1

CHAPTER 4
LAND

Sub: Stewardship of land and all it brings is mans paramount
responsibilityand that means caring for all that lives on it, all that grows
on it, and all the minerals and energy that are born of it

PART I: A Web of Interdependence

Sub: Man is just one part of the community that makes up the land, and he
must develop it in a way that will sustain all life

LAND is the solid ground of earth upon which all terrestrial animals live. It
makes up only 29% of the Earths surface, of which only about 11 % is
generally habitable.

The most agreeable place to live lies in what is known as the tropical zone,
where tides and the winds converge and there is an abundance of warmth,
sunlight and moisture.

The little land that is available to us is not merely soil, dirt or the ground we
walk on. It is, in fact, a fountain of energy through which life flows.
Consider the energy that flows from the sun and is captured by plants,
transferred to the animals and then, in the decay of death, absorbed by the
land as its base. From thence, with rainfall and more sunshine, plant life
grows again, and once again energy travels upward to the animal-life forms.
So goes the cycle of life, like an unbroken circuit of energy.

Precisely because it is the base of all living matter, the soil then must be kept
in a condition that is stable, nutrient-rich and life-giving. While there may be
some soil that is naturally lost through downhill wash, the volume is
normally minimal and is offset by the decay of rocks, dead plants and
animals. In small quantities, the soil washed downstream into the sea even
nourishes aquatic animals and plants. In small quantities, the fine and
nutrient-rich silt from the uplands is needed by mangroves, sea grasses and
even coral reefs.

The native Indians of America had a saying: Man is not the weaver, only a
strand, in the web of life. Humans are part of that intricate web, a
community of parts that make up a whole living earth. We are not the
2
suppliers of natural resources, but only users of that community of soil,
waters, plants and animals collectively known as land.

The sense of good manners and right conduct towards the land is what may
be called the land ethic. It presupposes the existence of a conscience, a
sense of right or wrong. This sense is present not only in our relations with
fellow human beings, but with other members of the community of nature
the soil, the waters, the plants and other animals. The land ethic also
presumes that, having understood the role of human beings in this
community, we take on the responsibility to ensure that this community of
life is kept healthy, and its capacity to renew itself kept intact.

Conservation is nothing more than thisthe effort to understand and
preserve this capacity for self-renewal. However, this consciousness is not
based in purely altruistic motives. There is a very clear motivation of
enlightened self-interest. It is also in accordance with the basic instinct of
self-preservation. We now understand that unless we have water, soil, plants
and other animals, that web of life is damaged, and with it goes the capacity
to sustain human life.

Ownership and responsibility
Ownership is defined as the characteristic of a thing to be possessed by or
to completely belong to a person. It is a distinctly human phenomenon. The
closest thing comparable to it in the animal kingdom is the territorial
imperative of some animals (e.g. a crocodile for its lair, a crab for its hole,
and the bird, its perch). But unlike men, animals do not seek to claim
permanent ownership. By their instinct, they probably know that their
occupation of that lair, that hole or that perch is, at best, fleeting.

Let us look at the origins in law of our claims to ownership. In Roman law,
the following are so-called rights of ownership. They are 1) jus
posenendithe right to possess; 2) jus utendithe right to use; 3) jus
fruendithe right to the fruits; 4) jus disponendithe right to dispose; and
5) jus abutendithe right to destroy.

As far as our relationship to land is concerned, we really only have the first
three rights: to possess it, to use it and to benefit from the fruits. The right to
dispose of the land is essentially only to the right to transfer possession and
the rights to its use and its fruits.

3
On the other hand, the right to destroy is an absolute and total fallacy. The
late Cordillera chieftain Macli-ing Dulag was correct when he said that we
cannot own nor destroy that which will outlive us. Even if we killed off all
the plants and animals in a patch of land, even if we dumped it with toxic
wastes, we would succeed only in removing the substance that makes life
possible. Certainly, we would never be able to destroy land. After we
succeed in depriving ourselves of the life-supporting parts of the community,
we would soon die and our bodies would decay and be returned to the earth
to fertilize it. And the land will continue to live for many more years, long
after we are nothing but dust floating in the wind.

In sum, therefore, land ownership is nothing more than another legal
fiction. In reality, what we call ownership actually refers only to the right to
temporarily possess the land for a brief period, a period that may span our
lifetimes and that of our heirs.

The right of ownership necessarily means that our temporary possession
carries with it the corresponding responsibility to use the land in a manner
that will advance its capacity to sustain life. As a privilege resulting from
our caring for the land, we can gather the fruits of that which we planted, or
which naturally grew from the land. Bearing this in mind, let us proceed to
discuss the wondrous things that the land contains and that are necessary to
sustain the circuit and cycle of life.




PART II: Ecosystems and Species

Sub: The sheer diversity of creatures living on the Earth is what keeps this
planet alive, but conservation must become a priority if it is to stay that way

ON A thin layer on the surface of the Earth, there exists life. The existence
of this life is the key difference between our Earth and the rest of the
heavenly bodies. In almost every place on earth we see different forms of
life. Why is this so? What kinds of life forms are there? What is their
purpose? How do they relate to one another and why are they important to
us?

Biosphere refers to that layer of living things on the surface of this planet
4
called the Earth. Bio means organic or living matter, and sphere is a
three-dimensional round surface. It is made up of three parts: the lithosphere,
the atmosphere and the hydrosphere. In more common language, that means
land, air and water.

The biosphere contains living things of great variety, complexity, and
number that collectively make up our Earths biological diversity, or
biodiversity for short.

There are three levels of biodiversity. Genetic diversity is the sum total of
the genetic information contained in the genes of individual inhabitants of
the Earth. It is what makes you different from your brother and your mother,
and why there are different kinds of dogs, cattle and horses. In like manner,
while there is only one species of Homo sapiens sapiens, there are different
varieties of men and womenthe Caucasoid (white), Mongols (yellow,
Asiatic), Negroid (black), and Malay (brown).

Species diversity refers to the variety of living organisms on Earth, which is
estimated at between five and 50 million species, of which only about 1.4
million have been identified. In other words, there are many, many different
kinds of trees, insects, birds and flowers that we do not even know about.

Ecosystem diversity refers to the diversity of communities of living
organisms. A variety of life communities or ecosystems, habitats, biotic

communities and ecological processes are found in the biosphere. In each of
these living communities is contained a tremendous diversity of life within
ecosystems

Being anthropocentric creatures, we humans like to look at things in relation
to their value to us. The value of biodiversity is evident in our food supply.
Roughly 1/3 of all known plant species produce edible fruits, tubers, nuts,
seeds, leaves, roots or stems. For all of 90% of history, when people lived as
hunter-gatherers, most cultures have known of several hundred edible plant
species that could provide sustenance
.
Even today, in many places, a wide
variety of wild foods form part of mans diet, especially during seasons of
food scarcity. In Niger, Tuareg women regularly harvest desert panic-grass
and shama millet. In Thailand, wild foods gathered from forests make up
half of all food eaten by villagers during the rainy season. During stormy
months in the fishing town of Sta. Fe in Bantayan Island of the Philippines,
people still gather root crops (locally called timsil) from a local wetland.
5

The medicinal importance of biodiversity is even more significant to
humans. Half of the medical prescriptions in the world have their origins in
wild plants. Aspirin, for example, comes from a compound originally
isolated from European willow trees and meadow herbs.

The World Health
Organization (WHO) estimates that the 3.5 billion people in developing
countries, more than half of the worlds population, rely on plant-based
medicine for their primary health care.

Traditional healers in South Asia and Southeast Asia use between 1,800 to
2,000 different plant species in treatments, and are regularly consulted by
800 million to 1 billion people for their medical needs. In China, where
medicinal plant use goes back some 4,000 years, healers employ at least
5,000 species of plants. Traditional medicine is particularly important for the
poor and rural residents who cannot afford prescription drugs.

In the
Philippines, a national law has in fact, institutionalized traditional and
alternative medicine.


The word ecosystem refers to the community of plants and animals
surviving self-sufficiently, interdependent on each and every part of the
community but functioning as a single unit. A forest is an ecosystem. It is
composed of a multitude of plants and animals interacting with and
dependent on one another. So also are coral reefs. The crabs, shrimps,
crustaceans, and fish that live in the corals, or are supported by them, all
interact with one another to form a basic functioning unit in the marine
environment. In fact, even a single tree and all the life forms it supports
(insects, birds, butterflies and worms) are a mini-ecosystem.

Left to itself, an ecosystem is able to achieve that balance of nature where
animals and plants interacting with the natural elements are able to support
all the life forms that live in it. If the ecosystem is disrupted, the ecological
services provided by natureregulating the water flow, protecting the
watershed, stabilizing soil and climate, preserving nurseries and breeding
grounds, and keeping the system in working orderare also disturbed and
interrupted. If the scale of disruption is greater than the capacity of the
ecosystem to absorb the change, these ecological services are dangerously
reduced, and the ecosystem ultimately ceases to function as a living unit.

Vanishing species
The study of life is known as biology. One of the terms frequently met in
6
biology is the word species. It refers to animals or plants capable of breeding
among themselves, and thus propagating and perpetuating their own kind.

Every species is represented in binomial nomenclature, known by two
names. The first name shows the genus (general classification) of the plant
or animal (its initial letter is capitalized), followed by a Latin adjective or
noun. Thus, man is called Homo sapiens, a species of animal coming from
the genus of hominids (the family of primates). The second word is a
description of the species. In the case of humans, the word used to describe
our kind of species is the word sapiens, or wise (or so we claim to be

Belonging to a species means being able to interbreed with ones own kind.
Humans of different genetic diversity belonging to the species Homo sapiens
are capable of interbreeding. A Negroid is capable of interbreeding with a
Caucasoid, thereby producing a mulatto. An Asian of the Mongolian race is
capable of breeding with a European of the Caucasoid race, producing a
Eurasian. But a horse cannot breed with humans, nor can horses breed with
cows. Their genetic compositions are different and incompatible.

In the case of plants, reproduction is done through the system of pollination,
flowering and seeding. A narra tree,

for example, propagates only narra
trees, mango tree bears only mango fruits and seeds.

In the same way a
Caucasian can breed with an Asian, thereby producing a hybrid variety of
man, so also can a plant be manipulated to produce a hybrid.

The biological diversity found on Earth is the product of three billion years
of evolution. Decline in the population of some species, and even outright
extinction, has always been a natural part of the evolutionary process.

The
few million species that exist today are survivors of an estimated half-billion
that once populated the Earth.

The best estimates reveal that in the past, an
average of one to three species become extinct every year.

In contrast, estimates of the current rate of extinction reveal that every year,
about 27,000 to 50,000 species of plants and animals are being lost forever.
What is even more worrisome is that, while almost all past extinctions have
resulted from the natural process of evolution, the extinctions occurring
today are overwhelmingly caused by human activities on a scale
unparalleled in the history of life. Like the dinosaurs 65 million years ago,
humanity now finds itself amidst a global evolutionary crisis. Unlike the
dinosaurs, however, we are not simply possible victims of mass extinction.
7
This time, we are its cause and reason.

In the animal world, vertebrates (animals with a skeleton and spinal column)
are a good barometer of the health of the animal population. Two-thirds of
the population of an estimated 10,000 species of birds in the world is in
decline, 11% officially listed as threatened with extinction, and 4% is
classified as endangered or critically endangered. Among countries with
more than 200 species of native birds, the highest share of threatened
speciesapproximately 15%is found in two archipelagos, New Zealand
and the Philippines.

The picture becomes even worse with mammals.

Half of the primate
speciesmonkeys, apes and lemursare threatened with extinction. Among
insectivores (such as shrews and moles), 36% are in trouble. Among hoofed
mammals (deer, antelopes, pigs) the figure is 37%; among whales and
porpoises, and dolphins (cetaceans), its 33%. Generally, one out of every
four mammals is in danger of extinction.

Amphibians and reptiles (crocodiles, turtles, snakes, frogs, and lizards) are
not found in large numbers. There are about 6,300 documented species of
reptiles and some 4,000 amphibians. One of every five documented reptiles
is classified as endangered or dangerously vulnerable.

