EPCC NEWS 07
January 27, 2009


CORRUPTION, DEFORESTATION, LANDSLIDES, MASS DEATH AND MEA CULPA

By Jerry Esguerra

“The reasons for the degradation of our forests are corruption and our own shortcomings,” admitted Secretary Lito Atienza of Department of the Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in a New Year message to his department personnel.

A common knowledge among Filipinos, Atienza's admonishment, hardly created a ripple in Manila were ordinary citizens had almost but accepted corruption is an integral part of governance in the island nation.

"Corrupt environment personnel were behind the massive deforestation in the country," Atienza continued. "That practice should be stopped to slow down climate change."

Atienza's display of humility was too little too late for thousands of victims of horrific landslides and floodings that could be attributed to decades of environmental degradation.

On the morning of February 17, 2006 a devastating landslide, at a terrifying speed, sent a wall of mud and boulders tumbling down the mountain wiping out the entire village of Guinsagon. And so did nearly every man, woman and child, in this farming community of 1,857 in Leyte on Philippine's eastern region. Only around 50 lucky residents survived.

The local elementary school which was in full session that morning never stood a chance. 250 school children and their teachers plus around 40 members of a women's group holding a conference at the site that day were buried alive.

A desperate text message coming from the school late that afternoon went unanswered. According to the rescuers the inundation was so massive that in some areas wall of mud rose 30 feet or more.

"Ang mahalaga ay makita ko sila kahit mga bangkay man lamang (What's important is for me to find them even if they're dead),"
said Dionisio Elmosora, a 42-year-old farmer who was digging through the mud with bare hands in a desperate attempt to find his wife and two sons just hours after the mudslide.

"It sounded like the mountain exploded, and the whole thing crumbled," recounted Dario Libatan one of the handful of survivors, who lost his wife and three children. "I lost everything, our village is gone and not a single house left standing."

Based on expert assessments from private and public forestry and environmental agencies the culprit was a combination of decades of illegal logging and mining in the mountains of Guinsagon.

The plunder of the mountain forest of Guinsagon was just the tip of the iceberg of years of deforestation and wholesale degradation of the environment causing tragic human disasters.

There were similar landslides at the end of 2004 and 2003, both directly linked to illegal logging and mining.

In December 2004, more than 1,000 people died when massive flooding and mudslides hit the eastern Quezon province in the northern region of the Philippines. Tropical storms battered the coastal towns of
Real, Infanta and General Nakar triggering tons of loose soil to cascade down from mountain tops. Illegal logging was again cited as a major contributing factor to the catastrophe.

In December 2003 in the same province as Guinsagon, in southern Leyte, landslides claimed the lives of more than 200 people. Most of the victims died in their sleep when torrents of mud swept down on dozens of homes.

And in 1991 Illegal logging was blamed again for one of the most deadliest disaster in the history of the Philippines when floods and landslides killed more than 5,000 people in the City of Ormoc in the southern part of Leyte.

In light of the government's
inability to seriously address the problem of deforestation in the country, Senator Jamby Madrigal a leading advocate of pro-environment initiatives in the senate warned: “Unless the government demonstrates the political will to address the serious threats to the environment, our country will become a no man’s land.”

Only 20 percent of the country’s original forest cover remains (using 18th century data as benchmark), making the Philippines the only country in Southeast Asia with the thinnest cover, according to DENR own studies.
The trend of deforestation if it continues at a current rate will greatly affect climate change in the region, environmental experts are claiming.

There were several failed attempts to mitigate the harm done to the Philippine forest and some made the problem even worst.

Using DENR's numbers again, historically since reforestation was accelerated in response to the United Nations call to mitigate denudation of our forest, no progress is being made at all.
While the much heralded public/private programs which involved the biggest logging and mining companies, like the behemoth Abra Mining and Industrial Corporation and funding coming from neo-colonial institutional giants like USAID, World Bank and Asian Development Bank - netted only a little over 68,000 hectares of coverage per year - deforestation stands at an alarming rate of 78,000 (about 300,000 acres) per year and rising.

