The Philippines needs 54% of forest cover to protect against landslides and ensure water availability from watersheds, according to Haribon Foundation forester Thaddeus Martinez.
“That’s why we are (now) experiencing different calamities,” Martinez was quoted as saying by the Philippine Star. “Definitely, we are far behind the threshold. The destruction of our forests is serious. So, we really need to act immediately.”
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that the forest area is estimated to have declined from 12 million hectares in 1960 to about 5.7 million hectares (which includes less than 1 million hectares of virgin forest largely continued to very steep and inaccessible areas).
“It is difficult to obtain accurate land use data as all areas over 18 degrees of slope are classified as forest regardless of whether any tree cover is present,” the FAO states in a report. “The official figure of forest area is about 33% of the land area.”
Virgin forests are old-growth forests or primary forests. “Most remaining virgin forests have been given protected status, but many of these areas are in critical condition and remain threatened due to inadequate protection resulting from lack of funds and lack of political will,” the FAO reports.
Unfortunately, the country’s forest cover is fast disappearing. “The Philippines is among the countries that are losing their forest cover fast, ranking fourth in the world’s top 10 most threatened forest hotspots,” wrote Marjorie Pamintuan, the spokesperson of Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment.
“If the deforestation rate of 157,400 hectares per year continues, the country’s remaining forest cover will be wiped out in less than 40 years,” Pamintuan continued. “The area lost to deforestation every year is twice the land area of Metro Manila.”
According to FAO, deforestation is caused by shifting cultivation, landuse conversion, forest fires, illegal logging and fuelwood collection. Of the latter, the UN agency adds: “Fuelwood demand continues to be strong, further exacerbating the critical position the forests are in. Fuelwood harvesting is believed to be seriously impacting on the remaining commercial forests.”
The removal of forest cover has bolstered soil erosion in the uplands. “Soil erosion is an enemy to any nation – far worse than any outside enemy coming into a country and conquering it because it is an enemy you cannot see vividly,” reminded Harold Ray Watson, the 1985 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for peace and international understanding. “It’s a slow creeping enemy that soon possesses the land.”
As a result, food production is jeopardized. “The loss of nutrient rich soil reduces crop yields and contributes to the expanded use of chemical fertilizers – a practice that can, in turn, pollute water resources,” said Jethro P. Adang, the new director of Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center Foundation, Inc. “Rivers and streams also carry eroded soil to the coasts, where it interferes with fish nursery areas.”
But that’s not all. “Extensive soil erosion has resulted in the siltation of waterbeds, reservoirs and dams, and in the process shortening their productive life spans,” said Dr. Germelito Bautista, of the Ateneo de Manila University.
The Magat Dam reservoir has been reported to cut its probable life span of 100 years to 25 years. The Ambuklao Dam reservoir has had its life halved from 60 to 32 years as a result of siltation.
With deforestation all over the country now more rampant, water crisis is just around the corner. “There has been a drop of 30% to 50% in the country’s water resources in the past 20 years or so,” pointed out Dr. Rafael D. Guerrero, an academician at the National Academy of Science and Technology.
“Rapid forest loss has eliminated habitat for unique and threatened plant and animal species,” observed Population Reference Bureau’s Kathleen Mogerlgaard. “At the rate our forests are getting destroyed, many species many no longer be around when we need them,” Adang said.
More than 400 plant and animal species found in the country are currently threatened with extinction, including the Philippine eagle and tamaraw, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A pair of the Philippine eagle, for instance, needs at least 7,000 to 13,000 hectares of forest as a nesting territory.
Without forest, floods are expected to happen – not only in Metro Manila (which has no forest cover to speak of) but also in other parts of the country where deforestation continues. The “flooding problems,” said then President Benigno Aquino in his 2011 State of the Nation Address, “are caused by the incessant and illegal cutting down of trees.”
Deforestation exacerbates climate change. Forests reportedly contain 40% of all stored carbon, more than any other terrestrial ecosystem, and thus help buffer against global warming. Land-use change – of which tropical deforestation is the most significant component – was responsible for roughly 20% of human-induced carbon emissions during the 1990s.
“If left unchecked, global warming could melt polar ice caps, raising sea levels by several feet and threatening low-lying countries,” warns Jonathan Nash in a briefing paper. “Such a development would be devastating for many countries.” And that includes the Philippines, which is composed of 7,100 islands.
All these are caused by partly by deforestation. Rev. Harold R. Watson, a former American agriculturist who had been helping the locals in Mindanao, pointed out: “When man sins against the earth, the wages of that sin is death or destruction. This seems to be universal law of God and relates to all of God’s creation. We face the reality of what man’s sins against the earth have caused. We are facing not a mere problem; we are facing destruction and even death if we continue to destroy the natural resources that support life on earth.”
Filipinos are urged to stop cutting trees now and preserve the remaining forests. “We have laid to waste millions of hectares of forest land, as though heedless of the tragic examples of the countries of Africa, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean, where large areas have become barren, if not desertified,” former Senator Heherson Alvarez said. “If we have not, in fact, reached this state, we are almost at the point of irreversibility.”
Dr. Ernesto Guiang, a forestry consultant, echoed the same concern: “We are now at the eleventh hour. We have to pay attention to the handwriting on the wall with respect to our forests.”
By planting trees, Filipinos can help repair the destruction caused by climate change. A recent study, which appeared in the journal Science, projected if 0.9 billion hectares of new trees were planted – around 500 billion saplings – about 205 gigatons of carbon dioxide can be absorbed once the trees reached maturity.
That’s’ equivalent to about two-thirds of man-made carbon emissions since the start of the Industrial Revolution, according to the estimates of the Swiss researchers. — ###