Fish species are by far the most diverse group of vertebrates. There are about
24,000 of them formally described by scientists. Of the 13,000 species of
marine fish, 2,500 are found in Philippine seas. While only 10% of the fish
species has been studied for their conservation status, the news today is
disturbing. It is estimated that roughly 1/3 of all fish species is already
threatened with extinction. Among freshwater fish, the estimate is even more
astounding: six out of 10 of these species are dying out, or almost extinct.

The causes of species and biodiversity loss are many. The more obvious
ones are too much hunting (or harvesting) by more and more people and too
much habitat destruction. In short, the cause is simply excessive
consumption by a single species of animalhuman beings.

The first cause of species loss is over-harvesting. Nowhere is this more
evident than in the abuse of the seas. The efficiency of modern fishing
methodscomplete with sonar, radar, fish-finders and super-efficient
fishing gearhave all led to the decline of the fish population. The increase
8
in the fish catch in recent years is an illusion, a result of the efficiency of
fishing methods, forgetting altogether that fish have to breed, live and
propagate. The decline is becoming evident in many places in the world
today where fish catch has dipped to such levels that the fisheries have had
to be shut down. Compound this with the use of illegal fishing methods such
as blast fishing and cyanide fishing, and you realize what is meant by the
word abuse.

Abuse of land animals offers an even more senseless picture. Killing other
animals for food to stay alive may be excusable. But in some parts of Africa
they still kill apes for food. Dogs, cats, frogs, lizards, snakes, and turtles are
still being eaten. In fact, in many Chinese restaurants, one can order
chickens feet, goose liver and sharks fin soup.

The manner by which sharks fin is harvested is not altogether humane.
Sharks are captured, their fins are sliced off before they are thrown back into
the sea to bleed to death or to be slowly eaten by other animals while alive.
For a certain dish of duck, the ducks feet are nailed to the ground and the
duck made immobile and starved for several days to cleanse its innards.
Gustatory inclinations vary according to culture and differ only in the level
of brutality inflicted on the animal to be eaten. Buddhists and vegetarians
may be correct in their belief that it is not good to kill other animals for food.
Scientific studies show that, after all, humans hardly need any protein from
animal meat for strength and vitality.

While killing animals for food may be acceptable, killing for fancy is
inexcusable. Some people believe that the penis and the bones of tigers and
the horns of rhinos have aphrodisiac qualities. These animals are hunted and
killed, and their horns, penises and bones removed and crushed into powder
to be sold in some Asian stores. The skin of the slain tiger is used as an
ornamental rug, its head mounted on the wall and displayed as a monument
to the supposed courage of the hunter. Until recently, elephants were hunted
for their tusks, which yield high quality ivory. They were removed and sold
to ornamental sculptors to be carved into small statues or piano keys. Small
rodents and antelopes are also hunted, killed and skinned to make into fur
coats or scarves.

Then there is the indirect, but certainly more potent cause of species loss:
alteration or degradation of the natural habitat. When the vegetation of a
forest ecosystem is removed, all the animals and the plants that support them
9
are gone. If the land is converted to agricultural use, all the biological
diversity of that forest, all its flora and fauna, are lost in favor of a single
crop of rice or sugarcane.

Degradation of a habitat is best exemplified by the Gulf of Mexico in the
United States and Manila Bay in the Philippines. The agricultural run-off of
fertilizers and pesticides from the Mississippi River basin is now so
extensive that when the river enters the Gulf of Mexico, it brings water that
is so over-fertilized with nutrients it results in huge blooms of algae in the
sea. This bloom, in turn, creates such a demand for dissolved oxygen that it
creates a dead zone of some 17,600 square kilometers2 1/2 times larger
than the island province of Cebu.

In the case of Manila Bay, fishermen attest that 90% of their catch is pure
and simple garbageplastics, cans, foam, and the other discarded flotsam
and jetsam. While the standard for fecal coliform bacteria in water fit for
swimming is pegged at 200 units, in the mid-1990s some parts of Manila
Bays waters were found to contain almost one million units.



The concept of conservation
The concept of conservation is grounded in simple necessity and sentido
comun.

Tomorrow we will still need air to breathe, soil to grow food, plants
to release oxygen, trees for paper and furniture. Tomorrow, we will still need
fish to eat, water to drink, and all the other raw materials that make our life
possible or convenient. It follows then that we will need to control the use
and abuse of these raw materials today to ensure that something will be left
behind. Only when we understand this can we begin to systematically
protect our resources. We must conserve life in all its forms not only as a
matter of common sense, but because of sheer necessity. We must realize
that conservation is a multi-disciplinary study that involves the sciences of
ecology, biology, sociology, human psychology and incidentally, the
discipline of law.

There is no longer any debate as to whether we should or should not
conserve our natural resources for future use. Rather, the debate now
revolves around how conservation can be implemented in the national
interest and within the means available to each country.

Significant steps have been taken over the last three decades to conserve
10
endangered species. Among these are efforts geared towards the regulation
of international trade in endangered species, the protection of wetlands of
international importance,

the protection of biodiversity,

and the designation
of world heritage sites.

In the ASEAN region, there is a specific Agreement
on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

Also in the international arena, the United Nations and the World Bank have
established a fund known as the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) to
support, among other things, the conservation of biodiversity.

The Philippines itself has its own laws and rules for the protection of certain
species of animals (the Philippine eagle, tamaraw and whale shark) and
plants (wildflowers and certain kinds of trees), as well as laws for the
protection of ecosystems of national and international importance (national
parks, marine parks, seascapes). The archipelagic province of Palawan,
known as the countrys last frontier of wilderness, is so important that it has
been the subject of a special law.

Logging has been banned in the shrinking remnants of the countrys old-
growth forests. The Philippines also passed a landmark piece of legislation
known as the National Integrated Protected Areas System (NIPAS), which
provides the policy framework and management structure of the land and
sea-based areas subject to special protection because of their biologically
unique features.

Finally, the world is awakening to the dangers of losing the strands in the
web of life. Whether it is too late, or whether the effort and the resources
devoted will prove sufficient to conserve what remains and to rehabilitate
the damage already inflicted, remains to be seen. As far as the required legal
framework is concerned, the laws are already in place. The greater work that
needs to be done is in the minds and hearts of the most reckless and
frivolous of all animals.





PART III: Protected Areas

Sub: Learning to respect the boundaries of the countrys protected areas is
11
key to protecting these natural and national treasures

PROTECTING animal species is possible only if their living space or habitat
is protected from the activities of human beings. As early as 1932, the
colonial administration of the United States passed an Act providing for the
establishment of national parks in the Philippines, declaring them as game
refuge and bird sanctuaries. The hunting and taking of animals and plants
and the extraction of timber from these areas were strictly prohibited. Areas
of the public domain that were of great natural beauty or of scientific and
historical significance were proclaimed national parks and were not allowed
to be occupied. It was legally decreed that these lands were to be kept in the
hands of the public (represented by the State) and forever dedicated for the
benefit and enjoyment of the people at large. Subsequently, a section in the
Revised Forestry Code of 1975 penalized destructive acts of occupation,
vandalism and removal of any species of vegetation or animal from the
national parks.

In June 1992, the Philippine Congress passed a comprehensive piece of
legislation known as the National Integrated Protected Areas System
(NIPAS), Republic Act 7586. This law articulated the overall policy toward
protected areas, listed the categories of protected areas and laid down the
procedure for proclaiming protected areas.

While national parks once referred only to terrestrial zones (including
mangrove areas and tidal flats), there was a belated realization that our seas,
the coral reefs and inland waters were also irreplaceable and priceless
natural treasures. In 1988, an area of 33,200 hectares was proclaimed as the
countrys first marine park, the Tubbataha Reef National Marine Park. In
recognition of its international significance, the Tubbataha Reef was
declared a World Heritage Site on 11 December 1993.

One of the significant provisions of the NIPAS law is the designation of
remaining virgin or old growth forests in the country as part of the protected
areas system. A recent survey and boundary-marking effort of these forests
indicates that the total forest area is greater than originally estimated.

Being
endowed with a multitude of flora and fauna, these remaining virgin forests
are the last repositories of the countrys amazing biodiversity.

To date, 2.7 million hectares of land and marine ecosystems measuring
roughly 7.6% of the countrys land area are protected areas. Although many
12
of these areas are protected only on paper, there are certain perceptible
policy changes, such as the suspension of land titling proceedings, reversion
of land titles issued in protected areas, controversies between the DENR and
concerned local government units in the zoning of lands located in the
protected areas, and the creation of the Protected Areas Management Board
(PAMB). At the very least, these changes have resulted in an increased
awareness of the existence of national parks and protected areas.

However, political will must be gauged by the amount of resources devoted
to the undertaking. In 1999, it was estimated that the national parks
administration for all protected areas in the count amounted to only some 27
centavos (about 1/2 of a US cent) for every hectare. Nothing was allocated
for the preparation of a management plan, for on-the-ground activities such
as for demarcation or delineation and other protection efforts.

In some localities, local government units have assumed the responsibility of
protecting the seascapes and natural monuments. In Sagay City in the
province of Negros Occidental, the local government unit decided to commit
substantial resources to regularly patrol the seas, an area of more than
30,000 hectares now declared as a protected seascape. The City of Puerto
Princesa in the Province of Palawan has taken on the responsibility of
protecting the unique St. Paul Subterranean River, now known as the Puerto
Princesa Subterranean Park. On the other hand, the local government of one
of the largest cities in the Philippines (Cebu City) was sued by a government
agency for its unilateral passage of a zoning ordinance declaring certain
portions of a watershed a commercial area. Land tenure controversies are
beginning to ripen in cases where land titles were issued prior to the
proclamation of the particular place as a national park or protected area.
They are also beginning to surface in situations where the lands located in
the protected area have already been classified as alienable and disposable
(A & D) prior to the proclamation. The situation becomes even more topsy-
turvy in areas where there are mining operations or mineral reserves.

Respecting and protecting boundaries
Article 12, Section 4 of the Constitution provides that the boundaries of the
countrys forests and national parks be clearly demarcated on the ground.
This is to properly identify the areas that need protection. The conventional
way of doing this is to lay short monuments (called mojon in the vernacular)
that protrude above the surface of the land by approximately 15 centimeters.
These markers are difficult to see and, over time, are covered with
13
vegetation.

Of all the terrestrial national parks in the Philippines, only the urban park in
Quezon Memorial Circle, the Ninoy Aquino Wildlife Park in Quezon City,
and the Rizal Park in the City of Manila are clearly marked on the ground
and readily identifiable. The boundaries of the others are hardly known,
much less visible to the inexperienced eye.

The need for visible monumenting cannot be over-emphasized: people
cannot protect something if they do not know what there is to protect. If the
mojones

were constructed so that the protruding portion was bigger, they
would serve as permanent and visible monuments. More important, these
markers would serve as a psychological fence for all to see and know that
the area enclosed is a protected area. This method of monumenting is
specifically mandated in the NIPAS law. The law, in fact, empowers the
Secretary of the DENR to establish a uniform marker for the System,
including an appropriate and distinctive symbol for each category in the
System.

The logistics of transporting these large marker monuments to remote areas
may initially appear to be a challenge. However, the challenge actually
becomes an opportunity when one considers the many possibilities that can
be explored. Air Force helicopters can ferry the cement to areas inaccessible
by land transportation. Bamboo, instead of cement markers, may be used as
the reinforcement bars of the boundary monuments. There is the possibility
of engaging the services of the nearby community dwellers to construct and
to lay the monuments.

Tapping the services of the local communities to construct and lay the
monuments would have the benefits of making them keenly aware of the
existence of the park within their area and of making them aware of the
governments presence and determination to protect the area. This would
also engage them in the process of identifying and demarcating the area,
thereby creating in them a sense of ownership over the area, while
subliminally educating the communities that within the boundaries of that
area is a special place of unique natural wealth. It would thereby give the
community a sense of pride over their special place of great natural
beauty.

This exercise could then be supplemented by an interactive training-seminar
14
on the physical and biological characteristics of the protected area. While
scientists may be well versed in the scientific names and characteristics of
plants and animals, the forest dweller knows of their practical or even
medicinal uses. The forest dweller can also easily identify other life forms
and processes found in the area that may not even be known by the
scientists.