The massive Contract Reforestation Program of 1988-1992, in which the Philippine government borrowed US$240 million from the Asian Development Bank and Overseas Economic Co-operation Fund of Japan with the goal of reforesting 225,000 hectares of degraded forest, was mainly used as photo-ops by ruling elite politicians to advance their individual political careers.

It was done in such a haphazard manner with little scientific research put into it. It was geared more towards getting instant results reminiscent of Imelda Marcos' Green Revolution Program during the martial law days.
The species used in plantations were fast growing and exotic but alien to the Philippine soil. The project was considered a total failure by many with only 10% yield.
What it did is just raise false hope among the population living in endangered zones.

About 20 million people live and depend on the forested uplands for subsistence. 99% of them come from the poorest sector of Philippine society and surviving on less than fifty cents a day. With the absence of real social, economic and political reforms, no meaningful programs will ever succeed to combat deforestation in our country.

Whatever programs that are intended to heal our environment in general and the forest in particular, should be part and parcel of an overall struggle of our people for an equal and just society.

The tragedies of Ormoc, Infanta, Real, General Nakar and Guinsagon are grim reminders that the ruling elite will stop at nothing in the expansion of the wealth of their class.

And as the anniversary of Guinsagon disaster approaches, we should be vigilant and ready to expose and condemn any attempt by the establishment to gloss over and hide the real
cause of such tragedies.

And no different from the past we expect the ruling elite to throw some bones in our direction to pacify the people's movement.

We should expose that the latest move by the DENR in offering its rank and file as "sacrificial lamb" is not an attempt to deter the further degradation of our forest but an attempt to deter the further erosion of people's confidence in the government of the ruling elite.

In a high profile news conference on January 8, 2009 in Lucena City, DENR Secretary Lito Atienza unveiled the agency's new policy of "one-strike", which he said will lead to immediate firing of regional officials in areas where environmental crimes like illegal logging and mining exist.

"Illegal logging is prevalent in all regions of the country. If the good secretary is serious in implementing his new policy, only the regional head of the agency in the National Capital will remain because there is no forest to rape in Metro Manila," said environmentalist lawyer Shiela de Leon Tanggol Kalikasan's Southern Tagalog executive director.

"He's just grandstanding as usual. He knows who the real culprits are. Most of them are walking away from their crime unscathed. In the past, DENR was quick to go after small operators, even poor little farmers who cut a tree here and there to feed their starving family. Big businesses with political connections were untouched," pointed out Al Garcia over the telephone from Los Angeles, California. He is the regional coordinator of Alliance for Just and Lasting Peace in the Philippines (AJLPP).

"Why don't they go after ruling elite politicians like Senator Juan Ponce Enrile who owns San Jose Timber Corporation - the biggest violator of logging laws in that region."

But to effectively confront companies like San Jose Timber is tantamount to initiating an open rebellion in the Philippines.
Senator Enrile wields an enormous political power and still can garner unquestionable loyalty from some elements in the military. As a secretary of national defense he was one of the main architects of the dreaded Marcos' Martial Rule which butchered tens of thousands of political activists.

Here's Garcia again: "Thirteen landlord families own or has the right to the majority of arable and mineral land in the Philippines. Most of them if not all have stakes in major lumber and mining concessions. To go head to head with Enrile and company, constitute a major struggle even for the organized left. 'Marami diyan namumundok na lang' (many took their struggle into the jungle)."

The cost of failure of programs, governmental or otherwise to heal our forest will always manifest in the horrific number of casualties from flooding and landslides that accompany typhoons and even a slight rain.

Yes the Philippines because of its geographical location is prone to more severe weather pattern and what it brings, but we don't have to compete with nature's fury in devastating our environment.

Corruption, degradation of our forests, landslides and mass death shouldn't be part of our normal lives - never!

And "mea culpa"?

It's insufficient.....

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