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Sunday, December 12, 2004
Mercado: Danger beyond those logs
By Juna L. Mercado
Guided by sailors with probing flashlights perched on the bow, Philippine Navy rescue vessel DF 317, loaded with relief goods, gingerly inched it’s way through a mile-wide maze of logs. They jammed entrance of the bay in typhoons that devastated Real, Quezon. A stray trunk could rip off a ship’s rudder or propeller.
That stark image captures the failure, by government hostaged by loggers, to curb ravaging of forests. Less than three percent of primary forests are left. Despite bans and edicts, secondary forests are still disappearing at the rate of 480 hectares per day.
Illegal logging funnels over US $700 million a year to cops and smugglers who ship logs abroad. Even the New People’s Army has dealt itself into the game. Public fury is therefore intense.
Unfortunately, that anger will subside soon. It always does. We are a people of short memories. Memories of flash floods in Ormoc, Caraga and Southern Leyte have been scrubbed away.
And media is always shuffling on to the next headline. “We never develop the vocabulary to convey the importance of some events,” CBS’ Andrew Hayward once said. “Everything is made to seem equally important.”
Degraded forests cannot be rehabilitated overnight. It takes an hour, maybe two, to chainsaw a hectare. But even fast-growing species take years to grow. So, the next flashfloods are inevitable. Postponed reforms make that a given. More people will die. That’s a given, too.
Worse, “tunnel-vision” blocks us from seeing even more lethal problems that follow. Little is heard, for example, about how soil erosion will wreck future food supplies.
Great civilizations in China, Mesopotamia, Egypt, North Africa and Greece decayed when granaries emptied as soil erosion sapped once-bountiful harvests. But who of our leaders think in terms of such historical lessons?
In Latin, the word “erodere” means to “gnaw away.” Soil is eroded or “gnawed away” when tree cover is stripped. In its uncultivated state, top soil – “a crustal fragile membrane that provides a foothold of life on earth” – is only seven to 25 centimeters deep.
Using “geological time scales,” soil scientists note: it takes a century to form an inch of topsoil from decayed leaves and other vegetation. “But a single climatic event can wash away this irreplaceable and fragile carpet that needed eons to weave.” Climatic events like Ormoc, Caraga or Real in Quezon.
Has it ever crossed the mind of our pork-obsessed legislators to ask for an estimate of how much of this invaluable asset was lost? They should. For Ormoc, Caraga or Real are only dress rehearsals of what is ahead for other provinces.
Nationwide, only 18 percent of forest cover is left, out of the original 92 percent in 1595. But our political leaders’ time scales rarely go beyond the next elections. They do not seem aware of this post-flashflood danger.
Even before today’s flashfloods, erosion already blighted “more than half of the land area in 13 provinces,” sapping their capacity to feed their growing populations, the Food and Agriculture Organization points out.
Provinces with land whose productivity is being “ gnawed away” are: Batangas, Cebu, Ilocos Sur, La Union, Batanes, Bohol, Masbate, Abra, Iloilo, Cavite, Rizal, Marinduque, Capiz, this United Nations agency says.
Nationwide, over 75 percent of the cropland is affected in one or other by erosion, the Department of Environment notes. The damage varies from province to province.
Cebu is one of the worst. Over 386,777 hectares have been damaged. Among other provinces running up soil productivity deficits are: Bohol--271,739 hectares; Masbate – 269,147; Batangas – 262,762 and Abra – 258,410.
“The earth does not belong to man,” the mythical Chief Seattle wrote. “Man belongs to the earth. This we know: Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it…How can you buy or sell the sky or the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us.”
An array of technology has been developed since wind erosion devastated wide swaths of the US in the 1930s. In 1985, the Ramon Magsaysay Award-cited foundation, for example, is the Sloping Agricultural Land Technology (SALT) developed by the Davao-based Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center.
Studies reveal farms using SALT technology – which relies on local inputs--can more effectively control soil erosion. And it has spun off in three more systems within reach of the ordinary farmer: SALT 2, which integrates livestock raisin; SALT 3, which is a combination of food-wood production; and SALT 4, where fruits and trees are planted together in the same area.
Being simple, applicable, low-cost and timely, the SALT system has drawn from all over the world. But the problem is not technology. It is lack of vision: one that sees the problem beyond today’s crisis.
Such a vision will also perceive that time is not on our side. Writing laws into the books is not enough. Soil or forest rehabilitation has cycles that do not bend to parliaments or armies.
“You hypocrites,” the Master from Galilee once said. “Why can you not read the signs of the times?”
(juan_mercado@pacific.net.ph)
(December 12, 2004 issue)
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