This monumenting activity and the interactive educational exercise would be
an excellent opportunity to prepare the forest dwellers for possible low-
impact income-generating eco-tourism activities and projects. For example,
they could be deputized as environment and natural resources officers or be
gainfully employed as game wardens, guides, porters, jungle survival
trainers, or eco-teachers.

One of the difficulties faced by government personnel who undertake the
survey and demarcation of the national parks is obstruction by landowners
who hold private titles to portions of the national park. This can be a
potentially violent situation and can cause serious demoralization among the
government personnel involved in the survey and demarcation exercise.
When the survey team goes to the field and is blocked from conducting the
survey by armed men, the survey activities are brought to a halt.

There are a few approaches that may be considered in resolving such a
dispute. First, the government must have a clear and defined land tenure
policy for land claimed, titled, or previously declared alienable and
disposable. Second, there should be a preparation exercise in order to soften
resistance. Before the survey and physical monumenting is actually
conducted, a reconnaissance of the land claimants within the area should be
undertaken. A meeting could then be held between the members of the
government agency and the community to inform the claimants of the
purpose of the survey and monumenting exercise, and to clear the air of
potential sources of conflict.

When made to understand and appreciate the need to undertake the survey
and demarcation effort, most occupants would readily accede. It would also
be during this exercise that potentially stubborn claimants can be identified
and then singled out for the application of legal surgery. This would
mean the filing of criminal cases for fraud in situations where the
certificate of title was secured after the area had been declared a national
park; civil proceedings for reversion of the title to the State and exemplary
15
(punitive) damages; the prosecution of the officials who collaborated in the
illegal land titling proceedings; and the wide publication of the names and
parties involved in the anomalous land registration.

In the actual survey, a team of special forces from the Police or the Army
Scout Rangers may accompany the survey party. Their sole purpose would
be to provide the necessary security. The soldiers may even assist in the
laying of the boundary monuments.

The stubborn claimant can also expose himself to various other liabilities. If
he touches, changes or removes the boundary, he can be held liable for
violation of the Protected Areas Law. This law provides that altering,
removing, destroying or defacing boundary marks or signs is an offense
punishable by imprisonment of one to six years and a fine of P5,000 to
P500,000, or both. In the game of force and intimidation, he who uses
greater force wins. The advantage of being in the right and being on the side
of Government is that naked force and power are clothed with the mantle of
legitimacy known as the law. The protected areas law actually directs the
Department of Justice to designate a special team of prosecutors to handle
cases involving violations of the NIPAS law.

False ownership
One of the most problematic issues in protected areas management is that
certain portions of land within the area either have been issued a certificate
of private title or previously declared alienable and disposable (A&D).

Then
there is the situation where there are lands of the public domain which,
although not titled or declared A&D, are issued tax declarations by the city
or provincial tax assessor. Both situations create a tremendous problem in
terms of planning and resource protection. Lands already titled are
considered owned by the title holder. This sense of ownership is
understood to include the right to use the property in any manner the owner
pleases, including the cutting of trees and the removal of any form of
vegetation, or paving over the land with concrete.

Furthermore, the law says that claimants to land already declared A&D even
before the area was proclaimed a national park or protected area and who
have been in possession of the land for 30 or more years may have his title
confirmed by judicial or administrative proceedings. These situations are
the more difficult ones since they involve rights that have supposedly
already ripened into full ownership.
16

What is even more prevalent is the situation where lands of the public
domain, i.e., lands still classified as forest or timber land, have been issued
tax declarations by the local assessor in favor of numerous persons, many of
whom are speculators and absentee land owners. Law explicitly prohibits
this situation. In fact, the law requires that before a tax declaration is issued
by the local realty tax assessor, the claimant must secure a certification from
the DENR that the land is A&D. Failure to comply with this requirement
exposes the local assessor to civil, administrative, and criminal penalties.

However, the practice continues, and tax declarations are issued over
protected areas giving rise to a complex set of issues and false presumptions,
none of which redounds to the benefit of the protected area. For example, the
possession by a person of such a tax declaration indicating his name,
address, and the areas (albeit often inaccurate) creates a wrong impression
and a false sense of ownership. Because the person possessing the tax
declaration pays an annual realty tax on the parcel of land covered, another
legal impression falsely created is that government is prevented from
questioning the possession or claim by the taxpayer. The legality of
canceling tax declarations issued over public lands has long been a thorny
issue, even before the passage of the Forestry Code prohibiting the act. The
legal argument put forward is that the local assessor cannot be held liable for
the act of renewing these tax declarations every three years or so, because it
is simply an act of renewal and not of re-issuance.

Many of the possessors of these tax declarations are speculative claimants
who do not reside in the locality and have hardly even seen the land itself.
Because they must recover the annual realty tax paid on the tax declaration,
they allow other people living in or around the area to cultivate it. This
results in the removal of the lands forest cover and its conversion into
agricultural land, and in the creation of an inequitable, absentee, landlord-
serf relationship, a throwback to the feudal system of land ownership
where the serf paid a share of his produce to the landlord.

Since almost no budget is provided for monitoring and protection activities
in these areas, the slash-and-burn farming and land conversion goes on
unnoticed and unabated.

Tax declaration holders take issue and argue that the tax declarations were
issued long before the passage of the Forestry Code prohibiting it. It is
17
further argued that the local assessor cannot be held liable for his act of
renewing these tax declarations every three years or so, because it is simply
the act of renewing, and not issuing, a tax declaration

The first step is to deal with the fact that the tax declarations have been
issued on public land, which is an outright violation of the law, and to serve
notice to the public officials concerned. A proactive DENR can simply
prepare a land classification map identifying the public and private lands
within the national park or protected area and super-impose it on the tax map
of the local assessor. This will readily identify and segregate the lands where
tax declarations have been issued over lands of the public domain. It will
also serve due notice to the local tax assessors that the identified areas are
classified as timberland or forest land of public domain and are
therefore inalienable and not subject to a tax declaration.

The next step is to look at the system of renewal. Every three years or so,
the tax declaration is renewed to reflect a revised, and upgraded, valuation of
the concerned real property. The new tax declaration bears a new number
altogether. It may therefore be argued by the DENR, if it so desires, that this
act of renewal requires that the claimant secure a certification to the effect
that the land is alienable and disposable.

How to own a protected area
The matter may be easily resolved through an inter-agency agreement
between the DENR on the one hand, and, on the other, the Departments of
Interior and Local Government (DILG) and Finance. After all, the situation
is a result of these agencies being at cross-purposes with one another. While
the DENR is concerned with preserving the forest lands, the DILG as well as
the Department of Finance are interested in raising revenues for the local
government. Revenues generated from property taxes on forest lands are
quite insignificant.

Is it within the power of the Government to divide an area into zones and to
restrict the use of private property within a particular district or portion of
the area? Yes, it is. This is done by restricting the use of property. All
environmental management begins with a sound land use plan prepared and
implemented by zoning. In the Philippines, the head of the environment
agency is specifically empowered to define and classify areas within the
protected area and to prescribe permissible or prohibited human activities
in each category of the area. In fact, the power of the Secretary extends
18
beyond the limits of the protected area itself, as the Secretary is directed by
law to adopt and enforce a land-use scheme and zoning plan in the
adjoining areas for their preservation and to control the activities which may
threaten the ecological balance in the protected areas.

Even if a parcel of land is already titled, the DENR can prescribe the kind of
structures that may be constructed within it, or even the kind of activities
that may be undertaken within a particular area.

For example, a housing
subdivision should never be allowed in areas of steep slopes. If it is titled
and privately owned, every effort must be made to revert it to public use, or
at the very least, to zone it as an agricultural or open space area.

An interesting possibility is to introduce the concept of an ecological
encumbrance in the land titling system. There is an inconspicuous provision
in the Forestry Code which states that all lands more than 18% in slope, even
if already titled but not yet part of a well-developed community, must be
kept in vegetative condition sufficient to prevent erosion and adverse effects
on the lowlands and streams.

The potency of this provision may not appear
obvious at first glance. Used creatively, however, even private lands that
have already been issued a certificate of title can be subject to an
ecological encumbrance as a condition for its continued use.

In the same manner as a mortgage encumbrance or an easement of a right of
way is annotated at the back of a Certificate of Title, this ecological lien (to
keep such land in vegetative condition) can also be inscribed as a restriction
on the use of the land.

The over-all goal is to change the way of thinking of the landowners and
land claimants on how they should treat these protected areas. They must be
made to understand and internalize the fact that their right to possess and
use the land carries with it the corresponding responsibility to care for it.
This will engage and co-opt the landowners into the mode of governance of
the protected areas not by forcing them, but by guiding them to the
necessary change in attitude.

If the tax declarations need to be cancelled, confronting each and every land
owner and claimant is not the proper approach. It will waste time and paper
and will create unnecessary acrimony against the environment agency.
Instead, State can demand that pursuant to the Forestry Code, the assessor
must require possessors of tax declarations within the protected area to
19
secure a certification from the DENR that the land covered by the
declaration is alienable and disposable.

To avoid inter-agency conflict, the policy initiative may be undertaken at the
highest levels of government, e.g., the President acting through the Cabinet
Secretaries and Ministers concerned. The policy and legal instruments that
may be used would be a joint administrative order issued by the Secretaries
of the Departments of Local Government, Finance and Environment. Such a
process would provide the impetus for the claimant/tax declaration possessor
to secure the necessary certification from the DENR. For those who do not
seek the required certification, the tax declaration may be cancelled outright;
for those who do secure the required DENR certification, the tax declaration
may be replaced with an ecologically sound land tenure instrument.

Being informed that the land is inalienable and cannot therefore be covered
by a tax declaration, the claimant could then be issued a Certificate of
Stewardship for a definite period. This could be given on the condition that
he establishes and maintains the area in vegetative condition sufficient to
prevent erosion and adverse effect on the lowlands and streams. A
Certificate of Stewardship is easily transferable to any third party, subject
always to the conditions of the eco-lien.

A different process may apply to the lands already covered by a Torrens
Certificate of Title. Two other governmental agencies are concerned: the
Department of Justice, which has jurisdiction over the Land Registration
Authority, and the Supreme Court, which has authority over cadastral courts.
Both could agree that the release of the issuance of titles to lands with slopes
of 18% and above be subject to the ecological encumbrance and annotated
as an easement in the memorandum of encumbrances at the back of the
certificate of title. For lands long issued a certificate of title, a letter may be
sent to the registered owner to this effect and the original title in the Office
of the Register of Deeds could be appropriately annotated.

The above-suggested approach to dealing with anomalous land tenure must
be handled with utmost care. The tax declarations should not be cancelled
outright with nothing to take their place. Without any tenurial instrument to
take the place of a tax declaration, there would be a vacuum in policy and
the land becomes terra nullius (land owned by no one). As such, it will be
owned and exploited by everyone. Lands in protected areas are traded
liberally without any concern for the cultivation practices. These practices
20
have resulted in the continued degradation of the land. The absence of secure
tenure for a landholder, be he a titled landowner or a holder of a tax
declaration, prevents him from investing time and resources for the long-
term sustainability of the land. Conversely, with the possession of a tenurial
instrument, the landholder would enjoy a greater degree of certainty and he
and his successors would have the chance to recover their long-term
investments in land preparation and permanent vegetation. The concept of an
eco-lien simply seeks to transform this psychological reality into an
ecological advantage.

Important protected areas
The Batanes Protected Landscape and Seascape is in the Batanes Islands,
which lie in the northernmost part of the Philippine archipelago, almost a
stones throw away from Taiwan. Because of the distance and difficulty of
travel to and from the islands, it is among the most isolated and preserved
groups of islands in the country with spectacular vistas of land and sea. It is
also an important flyway for migratory birds, among them the gray-faced
buzzard. It is also the home of endangered plant species such as the ebony
trees (Diospyrus sp.) and the arius (Podocarpus sp.) The Batanes islands
remain one of the few last untouched reserves of calm beauty.

In 1994, the
entire Province was declared a protected landscape and seascape.

Located in northern Luzon, the Northern Sierra Madre Natural Park, a park
of 359,486 hectares, contains the largest belt of species-rich primary lowland
evergreen rainforest. Its vast woodland consists of six distinct forest types,
and was declared a national park only in 1997. The place has historical
significance as well. The first Philippine President, General Emilio
Aguinaldo, retreated to the Palanan wilderness within these mountains, and
there made his final stand against the onslaught of the American forces at the
turn of the 20th century.

