Lim: The tree issue

Frankly, I think there’s too much drama over the trees.

Don’t get me wrong. While I’m not a rabid environmentalist, I’ve been practicing green living most of my life due to the frugal ways of my father who trained all of us to reduce, reuse and recycle long before green living became fashionable.

The environmentalists are at loggerheads with local government officials about the trees that line the roads of southern Cebu.

Local government officials claim the trees are diseased and should be cut down because they endanger human lives. Two trees, have, in fact, already fallen in the past few months. In addition, some of the trees are obstructing road traffic. More importantly, the 84 trees in question are in the way of a P1 billionroad widening project in the south.

Environmentalists want to save the trees. They claim that very few of these trees are actually so diseased that they need to be cut down. Instead of cutting all these trees down, tree experts suggest tree surgery and pruning to save many of these diseased trees. The cost would be P9,000 per tree.

To be fair, the cost is not prohibitive but is the solution practical?

Should we not also count the cost of inconvenience on the residents and commuters in saving these trees? In addition, for how long will these trees live with surgery? Will these trees actually survive to live another century? Or will we be performing needless surgery on trees that will eventually die anyway in a few years.

In the meantime, how do we preserve public safety? Are we going to wait for the next calamity to claim another life?

I’m a nature lover. I believe in preserving trees, especially, century-old trees but not at the cost of human life or common good. While the greater issue is the danger the trees pose to human life as well as property, the secondary issue is really just as important.

We desperately need to lift people out of poverty. And in order to do that, we need to push for economic development. Infrastructure is a vital component of economic development. The road widening project will facilitate the flow of goods and people to and from the southern towns and cities of the province of Cebu, boosting business, tourism and job creation.

Can we not have progress without sacrificing the environment? Of course, we can. But we need to be realistic. We are a nation of 100 million people. Most of us live in densely-populated towns and cities because poverty and insurgency pervades the mountainous and forested parts of the country.

I was in Norway and Iceland two months ago. Everything is pristine there. And there is no poverty. But Norway has a population of only 5 million and Iceland, 320,000. Sure. They can afford to live green over there. And they can save all their trees.

According to the National Statistics Office 2010 census, the population of Cebu province is 4.1 million, the population density, 780 persons per square kilometer. Contrast that to the population density of 17 for Norway and 3 for Iceland.

Yes, we should save the trees. But we should save the people too. We can’t have our cake and eat it too. We either save the trees or save the people. It’s that simple.