Sánchez: Up in smoke

Monday, February 6, 2012

HOLY smokes! There goes the provincial government’s 50-hectare Minoyan Reforestation Project in Barangay Minoyan, Murcia, up in flames. Another fire destroyed an adjacent 45 has. of a reforestation area.

Burned were the native premium species. Now the fat is on the fire for alleged arsonists who are blamed for the loss of P1,080,000 of replanted seedlings.

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Who are the arsonists? One theory says that the Minoyan reforestation sites were torched because of the provincial government's stepped up campaign against illegal loggers and charcoal makers.

Well, maybe. The usual suspects. I doubt though that charcoal makers would have any use for three year old seedlings. What would illegal loggers get from burned seedlings?

Ma. Valencia, Gov. Alfredo Marañon's chief of staff, is right that law enforcers should smoke out the arson suspects. The clue of who they are could be a review of previous arson cases in Minoyan.

Environmental lawyer and current Provincial Environment Management Officer María Aleta Núñez noted that the burned site is the same area that was also intentionally burned in 2008. Touché, Alett.

The Negros Occidental Social and Economic Trends 2009 reported that 259 hectares were burned plantation in Minoyan Reforestation Project and that Rehabilitation/Replanting activity done in the burned plantations.

If fact, the recent arson incidents were not even the first or even second cases in Minoyan. I remember a another case in 2002 during the provincial celebration of the International Year of the Mountains and even during the 1990s when a university professor of a local law school managed a reforestation project that mobilized students for reforestation.

I wonder if any culprits have been arrested, tried and convicted in 2008. The arson cases are starting to have the feel of impunity. Minoyan arsonists seem to feel they can get away with the crime.

Mind you, reforestation projects, as often conceived by the government, are by themselves livelihood opportunities. Tree planters are paid for setting up and maintaining centralized nurseries. They also get paid for holing, staking, hauling and planting of seedlings and maintenance for three years after outplanting.

On the fourth year, the tree growers get paid their retention fee for 80-90 percent seedling survivals, and then the reforestation project ends. That's when the money stops flowing in the community.

Government and civil society development workers shared with me that the Minoyan community tends to look at reforestation projects as livelihood and employment opportunities. The end of a reforestation project signals the termination of livelihoods and employment.

But if reforestation sites get burned down, the government or companies such as the Energy Development Corp. will have to start all over. Minoyan tree growers can expect another round of happy days with new reforestation projects. Only four years separate the previous and latest case of arson.

Well, where there's smoke, there's fire. I would be interested to know if the same tree growers from reforestation projects were employed for the 1,500 hectares Bago Watershed Forestal project area.

I did my share of managing NGO-led reforestation projects under community forestry in Salvador Benedicto and Calatrava. The latest was around agrarian reform communities in Murcia (not Minoyan), Bago, La Carlota and La Castellana adjacent the borders of the Mt. Kanlaon Natural Park.

There, the participating project communities planted endemic species such as lauan, apitong, and other dipterocarp species. We never had any problems with arson.

None of them have experienced what happened in Minoyan. In these rainforestation projects, tree growers have to contribute their share of raising and planting seedlings. This is after what is meant with community based natural resource management. Maybe local governments should review its reforestation paradigm.

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