BEFORE, it is a normal scene seeing young adults and students gather to chat and practice dance and movement routines under the coolness of trees on a center island park between the Davao Central Post Office and the Marco Polo Hotel. But, it is a different scene now as the trees are gone. Heartbreaking.
In a Facebook post of Arnold Vandenbroeck, he raised a concern over the cutting of trees in the area.
"To our great dismay, we discovered just before Undas that all decennia-old trees in the center island park between the Davao Central Post Office and the Marco Polo Hotel have been cut!" read his post dated October 31, 2019.
The park, also called Clifford Park, comprises the so-called Millennium Park along with the Freedom Park Island fronting Ateneo de Davao University.
"Based on our years-long monitoring, Clifford Park was, by far, the most intensively visited and used park in Davao City. It was our 24/7 park, accessible anytime, without hardly any maintenance. No fences, no entrance, and exit, just trees," he added. In fact, the park has been considered by some concerned citizens for Lunhaw Awards nomination as an effective example of what intensively used small and pocket parks can be like.
He went on with these questions: Who is responsible for such a dastardly environmental destruction in time of climate change and global warming? Who let it happen? Who made it happen?
His claims and points are valid. Seriously, who cut these trees and for what purpose? What happened to our value for the city's green spaces?
People often take essential things for granted. Take these trees for example.
Aside from providing people shade from the scorching heat of the sun, trees inevitably hold a major part in solving climate change and wildlife degradation.
But despite this, why deforestation still continues? And why people are not even alarmed with how deep the problem is?
Food and Agriculture Organization's 2016 State of the Forests report revealed that 7 million hectares of forest are lost annually. IntactForests.org also concludes that about 3.5 billion to 7 billion trees are cut down per year.
The Clifford Park's trees may be just a handful but it is in these small acts of cutting trees where the huge and alarming problem on deforestation starts.
This can't go unchecked. We need trees for a variety of reasons. Trees provide clean air and absorb not only the carbon dioxide that we exhale, but also the heat-trapping greenhouse gases that human activities emit.
Any single tree must be defended.