Wednesday, April 02, 2008 Osmeña: Visayas' land, energy, water resources By Antonio V. Osmeña Estatements
THE Visayan archipelago has now been divided into regions, consisting of a mix of rolling plains, irrigated farmland, rangelands, forests and pristine beaches—some of the nation’s most scenic areas.
It also contains the nation’s most rapidly growing urban regions and is expected to have high population growth rates between 2008 and 2028.
The Visayan region has vast supplies of geothermal energy, potential sources of natural gas and petroleum, a sunny area, which could be the site of power plants that use solar energy to generate enough electricity to theoretically desalinate water from the ocean.
This could help the water-starved regions and provide the needed electricity where geothermal energy is not within reach.
The deposits of many of these energy resources either overlap or are located near one another within the Visayan archipelago.
The oil exploration at the Tañon Strait created a conflict over energy resources development. The result is an extremely complex conflict over land use—especially over the use and management of public domain in the region.
Fishermen are wary of their fishing ground, where oil drilling exploration might drive away the fish. Farmers and ranchers want enough irrigation water. They don’t want to be disturbed or their water polluted from mining and energy development projects.
Many environmentalists and ranchers want to preserve the sparsely populated land from the severe environmental impacts caused by mining and other large-scale energy development projects.
Energy companies, for their part, want to mine the areas’ rich resources for private profit, to reduce dependence on foreign oil imports and to provide energy for the future.
Some residents of these regions welcome the money and jobs that energy development and boom towns bring. But others do not want their rural lifestyle disrupted by rapid population growth.
The National Government, which manages much of the land for the public, is caught in the crossfire of conflicting interests in trying to decide which resources should be developed and when.
To complicate matters further, the government allows the construction of coal-fired generation plant, which pollutes the environment.
But water maybe the limiting factor in determining, which, if any, of the energy resources in the Visayan region will be extracted on a large scale.
With careful planning and management, there maybe enough water for considerable extraction of the available fuels, but at the expense of farming, ranching, forestry and domestic use.
Some of these aquifers are being depleted faster than they are being recharged by rainfall.
The people in the Visayan archipelago who live with potential benefits and drawbacks of large-scale energy resource development face some difficult and important questions in this conflict between the use of land, energy and water resources.
In the heart of the Visayas lies Cebu, surrounded on all sides by islands of varying sizes and importance.
It was predominantly commerce that drew people to Cebu, as one mid-18th century resident noted.
It was a place “where no one can live without barter and trade.” In the first half of the 19th century, Cebu emerged as a major Visayan entrepot that linked an extensive commercial network centered in the markets of Europe and North America.
Today, the Visayas continues to have links to global economic network and it is important that an integrated land, energy and water resources development be planned and implemented.
