the primary culprits of the fast disappearance of the country’s forest cover.
“Logging is most ecologically destructive in the mountains,” wrote multi-awarded science journalist Alan Robles in an article circulated by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ). “It is next to impossible to replant trees on rocky mountainsides once their thin skin of topsoil has been washed away.”
The tragedy that happened in the cities of Iligan and Cagayan de Oro a few years back was a proof of the havoc caused by excessive mountain logging. Floods and landslides buried more than 1,000 people and a thousand more missing.
Cutting and processing of the logs cut from the forest constitute a big industry. But it creates an environmental hazard in areas where it is done. “The destructive of logging stems from its unsustainable nature,” Robles explained. “It is an extractive industry that destroys forest resources at a much faster pace than they can be replaced by nature’s regenerative capacity.”
In his article, Robles further wrote: “Even reforestation (which most loggers don’t bother to do after they have mowed down their concessions) doesn’t restore the ecological balance and diversity because the process of logging itself destroys so much. Loggers bulldoze roads by cutting a swath through the jungles. And when the trees are cut, they are dragged across the fragile undergrowth, destroying saplings and other vegetation.”
Singaporean author Ooi Jin Bee pointed out kaingineros (swidden or slash-and-burn farmers) as the primary culprit of the fast disappearance of the country’s forest cover. When he computed the rate of annual deforestation of both virgin and secondary growth forest due to kaingin from 1980 to 1985, he found out that kaingin accounted for at least 50% of the forest destruction in the country.
But there are several other causes: mining, forest fires, volcanic eruptions, geothermal explorations, dam construction and operations, fuelwood collection, and land development projects (construction of subdivision, industrial estates, and commercial sites).
The country’s surging population has likewise contributed to the problem. At least a fourth of the total population lives in the upland areas, where most trees are located. Most of them practiced slash-and-burning agriculture (kaingin farming). “These migrant farmers attack virgin forest lands to cultivate the rich soil, which they quickly deplete,” Adang observed Watson. “Then, they move on, looking for more. One day, there is no more.”
More often than not, deforestation is often equated with calamities like landslides and flash floods. In its editorial, Philippine Daily Inquirer deplored: “In just one decade, 2000 to 2010, 27 floods and 17 landslides occurred, affecting about 1.6 million people each year and destroying crops and infrastructure worth tens of million pesos a year. In all these floods and landslides, deforestation was a major factor. Bald mountains, depleted forests and barren watersheds caused rainwater to flow down and flood the plains.”
But there’s more to deforestation than just flash floods and landslides. Deforestation also results to declining crop yields, loss of vital soil nutrients, and degradation of surrounding ecosystems.
“Trees serve as barriers to soil erosion and ensure that vital nutrients are naturally returned to the soil,” explains Jonathan Nash in a briefing paper. “In many tropical areas, valuable soil erodes and crop yields can quickly decline when trees are cleared to make way for agriculture or livestock. Eroded soil often ends up in streams and rivers, leading to siltation, contamination, and stagnation. These processes, in turn, disrupt aquatic ecosystems, often killing fish and other aquatic organisms.”
In their collaborative book, Soil Erosion: Quiet Crisis in the World Economy, authors Lester R. Brown and Edward C. Wolf contend: “The loss of topsoil affects the ability to grow food in two ways. It reduces the inherent productivity of land, both through the loss of nutrients and degradation of the physical structure. It also increases the costs of food production.”
If forests are continued to be cut, sources of future medicine would be in jeopardy. “As forests are destroyed, degraded, or fragmented, many of the valuable species of plants and animals – any number of which contain precious genetic resources that could lead to new pharmaceuticals or provide important traditional medicine – are threatened or lost forever,” Nash claims.
Deforestation also means spreading of tropical diseases and reduced quantities of safe water. The spread of some potentially fatal tropical diseases like malaria, dengue fever, and cholera often follows paths of deforestation. As some forest animal species such as birds and bats disappear, insect populations swell, facilitating the transmission of disease.
Watersheds that are deforested lose their ability to provide adequate amounts of water consistently. “If the forest perishes, so will the life of people,” said Diomedes Demit, one of the farmers from Bukidnon who joined the so-called ‘Fast for the Forests’ in Manila some decades ago. “The trees are our source of life. Without trees, there will be no water. If there is no water, there will be no life.” (To be included)
