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Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Osmeña: Firewood crisis
By Antonio V. Osmeña
Estatements
KNOCKING DOWN WOOD. Over two billion people, including 90 percent of the people in the Less Developed Countries (LDCs), depend on wood as their principal fuel for heating and cooking. This use alone accounts for about 80 percent of the wood cut in LDCs and almost one-half of the timber cut in the world.
One out of four people on earth lives in areas where the collection of wood for fuel outpaces new growth, and shortages are expected to increase in the future. The Philippine population has gone beyond 80 million. Now is the time for the government to fully support firewood planting to avoid enormous ecological and economic crises.
The scarcity of wood for fuel accelerates deforestation, especially in areas near villages and cities where commercial markets for firewood and charcoal exist. Food shortages could also be made worse by firewood scarcity and increased firewood prices.
Cebu’s mountain hinterland crop yield has decreased because of decades of erosion and also when families cannot afford firewood.
In the early 1950s, then Cebu governor Serging Osmena Jr. tried to solve the firewood problems in the mountain barangays by air dropping ipil-ipil seeds in the hope that these seedlings would grow.
Today the firewood crisis continues not only in Cebu but over the country’s forested areas as well.
Dealing with the firewood crisis should now be the concern of the community. Here are some suggestions.
* Representatives from each household could form a forestry association to encourage villagers to plant, tend and harvest local woodlots, with the wood distributed among the households and proceeds from any marketable surplus used to support community development projects. This is being done successfully in South Korea.
* Government foresters could act as extension agents who help individuals and communities by providing seed of fuel-wood planting stock and giving advice on getting the trees started.
* Fast-growing trees and shrubs for fuel should be planted in unused patches of land, with emphasis on using the local species and introducing new species carefully to ensure that they do not take over large areas of land more suitable for other purposes.
* Using agroforestry techniques, both crops and fast-growing trees for fuel should be planted in certain areas.
* There should be increased funding for reforestation by government foresters and community forestry groups.
* At the same time, efforts must be made to reduce the 90 percent waste of the heat given off when wood is burned for fuel to cook food over an open fire. These include using locally produced and efficient wood stoves, solar cookers and small biogas plants that produce methane gas from organic wastes and leave fertilizer ash as a by-product.
* Lastly, population control will also control wood shortages.
The original forested area in the Philippines has been reduced by about 80 percent since the late 1960s. Much of our hardwood timber was exported to Japan.
Ecologists have urged our political leaders and the community to use more responsible forestry practices and call on Most Developed Countries (MDCs) to provide funds and technical advice to help conserve large areas of our vital resources.
They warn that our country’s remaining tropical forests may be gone within the next 50 to 80 years, posing a threat to the Filipino people, as well as to the wildlife that inhabits these forests.
(December 15, 2004 issue)
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