Tuesday, September 09, 2008 Editorial: What's going on out there in Marilog?
THE rains are here again, and with them come tragedy, like it never occurred to people that mountains do rush down the slopes when soil is left unstable by deforestation, mining, and mono-crop agriculture.
Amid the news of landslides are almost daily news from international wires about global concern on preserving the remaining forests, large swathes of land once dotted with residual forests along the slopes of Marilog District have been recently chopped down and exposed to the elements. The sight is so outrageous, the exposed reddish claysoil fanning anger.
What have people thought of again? Is this but another development out there that wasn't intended to be seen, and yet shouldn't have been allowed to happen?
These are the questions that popped out of our collective minds as rows and rows of tree stumps now dot the mountain slopes. Worse is a very big and deep excavation on one of those denuded slopes. A treasure hunting expedition or an unannounced mining operation?
With so much concern about our environment, and the Marilog District having been allowed to slowly build up forests anew, it is expected of the city to check on what's happening there. Apparently, no one has noticed, not even those who are supposed to represent that district.
When mountain dwellers, farmers, and landowners should have been earning studying how they can earn dollars and euros through trading of carbon credits, we remain in the third world, cutting trees for profit, flaunting disregard for the environment by allowing vast banana plantations to spring up on our uplands knowing too well that bananas cannot even hold soil, nor can anyone live in such a farm, living in denial that we continue to rape our environment while having our photos taken planting one scraggly looking seedling.
We lull ourselves into a false sense of security by occasionally planting seedlings -- like one tree seedling a year, while allowing mono-crop plantations and mining operations to wipe out hectares upon hectares of the uplands where soil is more fertile but most vulnerable -- because that looks good in the newspaper and we can clip those published photos as part of our annual accomplishment reports.
We refuse to understand the mechanics of carbon credits trading, when we could have used this for farmers to earn, preferring to be pictured as philanthropists personally giving out relief goods and aids, because that earns better recall and more votes.
