Thursday, 18 June 2009 01:45
Farmer Dado: Welcome to the jungle.
TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol—Diosdado Abergosado is a typical farmer. Early mornings he usually goes to his small rice field in Danao town in central Bohol with his young wife and two kids.
This day, however, is different. Abergosado is meeting three other farmers and walking a few hours to the hills for their weeklong tour of duty.
Arbegosado and other farmers from San Miguel village take weeklong turns up in the hills, armed with lunch and a plywood board. Their objective is the pesky cogon grass. Their mission: to restore the once lush forest that they’ve heard of only in stories told by their elders.
“Our parents told us they used to see many animals in these forests. Now the forests are all grass,” he said. “I want my children to see those forests once again.”
The Philippines’ once-spectacular forests have by now disintegrated into patches or grooves mainly in Palawan and some parts of Luzon. Around 7 million hectares of forest remain in the country, a number that is dwindling fast. Rampant logging and burning by farmers to clear plots brought down the country’s forest cover to just around 20 percent of what it used to be.
There were efforts at reforestation, according to Environment Undersecretary Jeremias Dolino, particularly in the last two decades when the government spent billions of pesos to pay organizations and farmers to plant seedlings and take care of the trees.
He admitted, however, that the effort had their limitations. Once the funding stopped, the trees were left on their own. “The biggest challenge for us is to get the community involved,” Dolino said.
Farmer Arbegosado is part of a growing movement in Danao and in the Philippines to revive the country’s forests by not planting trees. Instead, he allows nature to run its course uninterrupted via a practical, cheap and sensible method called assisted natural regeneration (ANR).
According to Dr. Percy Sajise of Biodiversity International, ANR has long been presented as an effective way to revive Philippine forests but was put in the back seat by the more tangible tree-planting activities.
“Now ANR is getting the attention as the most cost-effective way to revive the forest,” said Sajise.
The ANR method helps nature rejuvenate herself. Sajise said by natural dispersion, seeds are scattered in random places and are left to grow and mature.
However, some of the saplings are covered by thick cogon grass so they wilt and die. To help ANR, volunteers look for these “naturally planted” seedlings, clear the pesky cogon, and allow the future tree to get all the nutrients and sunshine it needs to grow by on its own.
Sajise explained that with ANR, trees grow in their natural habitat, unlike tree-planting where new species are introduced in areas, which often leads to imbalance with other species. Most of all, ANR is cheap.
Conventional tree-planting requires the establishment of nurseries before transporting the seedlings to the mountains. Including the care for seedlings, the effort costs around P35,000 per hectare. ANR costs a little less than half of the amount.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO) saw how important the forest is and ANR in supporting livelihood in rural areas. So it funded a three-year program to pilot ANR campaigns in Bohol, Davao del Norte and Bataan.
According to Kazuyuki Tsurami, FAO representative in the Philippines, the total project cost for the three-year program was P240,000.
“ANR is one of a few methods to revive the forest and mitigate the effects of climate change without affecting the livelihood of the people. In fact, ANR allows the people to earn more,” Tsurami said. “Most of all, it is very cheap.”
According to Patrick Dugan of Bagong Pag-asa Foundation, which is helping UN FAO implement the ANR pilot programs, the three sites in the Philippines are reaping the economic benefits from ANR. Bataan is having pineapples and bananas, rubber for Davao, and Danao is reviving its forest to support its bid to be an ecotourism destination in Central Philippines.
“There is no bigger motivator than the economic reward,” Danao City Mayor Louis Thomas Gonzaga said. “Talking about climate change and global warming is too complicated for the people. But when you tell them we will all benefit economically because of the project, they will all support it.”
And with ANR and other support mechanisms in place, Danao has already earned more than P2 million from its EAT Danao ecotourism project in the first few months of the year as adventurers, bikers and families from nearby urban centers like Metro Cebu and Tagbilaran City flock to the town for a green recluse and an adventure in nature.
Its tourism industry has earned more than the total income from taxes in its public market—usually the biggest-earning enterprise of any local government unit. The project has also employed 50 people.
Tourists come to Danao to go hiking, kayaking, water-tubing, mountain biking, and run down a zipline and visit caves. The sites are in prime condition because of efforts by the locals to protect the environment.
As is the case with other projects, the challenge for ANR in the three pilot areas is sustainability. At present farmer Arbegosado receives P40 in allowance for every tour of duty. It will soon be over as the project is over.
Mayor Gonzaga and his town council, however, vowed to continue the program. He said proceeds from the ecotourism revenues will be placed in a special fund to expand the ANR areas and protect them from fire—the biggest threat to the young forests.
The national government is also starting to see the benefits of ANR. For the first time, a P2-billion fund has been allotted for ANR across the country that includes a 50,000-hectare upland reforestation effort, according to Undersecretary Dolino said.
Tsurami said the UN FAO program opened the dam for funding agencies to get interested in ANR. UN FAO itself is considering extending the program in a second round.
In May, the UN FAO’s ANR project concluded with an international workshop in Bohol, attended by participants from Asia and Europe. Everybody agreed that ANR is the most sensible solution to recovering the lost forests of the world.
Arbegosado said he was happy to see a busload of foreigners and scientists visit his hilltop outpost in barangay San Miguel and see him work. But he couldn’t care less. For him, it’s all about his children and the forest that his family could see and enjoy in the future. Fortunately, that is more than enough.
