Happy logging!
Happy logging!
Posted 11:40pm (Mla time) Mar 11, 2005
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 12, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
THREE months after the disastrous rains in Eastern Luzon that punished denuded forests and resulted in floods, landslides and loss of lives and property, the government is oh so casually lifting commercial log bans wholesale in different areas of the country. No, not in Eastern Luzon -- in Nueva Ecija, Aurora and Quezon -- but in other areas of the country, such as the Davao and Caraga regions in Mindanao. Plus the Cordilleras, most likely.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo betrayed the wisdom -- or lack thereof -- of the lifting when she surmised that the ban on the Cordilleras might be lifted because "we may need one area in Luzon, and Cordillera looks like the most logical." She didn't even bother to explain whether the Cordilleras (Abra, Kalinga, Apayao, Benguet, Ifugao and Mountain Province) could absorb the commercial operations despite the tenuousness of the environmental conditions there. The pure consideration here is commerce and market.
And most probably, politics, too. Some of those who welcomed the lifting of the logging ban in Caraga are lawmakers from Surigao and the rest of the region. The fact that they readily applauded the lifting of the ban indicates that they lobbied for the logging operations to resume.
Continued logging operations, of course, may benefit forest workers and their families who depend on the forests for their livelihood. They certainly are a consideration in any decision to lift the ban. But without doubt, the paramount consideration is the protection of the environment and the sustainability of the commercial operations in the midst of indications of a very fragile ecology. The small people themselves are part of that ecology, and it is deceptive that the logging ban is being lifted in their name when in fact it is their very lives and livelihood that are endangered.
Which leads us to the manner in which the government seems to have gone about throwing all caution to the wind in lifting the logging ban in forested regions. There seems hardly a token effort on its part to assure the public and the stakeholders that the lifting is a deliberate move, one in which all aspects and interests have been considered with the view to preventing a repeat of last year's disasters.
If there's any effort at reassurance, it's merely photos of Environment Secretary Michael Defensor making the rounds of logging areas, inspecting the timber, checking the concessions, and generally looking serious and businesslike -- in barong Tagalog yet. Defensor has not even conducted a modicum of inquiry into last year's flooding. He may have named names (some of them wrong, as when he accused Sen. Jamby Madrigal's family of logging greed), but he has not exactly put anyone behind bars. Nor has he started to prosecute anyone.
Perhaps most important, Defensor has not really reassured the public that his department is on top of the situation. While he has been quick to put on preventive suspension the provincial directors of Aurora, Quezon and Nueva Ecija (one of whom had long ago warned that untrammeled logging would lead to disaster), he has not exactly given us cause to be reassured that environment officials in Davao, Caraga and the Cordilleras have done their jobs religiously of monitoring the operations of loggers and seeing that they don't go beyond their concessions and that they reforest the areas they've exploited. Many communities in these regions have called for a stop to logging for fear of a disaster.
Three months after the calamity, Defensor has not provided any information as to what his department has done to stem another ecological debacle. Save for the officials he has suspended, he has not prosecuted any logger or provided any explanation on what went wrong last year. Questions are crying out to be answered but if he is forthcoming in anything, it is in lifting the logging ban elsewhere, as if saying that since disasters have taken place in Eastern Luzon, they may as well happen to the other regions so as to spread the disasters equably around.
The December landslides were unprecedented in the annals of a nation otherwise called the most disaster-prone in the world during the last century. At least a thousand people died and tens of thousands were rendered homeless and displaced. All of these stark statistics have been made insignificant by the casual manner in which the government is lifting the logging ban everywhere.
Posted 11:40pm (Mla time) Mar 11, 2005
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 12, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
THREE months after the disastrous rains in Eastern Luzon that punished denuded forests and resulted in floods, landslides and loss of lives and property, the government is oh so casually lifting commercial log bans wholesale in different areas of the country. No, not in Eastern Luzon -- in Nueva Ecija, Aurora and Quezon -- but in other areas of the country, such as the Davao and Caraga regions in Mindanao. Plus the Cordilleras, most likely.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo betrayed the wisdom -- or lack thereof -- of the lifting when she surmised that the ban on the Cordilleras might be lifted because "we may need one area in Luzon, and Cordillera looks like the most logical." She didn't even bother to explain whether the Cordilleras (Abra, Kalinga, Apayao, Benguet, Ifugao and Mountain Province) could absorb the commercial operations despite the tenuousness of the environmental conditions there. The pure consideration here is commerce and market.
And most probably, politics, too. Some of those who welcomed the lifting of the logging ban in Caraga are lawmakers from Surigao and the rest of the region. The fact that they readily applauded the lifting of the ban indicates that they lobbied for the logging operations to resume.
Continued logging operations, of course, may benefit forest workers and their families who depend on the forests for their livelihood. They certainly are a consideration in any decision to lift the ban. But without doubt, the paramount consideration is the protection of the environment and the sustainability of the commercial operations in the midst of indications of a very fragile ecology. The small people themselves are part of that ecology, and it is deceptive that the logging ban is being lifted in their name when in fact it is their very lives and livelihood that are endangered.
Which leads us to the manner in which the government seems to have gone about throwing all caution to the wind in lifting the logging ban in forested regions. There seems hardly a token effort on its part to assure the public and the stakeholders that the lifting is a deliberate move, one in which all aspects and interests have been considered with the view to preventing a repeat of last year's disasters.
If there's any effort at reassurance, it's merely photos of Environment Secretary Michael Defensor making the rounds of logging areas, inspecting the timber, checking the concessions, and generally looking serious and businesslike -- in barong Tagalog yet. Defensor has not even conducted a modicum of inquiry into last year's flooding. He may have named names (some of them wrong, as when he accused Sen. Jamby Madrigal's family of logging greed), but he has not exactly put anyone behind bars. Nor has he started to prosecute anyone.
Perhaps most important, Defensor has not really reassured the public that his department is on top of the situation. While he has been quick to put on preventive suspension the provincial directors of Aurora, Quezon and Nueva Ecija (one of whom had long ago warned that untrammeled logging would lead to disaster), he has not exactly given us cause to be reassured that environment officials in Davao, Caraga and the Cordilleras have done their jobs religiously of monitoring the operations of loggers and seeing that they don't go beyond their concessions and that they reforest the areas they've exploited. Many communities in these regions have called for a stop to logging for fear of a disaster.
Three months after the calamity, Defensor has not provided any information as to what his department has done to stem another ecological debacle. Save for the officials he has suspended, he has not prosecuted any logger or provided any explanation on what went wrong last year. Questions are crying out to be answered but if he is forthcoming in anything, it is in lifting the logging ban elsewhere, as if saying that since disasters have taken place in Eastern Luzon, they may as well happen to the other regions so as to spread the disasters equably around.
The December landslides were unprecedented in the annals of a nation otherwise called the most disaster-prone in the world during the last century. At least a thousand people died and tens of thousands were rendered homeless and displaced. All of these stark statistics have been made insignificant by the casual manner in which the government is lifting the logging ban everywhere.
posted by Dante at 12:00 AM
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