Bataan National Park is part of the Zambales biogeographic region, and is
the traditional hunting ground of the indigenous Aetas. The parks 23,688
hectares is also home to endemic plants like the fire orchid and the mountain
rose, and animals like the bleeding heart pigeon.

Apo Reef Natural Park is the largest atoll-formed reef in the country, found
southwest of Mindoro. While the land is only 29 hectares, the water covers
15, 763 hectares and is home to one of the countrys richest concentrations
of marine organisms, including 375 species of fish. The island is a rookery
21
for migratory birds, and the beach a nesting ground for sea turtles, manta
rays, bumphead parrotfish and wrasses.

This 24,557-hectare Mt. Kanla-on Natural Park, 40% of which is still
covered with forest, is in an active volcano in the Negros-Panay region, a
region of faunal wealth.

The mountain rises to a peak of 2,435 meters above
sea level. It is the habitat of a variety of endangered floral species such as
the pitcher plant, the staghorn fern, and the waling-waling and other orchid
species. Also found there are 50 bird species, and trees that are
representatives of the dipterocarp family such as the tanguile (Shorea
polysperma), the white lauan (Shorea contorta) and the bagtikan
(Parashorea malaanonan). The forest contains several species of mammals,
reptiles, amphibians, birds and butterflies.

The Turtle Island Wildlife Sanctuary, a protected area of 392 hectares, is the
major nesting site of the endangered green sea turtle. It is located in the seas
between the Philippines and Malaysia, nearly 1,000 kilometers south of
Manila. It is believed that between 1984 and 1992, about 14 million eggs
were hatched on the Turtle Islands. The Turtle Islands are now the subject
of a joint protection agreement between the Philippines and Malaysia,
known as the Turtle Islands Heritage Protected Area (TIHPA). This is an
excellent example of mutual cooperation between two neighboring states
with a not-so-friendly past to protect a biologically important area in their
boundary as a common heritage of humankind.

Mt. Kitanglad Natural Park also sits on an active volcano and harbors three
classes of forests: lowland evergreen, mid-montane forest, and upper
montane forest. It is the habitat of numerous endemic, rare and endangered
wildlife species, including the Philippine eagle, the Brahminy kite, the
serpent eagle, hornbills, tarsiers, wild pigs and monkeys, as well as ferns,
orchids, lichens and mosses. The 29,716-hectare natural park was
established only in 1996. A local NGO (non-government organization) runs
an eco-tourism operation featuring a walk in the canopy of the forests
trees. Mt. Kitanglad is also the home of several indigenous cultural
communities who have lived in harmony with the mountain and its resident
plant and animal lives.

Mt. Apo Natural Park was one of the earliest declared national parks, and is
home to a dormant volcano and the Philippines highest peak, soaring to
about 3,000 meters with a base larger than the island of Singapore. This
22
72,800-hectare mountain is home to the Philippine eagle, hundreds of birds,
mammals, reptiles and amphibians, and more than 600 species of plants. It is
also the major watershed of Davao City, the largest city in the island of
Mindanao.

The Agusan Marsh Wildlife Sanctuary is a vast expanse of swamp forest, the
likes of which are not found anywhere else in the Philippines, and serves as
the catch basin and natural flood control system of the Agusan-Davao area
in eastern Mindanao. This ecologically significant wetland is known to serve
as the wintering ground of 200 species of migratory birds flying all the way
from China, Japan, and Russia. It is also the habitat of about 65 species of
butterflies, countless eels, catfish and carp, freshwater turtles, and a few
crocodiles.

The Siargao Island Protected Seascape is located off northeastern Mindanao,
in the Siargao and Bucas Grande Islands. These occupy 67,726 hectares of
land and 211,188 hectares of water, and host the largest mangrove forest in
Mindanao. Its ecosystem is also home to rare violet and pink lace corals,
seagrass beds, seaweed meadows, and rare and endangered species such as
the Philippine crocodile, marine turtles, the sea cow, fire and century
orchids, the Philippine cockatoo, the flying lemur, the Philippine tarsier, and
the fruit-eating bats known as flying foxes. Siargao Island, which faces the
Pacific Ocean, is also fast gaining a worldwide reputation as a surfers
paradise with its famous cloud nine waves.

Eight other sites have also been identified and are the subject of
conservation efforts. The Mt. Pulog National Park is the countrys second
highest peak with its 94 bird species, 33 of which are endemic. The Mount
Isarog National Park is the habitat of diverse species of small mammals and
also of the indigenous Aeta community. The Mindoro National Park is one
of the centers of floral and faunal diversity, and is home to the second largest
number of threatened and endemic species in the country, including the
tamaraw and the Philippine crocodile. An indigenous community (Mangyan)
also claims it as its ancestral domain.

Sibuyan Island in the Visayas has a relatively undisturbed forest. Although
not covered by any law, the island is ideal as a protected area because of a
great diversity of flora and fauna with its rodent population and some
important plant species believed to be endemic. Coron Island in northern
Palawan has a high rate of floral endemism, and 75% of its forest overlying
23
limestone rock is still intact. An indigenous community, the Tagbanua,
collect birds (swiftlet) nests, harvest minor forest products and engage in
subsistence fishing.

The El Nido Marine Reserve in Palawan, harbors unique and endemic plant
species found in beach forests and limestone cliffs. Other endangered
species such as the dugong and marine turtles inhabit the coastal seas. It is
also home to various endemic bird species. The Malampaya Sound, also
located in Palawan, has rich resources sustained by one of the largest
mangrove forests in the country. It is now the site of natural gas production.
Mount Malindang National Park was established as a national park in 1971,
and is home to the Philippine eagle and other threatened bird species and
mammals such as the flying lemur, the tarsier and the Philippine deer.

The last frontier
In the westernmost part of the Philippine islands is an entire archipelago, the
island province of Palawan.

To its east is the Sulu Sea and to its west the
China Sea, both extremely rich marine ecosystems. Palawan links the
Philippines to, and is part of, the bio-geographic region of the other island
groups of Borneo and Malaysia, and shares with them common flora and
fauna.

The second largest province in the Philippines, Palawan is a collection of
1,780 islands and islets. Its main mass is a 1.48 million-hectare-land area
configured as 425 kilometers from north to south and 40 kilometers at its
narrowest point, in Puerto Princesa City, the main population center and
capital of the province. The entire coastline, which runs along both the
China and the Sulu seas, stretches almost 2,000 kilometers.

Palawan is known as the countrys last frontier of wilderness, a term that
evokes visions of virgin forests, untouched marine life, and abundant fauna.
The term last frontier also emphasizes its state of danger. Largely because
of its distance from the mainland of Luzon and because of the protection that
malaria afforded its deep and dark forests from human occupation. Palawan
is today the only island province in the Philippines that still has a forest
cover of more than 50%.

Palawans distinction lies not so much in its land area but in its geological
and biological wealth. Its flora and fauna are rich and diverse, with much
still to be identified and classified. In 1991, a Filipino zoologist wrote that of
24
the 1,090 species of Philippine terrestrial vertebrates, 232 species are to be
found in Palawan. It is one of the countrys 12 centers of plant diversity and
one of the top endemic bird areas. Indeed, Palawan is so special that it has
merited the enactment of a special law known as the Strategic
Environmental Plan for Palawan (SEPP).

There are more than a few sites of great interest in Palawan. The Tubbataha
Marine Park is a large collection of coral reefs located 192 kilometers
southeast of Puerto Princesa, in the central Sulu Sea. Tubbataha is a
Muslim word that means a long stretch of foreshore. It is composed of
two atolls, the north islet and the south islet. The north islet, with its small
lagoon, is also known Bird Island, and is a renowned rookery of seabirds.
But it is below this sparkling cluster of diamonds that the real wealth of
Tubbataha can be found. Located in the heart of the richest marine
biogeographic region in the world, the Sulu-Sulawesi Marine Triangle, its
sea is home to the largest concentration of the most diverse coral reefs in the
country. Of the 488 or so known species of coral in the Philippines, the
Tubbataha reefs are home to some 370, more than the entire Great Barrier
Reef of Australia put together, and almost half the coral species in the world.
It is also the habitat of 379 species of fish. Because of its distance from land
and the fact that there is no large land mass to establish a human settlement,
these coral reefs have been left relatively undisturbed. Scuba divers the
world over know of Tubbataha as one of the best dive spots in the world,
where underwater visibility can reach as far as 60 meters or more, and where
sharks, barracudas, manta rays, and marine turtles may be seen in every
dive.

The Saint Paul Subterranean River (now known as the Puerto Princesa
Underground River) is another natural and geological wonder. It is an eight-
kilometer long river located under the limestone mountains in western
Palawan. Entry into the river is through a dome-like mouth in the small St.
Pauls Bay, its short stretch of beach providing a convenient jump-off point.
A native canoe with a boatman and guide brings one into the underground
river, with only a battery-powered lamp for light. The cool and tranquil
waters of the river, up to five meters in depth in some parts, teems with
crustaceans, ferns, coral flowers and other fascinating marine life. The area
surrounding the river and its mouth is heavily forested, and people may
picnic in the company of resident monitor lizards, birds and monkeys. And
then one arrives at a high cavern, called the Cathedral, its towering dome
so high that even the light rays of a powerful flashlight barely reach its
25
ceiling.

El Nido harbors unique and endemic plant species in its beach forests and
limestone cliffs. Endangered species such as marine turtles and the dugong
also inhabit the coastal seas. A special bird species, the swiftlet, lords it over
the grand limestone cliffs of El Nido and is known for the important
ingredient in the famous birds nest soup found in high-priced Chinese
restaurants.

One of the best legacies of former President Marcos to wildlife protection
was the establishment of a wildlife refuge in one of the islands in Palawan,
the 3,760-hectare Calauit Island. This was done in response to the request of
the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in the mid-
1970s to help save African animals caught in the midst of the civil strife in
Africa. The Philippines was chosen because it had an environment that more
or less resembled that of Kenyas Shimbu National Park. In a modern-day
Noahs Ark operation, 104 African animals of eight species were moved
inimpalas, zebras, giraffes, waterbucks, bushbucks, elands, gazelles and
topisin what was recorded in modern natural history as the first
translocation experiment in Asia. The first few months were difficult times
for the transferred animals; many succumbed to illness and left only an
alarming 72 out of the original 104 animals. In time, however, the remaining
animals adjusted. As of the year 2000, the exotic African animals had
quadrupled in number, from 104 to about 550. Unfortunately, there has been
the re-entry of people, and incidents where the animals were hunted and
poached by these humans have been recorded

Another amazing site in Palawan is the Tabon Caves. Explored only in the
1960s by experts from the National Museum, the caves yielded human
artifacts, which revealed that man occupied the caves at different periods for
the last 40,000 years. The human fossil bones, many of which have been
unfortunately disturbed by the guano deposits of the Tabon bird, have been
tentatively dated as far back as 22,000 to 24,000 years. The Tabon Man, as
the remains are now more popularly known, is representative of the early
evolutionary progress of the modern man. The artifacts are known as flake
tools, primarily made out of stone, which were used to scrape, chip, hack, or
cut materials from the surrounding natural environment.

More than any other people in the Philippines, the residents of Palawan, both
in its capital city Puerto Princesa

and in the entire province, have a high level
26
of awareness and concern for their environment.

Children and the common
people have been known to call the attention of visitors who litter the roads
with cigarette butts and other rubbish. The environmental concern and
activism of the City of Puerto Princesa and the Province of Palawan were
highlighted by a landmark case on local environmental governance decided
by the Supreme Court.

