Bayan: Think about it!!!

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

DURING the February 20, 2012 City Council Session, a group of environmentalists, advocates, organizations, and students came to the city council to express their strong opposition to the earth balling or cutting of 182 trees situated at Luneta Hill for the construction of a parking complex. Dr. Michael A. Bengwayan, an environmentalist, when given the time to speak before the city council to further explain his position on what Hon. Richard Cariño termed as “tree massacre”, in his dramatic expression of his position, explained of the importance of the trees with regards to the maintenance of ecological balance.

Baguio City is filled with the Benguet Pine, sometimes known as Pinus insularis. The City of Baguio is nicknamed “The City of Pines”, as it is noted for large strands of this tree.

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The trees are of great importance, not only to businessmen in the timber or lumber industry, but of great relevance to life. While it is true that trees can be cut down and used as wood, it's likely that if not for trees, human life on earth would not even be possible. Scientists believe trees are the largest single source of breathable oxygen in the atmosphere. They're also a major source of food and medicine. Finally, trees contribute aesthetically both indoors and out and help to produce lower stress environments.

Plants and animals exist in a sort of metabolic symbiosis. The oxygen animals and humans need to breath is the waste product of the respiratory process of trees, a chemical pathway that requires the carbon dioxide exhaled by animals. Unlike animals, plants can generate their own carbohydrates, which they do in a process called photosynthesis that takes the carbon from carbon dioxide and the hydrogen from water. In both cases, oxygen is released. Earth's early atmosphere contained very little oxygen, but millions of years of photosynthesis created an environment of breathable air. Today, trees continue providing new, fresh oxygen.

Perhaps there is no need to further enumerate the importance of trees, apart from the production of oxygen, it also helps in the generation of water. The water reservation in various areas in the City of Baguio is due to the abundance of pine trees. Logically, if the trees vanish, along with it is the water that we use everyday.

The present issue on the cutting or earth balling of the 182 trees at Luneta Hill has received strong opposition from the constituency because they know and understand the impending effects of the cutting or the death of trees. Awareness of the importance of these trees and the disadvantages to life itself should these be cut down or totally eradicated, the advocacy to protect the trees must not be focused only on the 182 trees of SM, but must as well be extended to the other areas of the City of Baguio. The SM concern serves as an eye-opener. Only when the public has become aware of the cutting or earth balling of the trees in SM has the public’s concern for the protection of trees been ignited.

A few months ago, the National Greening Program of His Excellency President Aquino, which aimed to plant as much as a million trees, has been launched. This prompted the concerned government agencies, private institutions, and the constituency as a whole to act and support the program. Hon. Joel Alangsab expressed his support to such endeavor through a city council resolution, as well as mobilizing the barangays to achieve the goal. However, we must likewise be aware that the planting of a tree is not as simple as putting a seedling in the ground, and covering its roots with soil, and planter in discharged of responsibility. It is a longtime process which already depends on something beyond human control which is the work of nature itself. We may plant as many as one thousand pine trees a month, but then perhaps less than half or even lesser would survive for the first three months. The lesson now lies not only in planting young trees, but also, in the rearing and caring for the old trees, some of which might even be aged than us. It is then time to start caring for the trees, not only through advocacy, but in action. It is high time that we all dare to care for the environment, for the trees, for every God-given beauty, which is life in itself.