Plant a tree, help save the planet

By Jonathan L. Mayuga

(Published in the Business Mirror, April 24, 2016)

http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/plant-a-tree-help-save-the-planet/

WHAT can help save the planet? Trees. Stop cutting and start planting trees. Top officials of the Forest Management Bureau (FMB) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) highlighted the importance of maintaining a healthy ecology to ensure the survival of every Filipino, as the Philippines joined the international celebration of Earth Day 2016 on April 22.

The Philippines marked Earth Day with the signing of the Paris Agreement in New York on April 22. The deal includes a covenant in support of the country’s commitment to the global effort to reduce carbon emission and limit global temperature increase below 1.5 degrees Celsius between 2020 and 2030. Environment Secretary Ramon J.P. Paje represented the Philippines during the historic signing of the Paris Agreement that was forged in December 2015 in Paris, France.

Earth Day every day

This year’s international Earth Day theme was “Trees for the Earth. Let’s get planting.” The Philippines’s campaign slogan, “Step Up and Deliver, #GreenEnvironmentGawingForever,” highlighted the importance of trees in fighting climate change, considered as the most serious threat to the planet and human existence today.

NONIE REYES

“Make every day Earth Day,” FMB Director Ricardo Calderon said.

The Philippines, through its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC), which it submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in October, committed to reduce its carbon emission by 70 percent by 2030. Top environment officials said that to sustain growth, the country needs to expand its forest cover and increase its carbon-absorption capacity, as well, underscoring the need to continue the “greening” of the country’s forests.

Volunteerism

Extolling the sense of group and individual volunteerism and the support of the private sector, Calderon, who is also the national coordinator of the National Greening Program (NGP), said the government’s ongoing reforestation program was a success, but could even be more successful with the support of every Filipino.

 “Imagine if every Filipino will plant just one tree, we will already have 120 million trees, and if we do that every year, our closed canopy forest will be back in no time,” he said. Because of NGP the trend of environmental degradation was reversed, he added.

“Now, the rate of reforestation is 240,000 hectares every year,” Calderon said. From the last quarter of 2010, over 1.35 million hectares of open, degraded and denuded forests have been covered by massive tree planting as of December 2015.

Calderon is confident that the overall target of 1.5 million hectares will be met before the end of 2016. He noted that seedling production has become institutionalized with 35 state universities and colleges maintaining clonal nurseries and five regular tree nurseries producing quality-planting materials. Once completed, the reforestation program would translate to an absorption capacity of 30 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. “That is generally the direction. By expanding our forest cover, we are expanding our carbon reservoir. More trees, more forest [means] more carbon sink,” he said.

Carbon footprint

The country’s economic growth in the last six years saw the country’s carbon footprint increasing. Carbon footprint is the amount of carbon dioxide and other carbon compounds emitted due to the consumption of fossil fuels.

Currently the country’s carbon footprint is increasing by 1.3 percent, which was partially the basis of the country’s INDC submission to the UNFCCC. Calderon said that, even after the NGP expires in 2028, the government would have planting materials for future tree-planting activities.

Last year, a year before the original NGP deadline expires, President Aquino signed Executive Order 193, expanding the NGP to cover the remaining 7.1 million hectares that need to be reforested. The program covers the period 2016 to 2028.

Before the NGP, the rate of deforestation was pegged at 42,000 hectares a year. The country’s forest shrank tremendously that because of the depletion, the forest’s contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP) shrank and is now below 1 percent.

“We are hoping that with the sustained reforestation, forestry’s contribution to the GDP will increase and breach 1 percent,” Calderon said.

The Aquino administration’s flagship reforestation program, the NGP, aims to plant 1.5 billion trees in 1.5 million hectares of land by 2016 in its original plan. 

So far, the government had spent over P25 billion from 2010 to 2015. This year the government has allotted P8 billion to complete the program.  But Calderon emphasized the need to reduce waste and energy consumption as well by living a simple life with not too much use of fuel and energy that contributes to the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Tree-farming

The DENR, through Paje, is gloating with the success of the program, which he attributed to the twin policy on reforestation: Executive Order (EO) 23, signed on February 11, 2011, which imposes a total log ban on natural and residual forest, and EO 26, signed on February 24, 2011, which established the NGP. From 1960 up to 2010, before the total log ban was imposed, the DENR estimates that 1.7 million trees are cut and harvested from natural forests. 

According to Calderon, to promote sustainable forest management, the DENR tapped the community-based forest management partners of the DENR to plant fuel wood, fruit-bearing trees and wood of commercial value, such as falcata and Philippine mahogany.

The plan is to encourage more people to invest in tree-farming to support the wood industry, particularly in Mindanao. 

Calderon said farmers with small landholdings would find tree-farming a worthwhile venture. He also urged businesses to diversify and invest in the establishment of forest plantations to further boost the government’s “greening” effort with the backing of the private sector. “We are hoping that through reforestation, we will realize the gains of reforestation in terms of increased contribution in the GDP,” he said.

Unaccounted benefits

“[Besides] the oxygen we breathe, a healthy forest helps clean the air, protect our watersheds. Whether there’s El Niño or not, it ensures good supply of water, in terms of quantity and quality, for irrigation of our agricultural areas and domestic requirements,” Calderon said. The benefits of a healthy environment, he said, could not be fully accounted, as there are no means to measure the cost of clean air and water, the protection against natural calamities, or even the aesthetic beauty that provides the boost to ecotourism.

More important, Calderon said, the forest’s contribution in terms of carbon capture is perhaps the biggest unaccounted benefit of planting trees.

“With El Niño, planting trees or reforestation is very important. It will help increase our carbon-sequestration capacity and help fight climate change,” Calderon said.  

Stand up against coal

Other environmental groups, reacting to the country’s signing of the Paris Agreement on Earth Day, meanwhile, criticized the Aquino administration for its conflicting policies. While the government is claiming to promote the environment through reforestation, they said the promotion of coal as a source of energy is confusing, at best, and somewhat “hypocritical.” 

Kalikasan-People’s Network for the Environment national coordinator Clemente Bautista said  that, while the Paris Agreement binds the country to reducing carbon emission by 70 percent by 2030, current policy on energy leans heavily on coal dependency.

He said the Aquino administration has approved 47 coal-power projects from 2014 up to 2020.  

“Under Aquino’s term, carbon emissions from coal-power sources have increased by 30 percent. It has also inaugurated at least three new coal-power plants under its administration. If all approved coal [plant] projects will be realized, an estimated total of 60 metric tons of carbon-dioxide emissions will be released by 2025,” he said.

“How can we contribute to keeping global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius? We are still not calculating the contribution of carbon emission because of forest denudation, and vegetation lost due to logging and commercial mining. [President] Aquino is through and through climate liar,” he added.

Stop tree cutting

In an interview, Chuck Baclagon, campaigner of 350.org East Asia, said tree planting is a positive action for individuals and institutions. However, he said a “proportionate response is needed to address environmental problems.” 

He said “because of the magnitude of the environmental problems we are facing, we can always plant trees but we should also see to it that the cutting of trees, whether old or new, should stop.”

 He also said there’s a need for transformation as to how the country produces energy, noting that “to be more pro-environment, renewable energy, and not coal, should be the way.” Incidentally, the Climate Change Commission has called for a review of the country’s energy-mix policy as the share of renewable energy continues to shrink despite the passage of the Renewable Energy Act in 2008.