In that case, both the Puerto Princesa City and the Province of Palawan
enacted separate ordinances prohibiting the export from Palawan of certain
kinds of live fish usually caught with the use of sodium cyanide. These
ordinances were challenged by the fish traders and exporters as an
unconstitutional deprivation of their right to livelihood without due process
of law. The Court ruled that the ordinances were enacted pursuant to the
police powers of the State, exercised through the local governments to
protect their environment. In closing, the Court declared, we commend
the Sangguniang Panlungsod of the City of Puerto Princesa and
Sangguniang Panlalawigan of the Province of Palawan for exercising the
requisite political will to enact urgently needed legislation to protect and
enhance the marine environment, thereby sharing in the Herculean task of
arresting the tide of ecological destruction. We hope that other local
government units shall now be roused from their lethargy and adopt a more
vigilant stand in the battle against the decimation of our legacy to future
generations. At this time, the repercussion of any further delay in their
response may prove disastrous, if not irreversible.
PART IV: Forests

Sub: The indiscriminate cutting of its trees and exploitation of its products
are destroying the worlds forests at an alarming rateand only large-
scale, decisive action can save them

WE now know that the forest is a storehouse of living organisms, plants and
animals. Life within a forest is so abundant, we have hardly even scratched
the surface in our studies of biology. The ecological services performed by
the forest are also well known; with its capacity to absorb carbon and its
ability to release oxygen, it is truly the lungs of the earth. It also serves to
regulate the climate in ways that we are only just beginning to understand.
27

In a scientific study, it was determined that the ecological services of a tree
in its entire lifetimeerosion control, climate regulation, water
replenishment and the likeactually has a value of some P5.1 million
(about US$100,000).

The forest works as a natural absorption and drainage mechanism for the
supply and flow of water. Like a sponge, the roots absorb water, which is
then released in almost measured volumes through the intricate network of
waterwayssprings, brooks, streams, and riversto finally flow out into
lakes and then into the sea. An imbalance in the functioning of these
ecological services has become increasingly evident in recent years. We are
beginning to realize that the unregulated flow of water during rainfall results
in a torrential flooding of the lowlands and in the uncontrolled erosion and
siltation of agricultural soil. Another piece of evidence becoming manifest
here is the increased heating of the atmospheric temperature and perceptible
changes in climatic conditions. Of course, this is but a natural consequence.
When we take out the trees we also remove their cooling effects.

The cost of this imbalance is staggering. In India, a country that can hardly
afford losses, deforestation in its Ganges River valley has caused heavy
flooding and property damage worth some US$ 1 billion per year. In China,
the destructive floods in 1998 cost thousands of lives and 264 billion Yuan
in property damage.

Chinese officials attributed the tragedy to deforestation.

Even the rich countries have not been spared the cost. In the Pacific
Northwest of the United States, 94% of the hundreds of landslides are
caused by the clear-cutting of forests and the construction of the logging
roads.

In the Philippines, one of the more dramatic examples in recent times was
the loss of some 6,000 lives on November 5, 1991 during what is now
known in Philippine environmental history as the Ormoc tragedy. The
28
watersheds of Ormoc, long cleared to make way for sugarcane plantations,
could no longer hold a sudden and unusually heavy downpour of rain.
Rainwater then rushed down in a torrential surge, and with a force yet
unseen, washed away anyone and anything that was in the waycars,
plants, animals, men, women and children.

Worldwide destruction
Statistics show that about 40% of the worlds trees are used for the making
of wood products, the demand coming mainly from industrialized countries
.
On the other hand, about 50% of the worlds wood is used as fuel, mainly by
the two billion people in developing countries who depend on it as their
source of domestic energy. That great demand for wood in both developed
and developing countries results in the tropical forest loss of about one
hectare per second.

In other words, even as you read this sentence, about
two hectares of the worlds tropical forests have just vanished.

We now know that Philippine forests are among the richest in the world.
They are also characterized by a high degree of endemism. The major
tropical forest types include mangrove forests, which occur in tidal flats.
Beach forests grow in dry and sandy beaches and are generally composed of
trees such as the balete, talisay, agoho and the pandan plants. Molave forests
occur in regions of distinctly dry limestone ridges, with trees that have a
more open crown and are highly valued for their natural beauty and
durability. Dipterocarp forests once provided 3/4 of the world-renowned
timber commonly known as the Philippine mahogany (red and white lauan,
almon, tanguile, bagtikan and apitong). Pine forests occur at high elevation
ranging from 300 to 500 meters for the Mindoro pine and from 450 to 2,800
meters for the Benguet pine in the Cordillera Mountain Range. The pine
trees we see in Baguio City are varieties of the Benguet pine species.
Finally, mossy forests are principally found in high-elevation mountains.
The trees are generally dwarfed and their branches are usually covered with
moss.

29
These forests are home to up to 13,000 species of plants. The Philippine
Islands has a land mass of only 0.2% of the Earths total land area, but
i
n
terms of plant life, this tiny dot on the map is home to 5% of all the plants on
earth.

Rain forests are so called for a simple reason: In these forests, it is often
raining. The moisture and coolness produced by the lush vegetation allows
for more water in the leaves to evaporate into the air and add to the volume
of water vapor in the passing clouds. This is an everyday occurrence
regardless of the season. That is why these forests are also known as
evergreen forests.

When the first Spaniards landed on our shores in the latter half of the 16th
century, the Philippines had as many as 27.5 million hectares of virgin
tropical rainforests.

In the 19th century, there was already documented
evidence of a growing concern over the deforestation going on in the
Philippines.

In the latter half of the 1800s, the Spanish Government banned
commercial logging in the islands of Bohol and Cebu. It also banned the
practice of kaingin.

In 1894, a Royal Decree from the King of Spain also
prohibited the sale of public lands unless it was first surveyed and declared
as alienable and disposable by the Inspeccion General de Montes.

In 1934, there were still approximately 16 million hectares of old-growth
forests in the Philippines, more than half of the countrys land area.

In 1988,
a survey was conducted with the use of satellite imagery. The results were
quite startling: Only about 800,000 hectares of these old-growth forests were
left. The almost 3.0 million hectares remaining of logged-over, secondary-
growth forests were unproductive or in varying states of degradation.

All this happened in about 50 years. It was also a time when the Philippines
became known as the worlds largest exporter of timber. The liquidation of
more than 90% of the Philippines primary forests from the mid-1960s made
a few hundred families US$42 billion dollars richer, but it left 18 million
30
upland dwellers, as well as the Filipino people, economically and
ecologically poorer.

In government posts, logging concessions were commodities of political
patronage. In the course of the last 40 years, the Philippines fell from being
the largest producer and exporter of timber in the world to being a net
importer of wood products. Today, we now import our wood products from
countries such as Malaysia, Burma, and Papua New Guinea.

On paper, 15.8 million hectares of the countrys 30 million-hectare land area
is classified as forest land or timberland. The classification may be
based on the fact that the land is more than 18% in slope, or it may have no
basis whatsoever. Truth to tell, much of the lands classified as forest land is
without any forest. Although fires were once rare in the continually wet and
evergreen rainforests, incidents of forest fire have become more frequent
since the forests have been opened to human beings. Forest fires now rank as
the most destructive cause of forest degradation.

The many uses of the tree are the very causes of its own destruction. Trees
grow too slowly to fill the need of rapacious humans.

The forests around the
world were depleted extremely rapidly in the last 100 years. Almost half the
forests that once covered the earth are gone, and deforestation is expanding
and accelerating. Every year, 16 million hectares of the worlds forests
disappear, more than half the entire land area of the Philippines. Land is
cleared by timber operations, converted to cattle ranches and plantations, or
burned to make way for small farms. Of the three billion hectares left of
forest around the world, only about 1.2 billion are frontier or old-growth
forests.


Until the turn of the 20th century, most of the forest loss occurred in Europe,
North Africa, the Middle East, and temperate North America. By the early
part of the 20th century, these regions had largely been stripped of their
original cover.
2
Although the forest cover of Europe is beginning to
31
stabilize, in secondary or plantation forests, almost all of its original cover is
gone. The United States is not far behind. Almost all of the forests in
continental USA have been logged out at least once, since the settlement by
the Europeans barely a few hundred years ago.

To the north of the United States is its neighbor, Canada. Every year,
Canada is the worlds largest exporter of forest products. Two-thirds of
Canadas coastal forest, itself a rare and threatened ecosystem, has already
been degraded by logging in the name of forest development. Cutting has
tripled in the last 30 years and is well above the sustainable level.

The
practice of clear-cutting, not a good forest-cutting technique, is still being
practiced by both the USA and Canada.

However, much of the dramatic deforestation in the last 30-40 years has
occurred in the tropics. From 1960 to 1990 alone, within a single generation,
1/5 of all the worlds tropical forest was lost.

Asia was the worst off; Latin
America and Africa lost about 20 % each.



The use and misuse of forest products
Consider the pages of this book. Chances are that the pulp used to produce
this sheet you are now looking at was taken from virgin logs. Two-thirds of
the worlds paper comes from these virgin logs. Also, look at the uneven
pattern of consumption of paper. More than 70% of the world paper is used
by only 20% of the world populationthose who live in North America,
Western Europe, and Japan. Note also the disparity in the consumption rates:
While a typical person in the world uses an average of only 46 kilograms of
paper per year, the average U.S. citizen of the USA consumes 320
kilograms.

The disparity in the use of paper is quite notable: On the one side of the
consumption spectrum are the countries of the United States with 320
kilograms, Japan with 232 kilograms, and Germany with 200 kilograms per
capita consumption of paper. On the other side, we see Brazil with 31, China
32
with 24, and India with only three kilograms per capita of paper use.


The world uses more than five times as much paper today as it did in 1950.
This is the result of growth in population, wasteful ways of using paper, and
the seeming rise in the level of literacy. Of the three, only the last is a
welcome development, and would be the only justification for paper
consumed. The paper consumption in the United States is so pervasive that
in 1995, the Federal Government moved to adopt a paper reduction policy.

In the so-called developed countries, the use of wood to produce paper is
consumptive and wasteful. More than 50% of the pulp and paper is used just
for packaging consumer goods. One only has to stroll through the shopping
centers of the world to know what wasteful packaging means.

More than half of the worlds forests is in the tropical zone where plant and
animal life is extravagantly present. The rest, consisting of coniferous and
boreal forests, are in the temperate zones. Because of the cold climate, these
forests contain less plant and animal life than tropical forests.

Logging is the process by which timber is removed from the forests. To do
this, roads must be built in order to enter a forested area. As forests are
opened up by roads and logging, they become drier and more prone to fires.
Over the last 20 years a new phenomenon has been occurring in tropical
forests: forest fires in these humid and wet forests. Worse, logging roads
also bring in the forests premier pestpeople, humans who like to play
with fire.

The network of roads that must be built into the forest to allow heavy
equipment to enter and haul off the logs is quite extensive. One square
kilometer of forest can have up to 20 kilometers of road. In the federally
managed forests of the USA alone, there are more than 600,000 kilometers
of roadsenough to circle the globe 15 times over.

Nearer home, in
Indonesia, our next-door neighbor, the 500 kilometers of logging road built
33
there cleared 40,000 hectares, more area than what was logged over. As a
result of the ambitious road-building program of Brazil to integrate its
large country, the area deforested in the Amazon increased from 30,000
square kilometers in 1975 to 600,000 square kilometers today, an area twice
the size of the Philippines. In the Philippines, the deforestation rate is
running at about 100,000 hectares per year.

Unlike the forestry practices of the USA and Canada, it is not cost-effective
to clear-cut trees in the tropics. Thus was invented what in forestry practice
is called the Philippine system of selective cutting. This selective cutting
method is a systematic and scientific way of cutting and removing only the
mature trees in the forests, i.e., trees with over 60 centimeter diameter at
breast height (dbh).

In the Philippines, a logger would be lucky if he found
15 mature and economically harvestable trees in a hectare of virgin forest.
Because the undergrowth vegetation is so lush, clear-cutting is not
economically sound, and is therefore not practiced.

After removing the trees, the branches are cut and cleaned and the log is
hauled out to the clearing and dragged along the streams or rivers. The
physical dragging of logs creates a tremendous path of destruction among
the vegetation and disturbance of the animals of the forests.

Of course, when
these huge trees fall, all young trees, saplings and vegetation that are fallen
upon are simply crushed, broken or otherwise damaged.

However, this disturbance, great as it may seem, is considered only
temporary. Under the terms of the logging permit granted by government,
there are two important conditions that must be met: protection of the
logged-over area and replanting.

