Domoguen: Staying with the conversation

IF WE care about tomorrow, we must do more to protect the forests and watersheds in our midst now.

On that score, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-CAR staff anchored their discussions during the final IFAD mission on the conceptualization of the Integrated Natural Resource and Environmental Management Project (INREMP). It enlivened the consultations on community involvement in the proposed project implementation participated in by community representatives and local government executives from Kalinga and Mountain Province that share the Chico Upper River Basin.

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After a “walk-through consultation” in the tri-boundary of Benguet, Ifugao and Mountain Province atop Mt. Pangao where the mossy forest is slowly disappearing being replaced by vegetable gardens, the message has sank deep among the participants when they gathered at the conference hall of the Mount Data Hotel in Bauko, Mountain Province last August 27. The state of the Chico River basin cannot be understood and resolved by communities on their own alone. They need to continuously talk, integrate positions and actions as communities in a larger community. The Chico River Basin is after geo-physically integrated. The history of plant and animal life in the basin used to be integrated. The sad and un-natural disconnectedness of life therein arising from human interventions multiplies resource sustainability issues and relationship tensions that inhabitants have to contend with. An unsecured resource and the sustainability of the quality of life now and the future are not only confined to the basin’s inhabitants but goes beyond the boundaries, affecting even the whole of North Luzon.

During the walk-through, talks had the nature of finger pointing. For instance, the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) and CHARM Phase 1 were loosely blamed as culprits in causing or starting the destruction of the Mount Data Watershed. Historically, that is not correct. Before the BPI established its potato breeding station there, logging started years earlier and devastation in the area was already in pronounced stage. For all intents and purposes, BPI built a road into a secluded forest away as much as possible to produce naturally quarantined seeds. Through the years as population encroached towards the station, that objective was rendered unviable. The CHARM Project, for its part, supported rural infrastructure and agricultural livelihood of local residents and not the expansion of farms into the forest. At the same time and through DENR, the Project supported community watershed reforestation and conservation activities.

In Mount Pangao, the increasing population and individual initiative is carving most of its top flatland, rolling terrains and the valleys below into vegetable gardens. The communities in Monamon Sur, Norte and Proper, all in Bauko are directly associated or found within this mountain. The evolution of these communities and their growth, development and sins against the forest needs more processing beyond finger-pointing or mere hand-washing. More important, stakeholders taking responsibility and buckling down to work together at this critical time is a better option to address the myriad of socio-economic and environmental problems in this watershed.

After the walk-through, the talks considered whether it is best for the INREMP to support individual LGUs in tackling problems and concerns in their separate community watersheds within the Chico River Basin. In which case, the project has to individually deal with them. That did not integrate well with the DENR’s concept of what the basin is about and what the project’s implementation must achieve to make individual communities responsible and accountable to one another being members of the greater watershed basin community. Hon. William Aspilan, Vice Mayor of Bontoc, did express an appreciation of this outlook saying that his town must not only be the focus of contemplated class suits and criticisms against the siltation and pollution of the Chico River. A limited and individualized action on resource utility and environmental and problems within the basin does not help much. Understanding the problems and coming out with meaningful mitigating actions must be shared by the communities upstream from Tinglayan, Kalinga; Bontoc, Sabangan and Bauko in Mountain Province, he said.

INREMP may yet bring the management of diversity, integration, and participatory community development in the Cordillera to a higher level. I take it that IFAD Country Programme Manager for Asia and Pacific Division, Mr. Sana F.K. Jatta, was impressed and satisfied with the mission. He expressed his gratitude that the Asian Development Bank, IFAD and the Government of the Philippines (GOP), are joining hands as the main funding source for the project’s implementation with complementing funds coming from the beneficiaries. I am satisfied myself with how the DENR, NEDA, DA, DAR, NCIP, LGUs and the other participants came together and supported the mission. Even without INREMP, these agencies come together more often as members of the Regional Development Council (RDC). As a community, they communicated and helped in formulating the INREMP. Now they must continue to help in ensuring that IFAD will have all the needed documents for its Board of Directors to approve during their regular session come December of this year.

Kudos is due to the DENR-CAR for accepting and leading the INREMP initiative and for sustaining the conversations on the watersheds. Certainly, for the CHARM2 Project, INREMP’s birth as a sister project is eagerly awaited. The event strengthens roles, binds family and communities, and the management of diversities for achieving cohesiveness, connectedness, and common goals in our Chico watershed Basin. Tomorrow can yet be better than today.