The Choices We Make: To Cut or To Preserve Philippine Forests

Blogger's Note: I included this article for readers to critically think how to balance the need to export wood products for our country to earn much-needed dollars and the want to preserve the environment for today's generation and the future. We are indeed in the crossroads of history. Whatever our leaders decide, I hope and pray it is for the good of the many and not of the few.

Preserve our forests for tourism
Posted 11:02pm (Mla time) Feb 27, 2005 By Neal CruzInquirer News Service

THE MAIN and most important function of Congress is to enact the national budget. Not the crafting and passage of bills, or investigations, or any other thing; it is the passage of the budget. Yet the current members of the House of Representatives are deliberately staying away from the bicameral conference committee meeting that is to finalize the 2005 budget. The senators spend the day waiting for them but the congressmen don't show up.

Why are the congressmen doing this? Because they don't want a new budget passed. When there is no new budget, the old budget is adopted, meaning, in this case, the 2004 budget instead of the 2005 budget. The 2004 budget, in turn, was itself adopted from the 2003 budget because no budget was passed in 2004. The congressmen really want the 2003 budget. Why? Because the pork barrel allocations in the 2003 budget were very generous.

Because of the present fiscal crisis, the Senate cut the pork barrel for 2005. (It should have totally abolished it, not merely reduced it, to finally rid us of this shameful, wasteful, corrupt and legalized theft of the people's money by their representatives.) That is why the congressmen don't want the new budget and prefer the old one. That the House leadership cannot compel its members to attend the bicam committee meeting shows a total lack of leadership.

On second thought, some say it is an "abuse" of leadership. They suspect that the leaders are actually manipulating their members to boycott the bicam so that the deadline would lapse without a new budget and the old one would apply. There is only one way to put our House in order. Kick out the incumbent congressmen and replace them with new ones in the 2007 elections.

* * *

The loggers and wood producers now wailing for the lifting of the total log ban imposed by President Macapagal-Arroyo should listen to Sen. Jamby Madrigal (who was a guest at the Feb. 21 Kapihan sa Manila). The neophyte senator explained why we would all be better off-the loggers and wood producers included-with a total logging ban.

The Philippine Wood Producers Association has presented a position paper to show why the ban should be lifted. In summary, it said:
1. That two million jobs in the wood producing and furniture industries, as well as P21 billion annually in the export of wood products, would be lost.
2. That we would have to import our annual requirements of 2 million to 2.5 million cubic meters of wood at a cost of $500 million.
3. That local wood prices would rise because of the import substitutes.
4. That legal loggers are responsible and are practicing a "sustainable forest program."
5. That without the timber concessionaires guarding their concessions, illegal loggers would decimate the remaining forests.
6. That there is no guarantee that a logging ban would stop all logging.
7. That the government earns P840 million annually from the wood industry.
8. That logging was not responsible for the floods and landslides in Aurora and Quezon.

The loss of money and jobs is always a handy threat raised by industries adversely affected by government policies. True, some of those employed by the loggers will lose their jobs, but the alternative is for them and their neighbors to lose their lives when nature wreaks its revenge.

Our forests are our valuable natural resource-but they are there not to be cut but to be preserved for all to see. The world is rapidly running out of virgin forests, and tourists are looking for destinations that still have plenty of untouched nature. The redwood forests of California are earning much more from tourism than the loggers could have ever earned had they cut down those trees. The Americans realized in time to save these giants before the loggers could finish them off.

In the US East Coast, the states are earning billions of dollars annually from crowds of tourists who arrive in autumn just to look at the colorful leaves of their trees. Had not their grandfathers planted many, many trees in those mountains years ago and preserved them, there would have been no foliage tours now.
Likewise, African nations are now earning much more from tourism-from their live wild animals-than they would have ever earned from hunters killing them.

Once an animal or tree is killed it is gone forever, the tourists go away. Keep them alive and the tourists would keep coming back to look at them.

If those whale sharks in Bicol had been killed, they would have brought food and money to the fishermen for a
few days. But with them gone forever, so would the food and money. Alive, they attract tourists again and again and bring jobs to the people who live there and protect them.

Similarly, if the coral reefs in our seas and the colorful creatures that live among them are harvested or destroyed, they'd bring some money to the people who harvest them. But once they're gone, they'd be gone for good. Nothing more. Preserve them; not only would the fishes keep coming back to breed among the reefs; so would the tourists-with plenty of money-to swim among these creatures and watch them.

Let's preserve our forests, and tourists will climb our mountains and explore our forests to look at trees and the animals living there. Tourists would not be flocking to Boracay, Bohol and the other tourist islands if the beaches there had been despoiled. They go there because they like the unspoiled nature of those beaches.
(To be continued)

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