Protection is essential. A logged-over forest
left alone for the next 20 to 50 years will naturally heal itself and regenerate,
with the young saplings, in due time, becoming mature trees. In fact, in
terms of a trees capacity to absorb carbon dioxide, young and growing trees
absorb more carbon dioxide than old and mature ones.

34
It is when humans intrude into the forests after the opening of the logging
roads that destruction explodes. The settling humans cut down the smaller
trees with their machetes and bolos, and the remaining vegetation is left
exposed to dry in the sun and wind. Thereafter, the leftover debris is ignited
and burned. The burning of the carbon matter releases carbon gases into the
atmosphere, contributing to the store of carbon dioxide molecules to the air.
Worse, however, the fire incinerates all the life in the forest, from the first
blade of grass to the last nutrient-rich bacteria in the soil.

After burning, the settlers begin to plant agricultural crops such as maize
(corn), rice, and root crops. Often the land is converted into large-scale
plantations for sugar, rubber and other commercial crops. After a period
when the land has become dry and barren, the agricultural land is
reclassified and converted to residential, commercial or industrial uses. Thus
is completed the entire process of forest combustion.


The worst kind of forest extraction and utilization is that which is done
illegally, in the continuing practice of theft of standing trees for commercial
gain. It is said that there are two general causes of forest depletion: need
and greed. Clearing forests to plant food crops, while ecologically
destructive, may draw some sympathy and understanding. However,
illegally cutting down trees for profit cannot be excused nor tolerated. The
full force of the law must be used to eliminate it once and for all.

Bearing in mind that our forests are home to some 3,000 kinds of trees,
13,500 kinds of plants, 174 species of mammals, and 556 species of birds, is
reforestation in the Philippine context an accurate word? Can we only
restore the forests to exuberant life by planting a monoculture of gemelina,
ipil-ipil, eucalyptus and other commercial trees of foreign origin? Not quite.

Let us assume that every tree has a real and ecological value of P5,100,000
and further assume that in one hectare there are 100 growing trees. A single
cutting and the accompanying destruction of saplings in this one hectare
35
would amount to P510,000,000. Now compute the equivalent of 12,000,000
hectares and watch your calculator go berserk. And this does not even
include the other unquantifiable ecological values and services that these
forests render to humanity. However, for the short-term gains represented by
the $42 billion industry derived from logging operations, a country can
easily be dazzled by the lure of money.

The government will often only see
and opt for the near-term economic gains, especially if it will benefit the
incumbent politicians. Political leaders like to show off how much money
has been made by the economy during their term of office. The problem lies
in the fact that the revenue derived from the natural capital is treated as
income without considering the cost.

How to save the forests
1. Find the forest lines
We cannot protect anything unless we know where it is. Take the case of
the Philippines forest lines, for example. According to Philippine law, at
least 54% of the countrys land area is classified as, and must be devoted to,
forest. In reality, however, the forest lines have not been properly
demarcated, delineated and marked on the ground. This being the case, how
can the forest be protected or rehabilitated when even the people who are
supposed to protect it do not even know where it is?

The entire exercise of delineation, demarcation, and marking can, by and of
itself, be a wonderful opportunity to educate the people en masse. This is
especially true for those living near or around the forests and those whose
livelihood depends on the forests. It can be a wonderful opportunity to
rekindle in them a healthy respect and care for that which has been here long
before them.

The issue that needs to be addressed and resolved is still the issue on land
tenure system in the forest areas. Areas that have been marked as forest
lands must not be classified as anything elsenot agricultural, commercial,
residential or industrial lands. Steep lands classified as residential lands
36
always end up in trouble in the long run. Nature will have the last say. In the
late 1990s, this was clearly illustrated in the tragedy that struck a residential
community in a hilly place near Metro Manila. Scores of people were
buried in the rubble of their concrete houses when, during a heavy rainfall,
the soil underneath the houses gave way to the water, during torrential rains.

The once expensive technological tool known as Global Positioning System
(GPS) is now widely available, inexpensive, and very user-friendly. This
cellphone-like gadget can tell you exactly what are your present
coordinatesthe exact location in longitude and latitudeat the press of a
button. It has become so simple that even forest dwellers can be taught how
to use them to demarcate the forest lines.

Having identified the forest lines of the country, it becomes easier to focus
attention on the dangers that threaten the forests. One of the most
devastating is fire, especially man-made fires. Although fires due to
lightning are a natural occurrence, they are few and far between and are not
known to strike tropical rainforests. However, because men have not been
careful, they throw away their fires recklessly into the midst of
combustible wood and forest material. In the case of slash-and-burn farming,
they actually and deliberately set the forest ablaze.

This propensity for slash-and-burn farming, kaingin as Filipinos call it,
presents the Philippines an opportunity to become an island of excellence in
forest fire-fighting techniques. With forest fires burning in the Amazon,
Indonesia, Australia, and elsewhere around the world, here is an opportunity
for Filipinos to contribute their skills to the world. Our forest dwellers can
be taught forest fire-fighting techniques and then supplied with modern
equipment. This team can be called up at moments notice to fly to any
country in the world upon request to help countries in trouble snuff out
raging forest fires

2. Reduce the demand for virgin trees
37
There are too few of our virgin, old-growth trees and forests left. It is
estimated that all over the world, only 10% of the old-growth forests are left
in their virginal condition. Therefore, they should be preserved, protected
and cared for at all costs. It is no less than the duty of humankind, especially
of our generation, to keep the forests in the same, if not in a better condition
than when we found it.

We see that we cut down trees so that human beings can use them for three
general purposes: for fuel, paper and construction. Using wood for fuel is
quite inefficient, especially with open-burning stoves. Advances in the
design of fuel-efficient clay stoves have made great strides in recent years.
Realizing the continuing need for wood as fuel, there is at once a unique
opportunity to establish woodlots in various places. People who use wood
for cooking can, for example, be leased a parcel of land by the government
so they can plant their own sources of fuel. Thus, the constant need for wood
as fuel and the danger of it running out of a resource, swings to the direction
of an opportunity.

In so-called developed countries, their use of wood for the production of
paper is even more consumptive and wasteful. But could we not require the
manufacturer to take back the carton? This makes sense ecologically as well
as economically. In fact, the manufacturer can even pay the amount
equivalent to the amount it spent for packaging, to a consumer who returns
the box in excellent (and immediately re-usable) condition. The technology
for recycling paper exists and offers an opportunity. What is required is for
societies on large scale to develop the custom of re-use.

Of late, there is a growing awareness of the uses of steel or plastic for
construction and housing needs. Both plastic and steel are recyclable and
re-moldable into the desired size and shape. The shift to plastic and steel for
construction works is an illustration of the truism that price is the best
conservationist. For the simple reason that the price of wood has since
become too expensive, roof framings of houses are now being built with
38
steel instead of wood. We have also seen that in the tropics, wooden
constructions are vulnerable to termites, and it is wasteful to use wood as
scaffolding. In their stead, steel scaffoldings may now be rented for the
duration of the construction period.

3. Promote tree planting
After having done our demarcation exercise and identified the needed forest
lands, tree planting can now be easier. The government can begin to engage
the people in tree planting endeavors. The government could provide the
land and seedlings, while the people provide their labor. With the growing
environmental awareness and the innate desire of people to be close to
nature, there are many people who are only too willing to take care of, and if
necessary replant an area into a forest land. All they need is security of
tenure. This is where the concept of an ecological encumbrance (eco-lien)
comes in. The economic benefits derived from the sustainable harvest of the
forest products can be shared by both.

In urban areas, for starters, there is a need to break up the concrete of at least
half of the highways and roads and at least half of the parking lots. They
must be turned into forested areas, woodlots, greenbelts and wildlife
corridors. We need to break up and remove the concrete in our roads and
parking lots and turn them into forested areas and open spaces.

Because concrete absorbs and then radiates heat, the temperature in
concreted areas is much hotter than in places where it is forested. In tropical
countries where the weather is naturally humid and balmy, the temperature
in these concrete jungles can increase by as much as one or two degrees.
These are known as part of the heat islands that urban areas have turned
into.

Without the absorptive capacity of the ground because of this concreting,
water quickly accumulates in and runs off through the concrete surfaces in
torrential flows. Of course, this is another excellent ingredient in the
39
phenomenon of flooding.

In the haste to plant trees and undertake the so-called reforestation, people
have looked for species of trees that grow faster. In the Philippines, for
example, we have experimented with planting exotic species of commonly
known as gmelina (Gmelina arborea), eucalyptus, mahogany, aure (Acacia
aurecoliformis) and the giant ipil-ipil (Lucaena lucocyphyla). In the 1970s
during the Green Revolution, the giant ipil-ipil was heralded as the magic
tree that could grow in a few years to almost full height. Economically, too,
it appeared highly beneficial because it could be used for firewood and as a
supplemental feed for animals.

But we forgot one very important thing. We forgot that in a rainforest, there
are many kinds of plants and trees. We also forgot that everything in nature
is interconnected. We forgot about the interdependency of life, known
simply, as the food chain. We forgot that the forest is an ecosystem. When
we planted one kind of tree on a large tract of land, a tree that did not belong
there in the first place, we were mono-cropping. By doing so, we were
courting trouble. The insects and organisms that fed on the leaves and barks
of the ipil-ipil tree had no known predators. And since many trees were
planted, plenty of food was made available for these organisms. In time,
their population boomedand then exploded! In time, they consumed the
ipil-ipil trees. Thus, in the mid and late 80s, the very same land planted to
ipil-ipil was decimated by a pest

This brings us to the manner by which we have been undertaking the
reforestation effort. When we want to reforest an area, we start with the
planting of trees. But did we not say that the trees are the climax species in
the story of plants and vegetation? Before there are trees, there is grass,
ferns, shrubs, and bushes in ascending order. When the vegetation is right
and the conditions ripe, a tree begins to grow.

This understanding has led to the technique in the reforestation endeavor
40
known as assisted natural regeneration (ANR). The principle behind this
is to allow the native vegetation to regenerate itself at its natural pace and
levels of growth. It simply means that where there are a few small trees
growing on a particular land, one should clear only the surrounding area of
the trees to facilitate growth and not bother to clear the entire grassland. To
hasten the establishment of a canopy of trees, a few native/indigenous trees
can be planted here and there.

Institutionalized action and incentives
Among the most potent tools for behavioral change are economic and fiscal
incentives .In some legal regimes, a tree planted on ones property,
especially if it is a fruit-bearing tree, is subjected to a property tax in the
same manner as a house or building is subjected to a tax. This is incorrect
and the law must be revised to make it conform to the policy of encouraging
reforestation efforts. Such a realty tax must be abolished, and in its stead a
tax credit or tax rebate may be given to the planter of the tree. By planting
and caring for trees, the people have helped and relieved the government of
the task. Such people must therefore be rewarded. The tax credit must be
generous enough to be attractive to all interested parties.

There are millions upon millions of hectares of denuded forest lands and
national parks that need to be revegetated. The tax credit can then be used
by individuals or corporations as a deduction from their income or realty
taxes due. For the poorer, economically disadvantaged sector, these tax
credits/rebates may be exchanged for a few kilos of staple such as rice.

Let us not forget the first E in our search for opportunities and options.
Education is the most potent force to bring about the desired change. And, of
course, that starts with children. One exercise could be an eco-walk they
might undertake with adult members of a community. In selected areas they
could be encouraged to take up reforestration activities. The Clean and
Green Program in the Philippines, an annual search for towns and cities
which have kept their environment cleanest and greenest, has yielded very
41
positive results. In the science of mass psychology, this is called positive
stroking en masse.

In the three Es of policy implementation, the last is enforcement. It is
with good reason that enforcement is the last Eit is expensive, time-
consuming, acrimonious and emotionally aggravating.

The best form of law enforcement is when the law does not need to be
enforced. But when a tree is cut, no amount of jail time served by the person
found guilty of illegal logging will bring that tree back to life. It is for this
reason the following principles of legal marketing have been conceived:
1. The best form of law enforcement is when the law does not need to be
enforced.
2. The socio-cultural characteristics of the target market of the law must be
carefully taken into account and used to advance the social good being
promoted.
3. Humans respond to candies and needles.
4. If the law must be enforced, it must be done in a manner that is swift,
painful and public.

