Sanchez: How green is green?

Monday, August 8, 2011

HOW green are environmental projects? How green is green?

It’s interesting how the Climate Change Commission (CCC) is positioning itself as the country’s “green auditor” that will evaluate environmental projects being trotted yearly as the country exerts efforts to conserve natural resources or preserve energy.

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That the CCC will assume this role in the absence of a government body specifically assigned to ensure that green projects on which public funds are being spent are truly achieving their purpose, that is, protecting the environment.

Vice Chair Mary Ann Lucille Sering cited several examples. One of these is the government’s reforestation project or the so-called National Greening Program, timed to coincide with country’s celebration of the International Year of the Forests.

President Aquino signed in February 2011 Executive Order 26 that gave the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) its marching orders to spearhead the administration’s NGP.

Five months later, the DENR said that as of July 15, 2011, 22 million tree seedlings had been planted in 3,928 hectares of government lands nationwide. I got that incredible figure from the July 24, 2011 news report of the People’s Television Network Inc., a government-owned television station.

I’ll take that DENR claim with a barrelful of salt and agree for the sake of argument that the government has truly planted that many seedlings, especially since the NGP was launched just in mid-May to address environmental issues and ensure the country's self-sufficiency in timber.

Sering said the government is trying to raise seedlings but there is no vulnerability assessment on whether these seedlings will survive if the temperature increases.

That’s a valid concern, but I find it a bit shallow. Out of that 22 million planted seedlings, how many of the seedlings are native tree species? And how many are exotics? Somehow, the news articles failed to give a breakdown. I see nothing on dipterocarps and other Philippine endemics.

Or is the unstated assumption of the EO and the CCC is that God created all trees as equal, that eucalyptus trees are just as good as a red or white lauan or a yakal?

Last I checked my Environmental 101, there are such things as forest biodiversity. And that rainforests are more than trees. There are non-timber forest resources and then there’s the wildlife.

I don’t see how the NGP can restore lowland evergreen dipterocarp rainforests where once the dominant vegetation consisted of species of Dipterocarpus, Shorea, Hopea, Pterocarpus indicus, and pandans in the Greater Negros-Panay Rainforests ecoregion.

I fail to see how the 22 million trees planted can serve as biodiversity corridors. After all, Philippine wildlife depends on rainforests as their habitats. Can the remaining herds of the Philippine spotted deer now found only in Panay and Negros survive on the predominance of monocultures of mahogany or eucalyptus plantations?

In fact, studies show that tropical rainforests are being destroyed because the value of rainforest land is perceived as only the value of its timber by short-sighted governments and land owners.

And the solution tends to hew to the same mindset. Restoring forests are limited to restoring timber resources in largely tree plantations.

I agree with Sering’s assertion that “there’s nobody doing monitoring and evaluation in terms of the green projects. The COA (Commission on Audit) is more into numbers and specific guidelines you have to follow.”

But the CCC has to expand its audit much more than tree seedling survivals. It has to touch base on biodiversity issues, to look beyond the trees and start seeing the forests.

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