WHERE HAVE ALL OUR FORESTS GONE?

by Gerry T. Estrera
Logging – whether legal or illegal – is one of the primary culprits of the fast disappearance of the country’s forest resources. 
 “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.
Sean McDonagh, a priest who worked in the area, believed deforestation magnified the threat, since large surfaces of rainforest in the upper portions have been converted into pineapple plantations.
“The deforestation was literally criminal,” McDough decried. “If the rainforest in the area had been left intact, even 12 hours of continuous rain would not cause the devastation.”
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.”
 Logging is just one of the culprits.  The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) said other causes of deforestation in the country include forest fires, natural calamities (like earthquake and volcano eruption), as well as conversion to agricultural lands, human settlements and other land uses brought about by urbanization and increasing population pressure.
 “An increase in population density, whether due to natural increase or migration, heightens the probability of deforestation in any given area,” writes Jonathan Nash in a briefing paper.
 Additional threats to Philippine forests come from mining operations, collection of fuelwood, and slash-and-burn farming practiced by kaingineros.  “These migrant farmers attack virgin forest lands to cultivate the rich soil, which they quickly deplete,” said Harold R. Watson, recipient of the 1985 Ramon Magsaysay Award for peace and international understanding.  “Then, they move on, looking for more.  One day, there is no more (areas to look for).”
 These are the main reasons why the Philippines is now almost completely devoid of its forests.  According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 25.7 percent or about 7,665,000 hectares of the country’s total land area of 30 million hectares is forested.  Of this, only 11.2 percent (861,000) hectares) is classified as primary forest.
 Between 1990 and 2010, the Philippines lost an average of 54,750 hectares or 0.83 percent per year.  “Most of the (Philippines’) once rich forest are gone,” said the FAO publication, Sustainable Forest Management.  “Forest recovery, through natural and artificial means, never coped with the destruction rate.”
 In February 2011, President Benigno C. Aquino III, signed Executive Order 23, which declared a moratorium on “the cutting and harvesting of timber in all natural and residual forests” throughout the country.
 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 Nash.  “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 steams 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 o 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.”
 Deforestation exacerbates climate change.  Forests reportedly contain 40 percent 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 percent 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,” Nash warns. “Such a development would be devastating for many countries.”  And that includes the Philippines, which is composed of 7,100 islands.
 Ex-Senator Heherson Alvarez, who was formerly head of the environment department, once commented that if deforestation is not soon curbed, time would come that “we will be traveling to Manila and around Central Luzon by bancas (outriggers).”
 In 1990s, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines warned against an ecological debacle in the country should deforestation continued unabated.  No one listened; it was business as usual.
 Ben Malayang III, president of Silliman State University, commented: “That the forest, the foundations of our forests, or whatever forests remain in the country, is not a matter of technical forestry, but rather a symptom, or an indication, or a measure, of the failure of our political and social systems.”
 The signs are now written on the wall! “The Aquino administration has to muster the political will and undertake as soon as possible a massive reforestation program covering all the severely deforested areas in the country,” the Inquirer editorial urged.