If enforcement must be effective, it must be swift to ensure immediate
detection and arrest. It must be painful to ensure that the experience will
forever be etched in the memory of those concerned. And, it must be public
in order to advise others of the certainty and of the pain of what will befall
them if they follow this undesirable path and pattern of behavior.

Enforcement can be carried out in a variety of ways. There is a need to
establish institutional linkages with the police, the National Bureau of
Investigation, the prosecutors offices, local governments, and with the
courts. This can be done through seminar-workshops. At the very least,
these can foster networking relationships essential for speedy arrest and
prosecution of forestry (or environmental) offenses.

42
A group of dedicated personnel must be formed to immediately respond to
reports of violations. This Legal Strike Force must be equipped with proper
authority from the highest places of government. The members of the Force
must also be given a fixed and secure tenure of office. This way, it will
enjoy a measure of insulation from the strong and fickle winds of partisan or
petty politics. Of course, most of all, the Force must be provided the
equipment and resources necessary to achieve its mission and passion.

In order to sow terror of the law in the hearts of malefactors, the Strike Force
can conduct continuing raids against illegal logging operations. At the very
least, this will keep the adversary off-balance. The objective of these
sporadic raids would be to arrest violators and let them go through the
wringer of immediate legal proceedings.

After the arrest and detention, even during the trial, the faces of those
arrested must be splashed in the newspapers and TV, and their name
repeated constantly on radio. Let government pay for the advertising fee, if
necessary. There is no greater punishment than the loss of face.


PART V: Agriculture

Sub: Man must understand the impact of modern agriculture on the
environment if he is to continue to benefit from the fruits of the land

CIVILIZATION refers to the existence of a social order that affords man the
time for cultural creation. There are four elements of a civilized social order.
Material security is the economic provision to free man from the uncertainty
of daily survival and a hand to mouth existence. Physical security frees man
from the fear of attack by other men. Moral order liberates man from his
baser instincts. Knowledge and the arts improve and enhance the quality of
human life.

Material and physical security are the primary elements of civilization. As
43
soon as man has satisfied these two elements, he begins to develop a sense
of right and wrong, of good and evil. The pursuit of knowledge and the arts
even more clearly sets humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom.
With his curious and inventive mind, man is able to search for design and
meanings in the natural world around him. With the use of symbols,
language, and pictures he is able to preserve what he has learned and to
transmit this body of knowledge to his successors.

The first hinge of civilization was the discovery of agriculture.

It was when
man realized that he could be freed from the daily insecurity of hunting and
gathering that he began to have the free time to do other things and to pursue
his innate curiosity and natural creativity, and thereby began to learn to
civilize himself.

With the introduction of agriculture, mans sense of social order expanded.
As a hunter-gatherer, mans social unit was composed only of his immediate
family. Later it expanded to cover a number of related families that then
constituted a tribe. These groupings of people, the tribes, existed solely to
pursue a common effort: to gather and hunt for food.

As the size of the tribe increased, more rules had to be made and the sense of
property was revolutionized. Hunter-gatherers were basically nomads,
moving from one place to another in search of better hunting grounds. The
discovery of agriculture made it necessary for man to lay claim to a parcel of
land that, in his symbolic mind, represented the security of his familys food
supply.

The greatest riddle of modern day is that despite the amazing advances in
agricultural production, about 99% of the human population still lives to
eat. This means that they work each day, each month, each year, and
through a lifetime simply trying to eke out a living. This observation does
not exempt those who are already rich and have a surplus of food on their
table. These people may be considered worse off as they seem to work
44
frenziedly to earn more and accumulate even more.

The revolution in agricultural productivity
There is now more food in the world than there ever was at any other stage
in the story of mankind. The 20th century was revolutionary in agricultural
productivity. At the turn of the century the worlds croplands produced only
400 million tons of grain. Today, only 100 years later, the worlds croplands
produce 1.9 billion tons of grain. This five-fold increase, especially since
1950, was brought about by three principal factors.

Increasingly large areas are now being put under the plough: 587 million
hectares in 1950 increased to 732 million hectares in 1981.

From the year
1900, the worlds irrigated areas multiplied six-fold. This was made possible
through the use of mechanized equipment, as powerful mechanical tractors,
bulldozers, and other earth-moving equipment replaced draft animals such as
cows and buffaloes. Motorized pumps also replaced manual irrigation,
extending both the reach and continuity in the supply of water.

In 1847, Justus von Leibig, a German agricultural chemist, discovered that
chemically produced minerals could substitute the nutrients plants take from
the soil. While the use of chemical fertilizers was virtually unheard of at the
turn of the 20th century, it has multiplied nine-fold since the 1950s. Remove
fertilizers and you reduce 40% of all the grain produced in the world.

The use of pesticides is another story altogether. While there is evidence that
traces the use of pesticides to the time of Homer around 1,000 BC, the past
30-40 years saw the use of pesticides grow 32 times. Pesticides meant to kill
off the perceived pests of the crops and, at least initially, increase the
productivity of the land cultivated. All these were good things at first sight,
until the insects developed resistance to the pesticides and are now coming
back with a vengeance.

In the 1860s, Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk breeding garden peas in the
45
monasterys garden, discovered the basic principles of genetics. This
discovery laid the groundwork for the spectacular progress achieved in the
20th century in the breeding of more disease-resistant and higher yielding
crops. In the 1880s, the Japanese, known for their centuries-old bonsai trees,
also succeeded in dwarfing cereals. This success eventually led to the highly
productive wheat and rice varieties widely used throughout the world today.

In 1917, the University of Connecticut developed the highly productive
hybrid corn. Rice, corn and wheat are the staple diet of all human beings.

Indeed, the growth in agricultural productivity has become so phenomenal
that while in 1900 an average American farmer produced enough for seven
people, he now produces enough to feed almost 100 people.

Because the
United States has inadequate storage facilities and markets for this immense
produce, some American farmers are paid to let their land lie fallow so that
they will not increase the excess production!

The phenomenal growth in food productivity, however, has not necessarily
meant that every one of the six billion people in the world today is well fed.
The World Bank estimates that 1.3 billion people live in absolute poverty,
with incomes of less than US$1 a day, many of whom are concentrated in
rural areas.

Every day, 19,000 children die as a result of malnutrition and
related illnesses.


But in some parts of the world, the poor in rural areas often live better
than their counterparts in urban slum areas. Whereas the poor in rural areas
usually have a patch of land to grow a few vegetables, or a nearby body of
water in which to fish, squatters in urban slums have neither of these, nor
access to clean water, clean air, and basic sanitation facilities.

In the face of the famine and hunger suffered by at least one quarter of the
worlds people, there is also a great number who suffer from being overfed.
In the U.S.A., 97 million people are overweight, and obesity has been
described as a dangerous epidemic.

Of the people aged 20 and above in the
46
USA, 55% are estimated to be overweight. In Russia the figure is 57% and
in the United Kingdom it is 51%.

Environmental impacts of agriculture
The growth in agriculture was made possible only through the opening up
and clearing of new land, mainly forest lands, in order to graze and breed
cattle, sheep, goats and other livestock. The 11 million tons of meat and milk
produced in the world in 1984 came from 1.4 billion cows and buffaloes, 1.6
billion sheep and goats, 800 million pigs, and an innumerable quantity of
poultryall of which would weigh more than all the people on the planet.

When we consider that all of these animals needed space to forage, we can
begin to picture the extent of the land area that was required to breed and
feed this large number of animals. Over the last 40 years, when the Central
American beef market began booming, more than 25% of the rainforest area
was cleared. Additionally, 2/3 of Central Americas agricultural land is now
occupied by livestock, most of it destined for the stomachs of North
Americans.

In just 20 years, Costa Rica slashed and burned over 80% of its
tropical forest to accommodate the increased global appetite for beef.

For every hamburger made of Central American beef, the American
consumer saves an average of five cents. The United States bears a large
responsibility for the environmental effects of the production of Central
American beef because it is the single largest consumer. In fact, with less
than 5% of the worlds population, Americans consume almost 25% of the
worlds beef. The typical American, it is said, gnaws through seven cows in
a lifetime. Each pound of Central American beef destroys over 18.6 square
meters of rainforest.

The soil is that layer of earth upon which the roots of plants attach. It is
called the lithosphere. It is also the layer that stores a vast and complex
structure of nutrients needed to grow plant matter. In the course of geologic
time, measured in millions of years, the solid portion of the earth crumbled
away with the constant action of the elements. In time, rocks broke down
into smaller pieces, then into stones, and later into fine sand. All the sand
47
that we now see today was once a part of a pebble, every pebble was once a
part of a rock, and every rock once part of a boulder. After much weathering
and magical mixing with air and water, the fine sand became the thin and
fragile layer we call soil.

Agriculture first needs to clear the land and then completely remove the
remaining grasses. Next, the soil has to be turned over to plant the seeds of
grain. Without any vegetative cover, the soil is exposed to the heat of the
sun, and its natural moisture quickly dries up. It is now also exposed to the
action of the wind, which further dries it up. Add to this a bit of heavy
rainfall on a slight incline in the slope. The water then carries the soil to the
rivers, running through the lowlands and plains and ultimately being
deposited in bodies of water and the sea in the form of silt. In places where
the land is very flat, as in the agricultural plains of North America, too much
exposure to the sun and the wind transforms the soil into dust. Ultimately,
land productivity is lost and the soil is found in places where it should not
besilting up waterways, coral reefs and aquatic life. With the reduced
capacity of the waterways to carry water, it increases the incidence and
intensity of floods.

Let us remember that soil is irreplaceable beyond any time-scale of interest
to us.

When lost, it is lost forever. While re-vegetation of the land will
ultimately restore the soil somewhat, the length of time it will take is best
measured in terms of millennia. It is therefore essential that the soilthat
delicate mixture of nutrients, organic matter and waterbe prevented from
being washed away faster than it can be formed.

Water and chemicals
There are two aspects of the story of water for agriculture. The first is the
quantity of water, and the second the quality of the water.

1. Water quantityOf the 3,240 cubic kilometers

of water in use in the
whole world, 70% is used for agriculture, 20% for industry, and 10% for
48
domestic needs. Plant cultivation is the largest consumer of water. To
produce one kilogram of grain, 1,000 kilograms of water is needed. To
produce one kilogram of beef, the animal must be fed with seven kilograms
of grain.

Evidence of water scarcity is unfolding with the water table falling in every
continent. It is occurring in the Southern Great Plains of the U.S.A., in much
of North Africa and the Middle East, in most of India, and almost
everywhere in China. A 1991 to 1996 survey indicated that the water table
under the north China plains is dropping at an average of 1.5 meters per
year. Almost everywhere in India, where the withdrawal rate of underground
water is double the rate of aquifer recharge, the water table is falling at the
rate of one to three meters every year. In the Philippines, while a
comprehensive documentation of severe water shortage has yet to be
recorded, evidence is growing that the water table in Cebu, Cavite, and other
coastal zones is falling at rates equally alarming. The risk of irreversible
saltwater intrusion and aquifer salinization is even more serious in an
archipelagic country like the Philippines. In the island province of Cebu, a
long and narrow island, groundwater salinization has now penetrated four
kilometers inland.

2. Water qualityThe other aspect of the story of water is the run-off of the
pesticides and fertilizers that are applied to our agricultural crops. The
chemicals that we put into our agricultural lands, the poisons that we spray
on our crops in the form of pesticides, insecticides, fungicides and herbicides
all have to go somewhere. The rainfall washes away a large part of the
chemical poisons and nutrients into the waterways and bodies of water.
There, the fish and other aquatic life are exposed to the poisons. The
nutrients of the fertilizers, misplaced in the aquatic environment, unduly
enrich the plants that live in the water bodies and trigger an imbalance in the
aquatic ecosystem.

Fish kills cause great alarm when they occur. Often, these are quickly and
49
conveniently blamed on nearby factories and establishments by the
investigating authorities. Fish kills are episodic incidents that do not occur
overnight. They are brought about by a system malfunction accumulated
over a period.

One of the heaviest prices that we have to pay for the growth in agricultural
productivity is the intensive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to
sustain the growth of the new and high-yielding varieties of grain seeds. The
novelty of high productivity with new grains and new chemicals so
enthralled governments that the so-called Green Revolution of the 1960s
was entirely anchored on the proposition to put in more to produce more.

