The National Greening Program

Sunday, October 9, 2011

LAST week, we went all the way to Lubao, Pampanga to attend the National Greening Program of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources which is gaining some headway amid the great task to plant 1.5 billion trees all over the country in the run up to 2016.

In the face of the wide destruction brought about by the flooding in the provinces of Pampanga and Bulacan, the Philippine government including all of us who cares for the environment should now rethink environmental programs not only to save lives and properties but to re-green the earth for future generations.

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The Angeles Parish had been doing exemplary work as far as the protection of the environment is concerned - Sapang Balen had been cleared of effluents and the water in the creek is now flowing freely bereft of the stench that attended it in the past.

Meat processing plants and the Angeles abattoir dumped their wastes into Sapang Balen before a Parish priest put up a curse on unconscionable individuals who will dump their wastes in the creek. Whoever instigated the save Sapang Balen move should be commended by the DENR for the environmental protection that was enforced in the once-dreadful creek.

Now comes the NGP, perhaps the major proponent of the re-greening program such as the DENR, Department of Agriculture, DAR, Department of Education and the LGUs should start by fortifying the lateral areas of rivers and creeks all over the country to minimize flooding. The DENR had been rallying that each Filipino is required to plant 10 trees within six years.

The DENR had been targeting to plant 50 percent of the 1.5 billion trees for production and protection purposes and the other 50 percent in agroforestry, which is a mix of fruit and forest trees. We are just hoping against hope that unconscionable illegal loggers will not squander away what we had started. The Philippine government had been doing this program in the past but to no avail because deforestation only aggravates environmental problems.

If the NGP will be successful, it will cause among others food security, poverty reduction, biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation and environmental stability.

In this context, the information officers all over Central Luzon met last week to further discuss the merits of the NGP and to rally support for implementation of the program and to generate support/partnership towards the success of the environmental program.

Perhaps, it is high time to mobilize students, government employees and all Filipinos to support the National Greening Program of the government for the benefit of the Filipinos. Our environmental resources had been squandered in the past and there is no sign of abating even up to these days. The tree planting activities should be harmonized under the NGP.

Mankind had taken so much of the earth's remaining resources and we should contain the environmental problems before it become irreversible for us. We have to seek alternative sources of energy, we have to recycle and we have to support re-greening programs like the NGP to raise the level of social responsibility.