THINK OF THESE – Record-breaking tree planting

“It would be a great achievement to break the Guinness record, but the primary focus is to reforest a large portion of the region to restore the integrity of the environment and enhance our efforts against the negative impacts of climate change.”
That was what Secretary Ramon J.P. Paje of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) said after the TreeVolution, which served as an opportunity for the people of Mindanao to take part in a larger effort to reforest the region.
Actually, TreeVolution was part of the National Greening Program (NGP), the flagship reforestation of the administration of Benigno Aquino III. It seeks to cover 1.5 million hectares with trees by 2016.
NGP is also “a national effort that aims to address food security, poverty reduction, environmental stability, biodiversity conservation and a mechanism for climate change mitigation strategy to enhance the country’s forest stock to absorb carbon dioxide.”
What was thought of as not good enough to dislodge the India’s record of 1,945,535 trees planted in one hour is now official. Yes, “TreeVolution: Greening MindaNow” has been confirmed by the Guinness World Records (GWR) as planting the most number of trees simultaneously in multiple locations.
Last September 26, 2014, a total of 122,168 people planted 2,294,629 trees in 29 locations in the country’s second largest island. “This record-breaking event saw the planting of rubber, cacao, coffee, timber and mahogany trees, as well as a range of fruit trees and other species indigenous to the Philippines,” GWR said in a statement.
The DENR, in its website, posted this information: “One significant observation made during the activity was that each participant was able to plant an average of 20 seedlings, which were pre-positioned, in 30 minutes. The assumption that 17 planters can plant an average of 340 seedlings per hectare was also achieved; hence, the conclusion that 17 planters can plant an average of 680 seedlings in one hectare for an hour.”
At the height of the TreeVolution campaign, Joselin Marcus E. Fragada emphasized that breaking the world record “would just be an added incentive” as the real goal of the project was “to create environmental awareness, and to show the world that Mindanao is capable of increasing its forest cover and mitigate the effects of climate change.”
“With or without Guinness, Mindanao will still plant trees within designated areas as we are currently implementing the NGP in the region,” pointed out Fragada, who is the regional honcho of DENR.
Once upon a time, the Philippines was totally covered by forest. Jose Ma. Lorenzo Tan, a noted environmentalist and wildlife photographer, wrote in an article that forest covered 70 percent of the Philippines in the 1900s. By mid-1960s, only 13.5 million remained, of which barely 6.3 million hectares were considered primary forest.
During the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos, forests were decimated at an astonishing rate of 300,000 hectares per year.
“As the timber boom gained momentum, the government was unable to supervise concessions effectively or enforce logging regulations,” wrote Robert Repetto, author of The Forest for the Trees? Government Policies and the Misuse of Forest Resources. “Links between timber companies and politicians further eroded government control.
“Annual outputs averaging 10 million cubic meters were maintained until 1974, when depletion, world recession, and competition from other log-exporting countries forced a reduction,” Repetto added. “Declines continued over the next decade, and by 1984 the harvest returned to the pre-boom level of 3.8 million cubic meters.”
Towards the end of Marcos administration, there was only 7.2 million hectares that remained of the country’s forest cover, of which bare 2.7 million hectares were reported virgin forests.
Mindanao, the country’s second largest island, is not spared from denudation. In 2011, during the third board meeting of the Mindanao Development Authority, members raised the alarm on the vast disappearance of the island’s forest cover.
“There is only six percent of forestry left in Mindanao,” said Luwalhati Antonino, the chairperson of the said board meeting. “We from Mindanao must do something (now before it’s too late).”
Where have all our forests gone? “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,” deplored Pamintuan. “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. The area lost to deforestation every year is twice the land area of Metro Manila.”
There are several solutions as there are several causes of the problem. “It is wrong to just portray the problem of forests as a problem with logging of natural forests as it’s a problem of competition for land use,” said the Bogor-based Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). “It’s a much bigger problem than good or bad logging. The real long-term problems are outside the forestry sector.”
CIFOR shares these thoughts: “Increasing population puts pressure on agricultural production which increases the demand for land and leads to forest depletion. Relaxing trade barriers also has an effect.
“Areas opened up by commercial logging are often then exploited by shifting agriculture (kaingin to Filipinos) leading to more devastation and mismanagement or over-exploitation of resources.”
Indeed, there are no fast rules in curbing deforestation. “The illness of our forest is complicated — and cannot be cured — with a one-stop prescription of a single medicine,” reminded then Senator Heherson T. Alvarez in a 1992 forestry workshop in Isabela. “A comprehensive, scientific and ethical strategy and coordinated efforts are needed to care for and manage the forests through sustainable development.”
Data from the DENR’s Forest Management Bureau show that combined reforestation efforts by the government and the private sector are not enough to arrest the rapid deforestation.
After the TreeVolution, Antonino was quoted as saying: “I do hope that all of us will continue to have the passion, the will and the courage to rehabilitate and preserve our environment because a healthy environment is the best gift that we can give to our children. As parents or grandparents, education is not the only best thing we can give to our kids but a healthy environment as well.”
Even at the end of the world, so goes a saying, we need to plant trees. “A person without children would face a hopeless future; a country without trees is almost as helpless,” American President Theodore Roosevelt reminded us.