A 1983 study indicated that about 10,000 people died each year in
developing countries and about 400,000 people suffered acute health
illnesses due to pesticides.

In our agricultural croplands, related pesticide
illnesses abound in the banana and pineapple growing regions in Mindanao.
However, because of the importance given to economic gain, these
deformities, mutations, illnesses and deaths are often swept under the rug,
and the claims quietly paid to the impoverished families of the farm workers.

Recent scientific discoveries reveal a perplexing phenomenon. This is the
effect of chemicals, the so-called persistent organic pollutants (or POPs),
on the physiology of certain animals. These chemicals appear to be causing
deformities in the sexual organs of animals exposed to, or which have
ingested, these pollutants through the food chain. The alarming build-up of
these chemicals has also been recorded in the human organs.

Al Gore, former Vice President of the U.S.A., in his foreword to the book
Our Stolen Future, stated that human beings in such remote locations as
Canadas far north Baffin Island now carry traces of persistent synthetic
chemicals in their bodies, including such notorious compounds as PCBs,
DDT and dioxin. Even worse, in the womb and through breast milk, mothers
pass this chemical legacy on to the next generation.
50

Another aspect involves the other insects, the innocent bystanders in our
quarrel with agricultural pests. The so-called broad-spectrum pesticides
and insecticides have a shotgun effect: They kill everything they touch.
Thus, even friendly and beneficial insects, airborne carriers of pollen and
seeds, or those that are simply ecological bystanders and part of the food
chain are all hit by the shotgun blast of these chemical street sweepers.

In
the language of warfare, they are known as the unintended consequences of
an aggressive action or simply collateral damage.

We do not realize that these same insects are all part and parcel of the
intricate web of life that make up the food chain. Many of them are carriers
of seeds and pollen that are necessary for the perpetuation of plant life. Then
again, some of these insects are predators of the pests we seek to eliminate
through the use of chemicals. In recent years, there has been a growing
realization that the use of chemical pesticides can be significantly reduced if
we retain the friendly insects and allow them to serve their function as
predators of the pests. This has led to the introduction of the integrated pest
management (IPM) system and a shift towards the use of biological
control methods.

The Philippine agriculture situation
The Philippine situation mirrors that of the world. Despite its misguided
efforts towards industrialization, the country is an agricultural country and
must be proud to be so. We are fortunate that our soils and climate give us
the capacity to be self-reliant in terms of food production. But why is it that
once we were an exporter of rice, and now we are importers? Water is fast
running out for irrigation, and the erosion rate of our agricultural soils run
from moderate to severe. The area used for agriculture has expanded from
12 million hectares in 1960 to 14.1 million hectares in 1990, or almost half
of the total land area of our country.

However, this figure is not reflective of
the total area cleared and at one time cultivated. While no figures are
available for areas technically classified as watersheds, a safe estimate is that
51
about 70-80% of the Philippines land area has been devoted to agriculture
at one time and in one form or another.

A loss of some 2.1-2.5 billion tons of soil per year is nothing to sneeze at. It
represents a net lossa permanent, irreversible and irreplaceable lossof
the countrys agricultural capital. If one cubic meter of topsoil or garden soil
costs P500 (about US$10), the loss of two billion tons of topsoil is
equivalent to about 1,000,000,000,000 pesos per year.



As for agricultural pesticides used by Filipinos, the figures are staggering. In
a mere seven-year period from 1980 to1987, pesticide use tripled from 4,725
metric tons (MT) to almost 16,000 MT per year.

Almost 54% of all the
insecticide used in the country is applied to rice, and 19% is used in
vegetable growing. Plantation crops such as banana, pineapple, and
vegetables also use a large amount of fungicides.

One of the more insidious and quietly creeping dangers is the loss of genetic
biodiversity. Prior to the Green Revolution, the Philippines had several
hundred varieties of rice, including some wild species.

Because they were
native varieties, they were sturdy and had a natural resistance to native pests
and to the natural calamities that frequently visit the area where they grow.
This genetic diversity served as our insurance for survival. However, the
introduction of the so-called high-yielding varieties of rice eliminated all but
a few of the native varieties. In their stead, they were replaced by genetically
uniform rice varieties without the natural traits and defense mechanisms
needed for resistance.

These so-called high-yielding rice varieties are not really high yielding.
They are only high-response varieties. They increase their yield only as a
response to the high input of fertilizers and chemicals that are applied to
them. These varieties have proven unstable in the face of new and more
virulent insect attacks, many of which have developed resistance and
immunity to the chemical pesticides already in use. The first miracle rice
52
(the IR-8) was wiped out by tungro infestations in the 1970s. Attempts to
replace the infested varieties with new varieties have only led to more
sophisticated infestations, greater resistance to pesticides, and more and
more intensive application of inorganic or chemical pesticides, round and
round in an almost mindless cycle.

However, as far as the pests are concerned, the cycle of life goes on. We
humans are actually doing them a big favor by planting only one kind of
plant in large areas. This practice is called mono-cropping. With this, the
natural predators of the insectsthose other insects and birds that inhabit
and feed on the other plants and pestsare nowhere around. Lest we forget,
insects have the largest number of species among animals, some 800,000 of
them. They breed so fast that even if only five or 10 escaped the fungicide,
they would breed soon enough and in large enough numbers to return with a
vengeance.

Conservation measures
Soil and water conservation measures fall under the category of short-term
remedies, as they can be accomplished in a matter of five years. It is a note
of living archeological history that the Philippines is the site of the Banaue
Rice Terraces. These rice terraces are nothing less than an engineering
marvel. In fact, they are known as the eighth wonder of the world and
listed among the World Heritage Sites

for its significance to all of
humankind.

Carbon-dating tests reveal that this collection of high-altitude
terraces is about 2,000 years old, thousands of hectares of land painstakingly
carved out of the steep mountain slopes with primitive tools. This
conglomeration of terrace planting has been able to retain soil and water so
well that to this day rice is still being grown there.


In recent years, a technique of soil and water conservation known as contour
farming was re-introduced in the Philippines. Its technical label is Sloping
Agricultural Land Technology (SALT). The whole technique hinges on the
use of an A-frame with a pendulum weighted by a stone in the middle.
Placing both ends of the triangle on the ground, the pendulum will swing left
53
or right until the natural contour of the sloping land is found by putting one
of the legs of the triangle on different parts of the ground. When the natural
contour is found, the piece of stone hanging from the string would be at dead
center of the A-frame. It is now for the farmer to put a stake in that ground
to mark it as the place of the outer edge of the terrace to be built.

The SALT system has proven to be highly effective in conserving the soil,
and the Department of Agriculture would do well in promoting this
conservation technique rather than promoting the use of chemical inputs. It
would do well for the concerned government agencies, especially the
Departments of Agriculture, Agrarian Reform, Environment, and local
governments to launch a massive education and hands-on campaign to
stabilize the soils through the use of contour farming techniques. An entire
legal marketing campaign and program can be carried out with such steps as
the identification of eroding areas, the mobilization of upland farmers using
the bayanihan system (volunteerism and mutual help), government support
for the purchase of food, the contouring of all sloping agricultural lands
within five years, and the delivery of social services (health, land tenure
instruments, etc.) as an adjunct to the campaign.

Chemical inputs per se can be beneficial when administered in the right
doses and when combined with organic inputs. Poorly educated farmers,
however, tend to use more than is necessary in the belief that more is
better. Re-education in the use of chemicals is required in order to wean
farmers away from inorganic inputs that ultimately result in degrading the
quality of the soil.

Some responsible chemical companies are also beginning to introduce more
target-specific and quickly decomposing chemical pesticides. In the same
manner that farmers were taught to intensively use chemicals 30 years ago,
they can now be taught more earth-friendly techniques in the control of
unwanted pests and the use of organic fertilizers. Fortunately, this paradigm
shift is starting with the introduction of organic farming and the integrated
54
pest management (IPM) techniques.

Organic farming is beginning to catch the attention of both farmers and
health conscious consumers. Ultimately, it will be the consumer who will
determine the need for organically grown grains and greens, and thereby
create the demand, which the farmers will have to fill.

At present, however, individual farmers who have experimented with
organic farming find that they still operate at a loss. As the only farm not
protected by chemical pesticides within the area, it is a natural target for
insects that are driven away by the pesticides used in the other neighboring
farms. This points to the need for a coordinated and comprehensive
approach to integrated pest management (IPM) and organic farming.
Otherwise, those who practice it will be at a great competitive disadvantage
and will ultimately revert to the use of chemicals.

True land reform
Land use planning is the first step in environmental planning. It is the sole
prerogative of local government units following a framework plan of the
national government. To determine areas suitable for agriculture, there is a
need to delineate broad categories of areas. Enhancement areas are lands
capable of sustaining intensive cropping. Prevention areas are areas which,
by common consent and taking into consideration the slope, soil
composition and other factors, should not be developed for intensive
agriculture, or should be converted to other uses when already developed.
Restoration areas are lands that have been stripped of vegetative cover and
have totally lost or drastically reduced their productive capacity.

The above effort is probably what Land Reform is in its truest sense:
reforming mans relationship with the land by treating it not just as mans
source of food for the day but as a continuing source of life. There is a need
to break up large land holdings that are the cause of civil strife because of
the feudal relationship between landlords and tenants. Undoubtedly, the
55
governments land reform program may have temporary socio-economic
benefits by creating a new set of landowners. But the land reform that entails
the mere redistribution of land to more people is not the land reform we
refer to here. True land reform is about reforming the attitude of landowners
and farmers towards our natural capital and food security.

In the longer term there are a few difficult decisions that need to be made.
One obvious need is to stabilize or even reduce the human population. It is
projected that there will be about eight to 12 billion people on earth by the
year 2050.

In the Philippines, within a span of 35 years, the population more
than doubled, from 35 million in 1965 to 80 million in the year 2002.

The governments efforts at family planning

are often thwarted by the stand
of the Catholic Church against certain methods of contraception.

Whatever
may be the outcome of the long-running Church-State debate on the matter,
it is the function of government to at least make accessible to couples,
especially to women who bear the brunt of pregnancy and childcare, the
options available for responsible family planning. Artificial contraceptive
methods are only one of the options, the most important one being
education. Studies have indicated that where the women are more
empowered by education and livelihood opportunities, childbirth is very
much reduced.

In the long term, there must be another paradigm shift in the way we view
agriculture. For the past century, we have focused on the side supply of food
production: increasing food supply with genetic manipulation, expansion of
croplands and greater productivity through the use of chemical inputs. We
need to think about ways of reducing the demand side of the food cycle. This
reduction is called the needs contraction theory.

We need to think about food that uses less water and takes up less land by
moving down the food chain. Vegetables and fruits take up less soil and less
water and are certainly healthier food. On the other hand, cattle and pigs not
56
only require much land and grain; they also produce more waste. In the
United States, one of the largest meat-eating countries in the world, livestock
produces 130 times more waste than the countrys entire human population.

Although it has been the mark of affluence, meat eating is not altogether
healthy. Research in China, the U.S. and by the World Health Organization
(WHO) indicates that the over-consumption of protein from animal flesh has
been the cause of obesity, breast cancer, cardiovascular diseases and
colorectal cancer. Moreover, there is the concern of eating genetically
modified animal flesh pumped with immense doses of antibiotics and
growth-enhancing hormones.

It is projected that the era of mass-produced
animal flesh and its unsustainable cost to human and environmental health
should be over before the end of the 21st century.

In the accompanying volume, A Legal Arsenal for the Philippine
Environment, the laws on agriculture all relate to and focus on making the
soil produce more and more. The recently passed law on Agricultural and
Fisheries Modernization (AFMA) is one such law. The High-Value Crops
Law is another. The Pesticide and Fertilizers Act reflects the policy of
protecting human health from the adverse effect of chemical inputs. The
Anti-Coconut Cutting Law seeks to protect the productivity of coconut trees,

the cutting of which has been widespread in the last decade for coco-lumber
and as a substitute for the vanishing and high-priced good lumber, i.e.,
lumber from trees. An interesting piece of legislation is the Animal Welfare
Act, if only because it indicates what might be the beginnings of human
kindness towards their fellow creatures.