From gbarry@forests.org Sun Dec 5 14:26:05 2004
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 21:19:59 -0600
From: Forests.org
To: cestvr@ces.iisc.ernet.in
Subject: FORESTS: Logging Suspended in Philippines
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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY
Logging Suspended in Philippines
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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.
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December 4, 2004
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Glen Barry, Forests.org
The Philippines are being ravaged by massive human-induced floods that
have resulted from decades of horrendous forest mismanagement. And now
finally, after hundreds of deaths, the Philippine government has suspended
logging.
There are reasons that most moist tropical areas including the Philippines
were naturally densely forested. Closed canopy forests protected fragile
soils from intense downpours. Forests and their soils and root systems
acted like a sponge - holding water in times of torrential rains, and
releasing water slowly in times of drought. You can attribute this to
your God, Gaia and/or evolution. But human greed exhibited through both
legal and illegal logging has dramatically impacted life giving
rainforests. Tropical logging is murder, now, and in the future.
It is dangerous and unnatural for any tropical nation to depend upon
tropical logging as a development strategy. Nations such as Papua New
Guinea, the Congo, Brazil and elsewhere are following the Philippines and
other nation's lead in peeling their rainforest skins from their lands, at
drastic costs to their future ecological well-being and development
potential. There will be no human advancement and much misery in all
countries - tropical in particular, for the reasons given above - that
fail to identify and maintain large and strategically placed natural
forest areas adequate to provide ecosystem services such as water
regulation.
Deforestation and diminishment of ancient tropical forests is dumb, evil,
and ecocidal. It is also unnecessary and preventable. It must be stopped
and reversed. Global ecological sustainability depends upon reintegrating
natural forest cover into human communities, while maintaining remaining
large, connected and intact areas as core ecological preserves free of
industrial development and all but local traditional uses. Legal logging
(or in essence mining) of ancient forests in most cases differs from
illegal logging only in that corrupt government officials benefit even
more. In both cases millions of years of evolutionary and ecological
brilliance are being mowed for a few bucks and beer money for local
peoples, while a few become gluttonously rich.
All tropical nations rich in forest ecosystems must heed the Philippines
example and end commercial logging - both legal and illegal - and be
assisted by the international community in doing so. If the Philippines
and other tropical nations are serious about having a prosperous and
civilized future, they will begin restoring their forests and limiting the
size of their populations. To do otherwise dooms their citizens and the
world to spirally ecological collapse and great suffering. It has begun
already.
g.b.
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
ITEM #1
Title: Logging suspended in Philippines
The clear-up has already begun but many people need aid
Source: Copyright 2004, BBC News
Date: December 4, 2004
Philippines President Gloria Arroyo has suspended logging and vowed
punishment for law-breakers as the country reels from four deadly storms
in two weeks.
Legal and illegal logging is blamed for worsening the impact of the
storms, which have left 1,000 dead or missing.
Permits to fell trees across the nation will no longer be issued, pending
a review of the environmental effect.
And illegal loggers would be punished like "terrorists and kidnappers",
Mrs Arroyo said, visiting badly hit areas. She also revoked existing
licences in the worst-hit areas.
'Heinous criminals'
The Red Cross says about 800,000 people need help in the wake of the past
fortnight's storms and aid agencies have launched an appeal for more than
$2m for aid relief.
President Arroyo on Saturday flew by helicopter to visit residents and
relief workers in three devastated towns, General Nakar, Infanta and Real.
She praised the rescue efforts before turning her fury on loggers. "I'm
cancelling all [logging] permits here and suspending issuance of all
others," Mrs Arroyo said, reinforcing the view that widespread
deforestation has left the Philippines more vulnerable to mudslides.
"We are determined to make those responsible for widespread death and
destruction pay the price for their misdeeds, and we shall prosecute them
the way we do terrorists, kidnappers, drug traffickers and other heinous
criminals," Mrs Arroyo said.
She called on Congress to introduce stiffer penalties for "illegal loggers
and their cohorts, including erring government officials and law
enforcers".
Complex problem
Eight officials have already been sacked for failing to check illegal
logging in their areas, the Manila Times newspaper reported on its
website.
But experts say the problem is more complex than just cracking down on
loggers as poverty drives many people to fell trees with little regard for
the law.
Legal loggers are also responsible for much damage, campaigners say.
"There's hardly a difference between so-called illegal loggers and legal
loggers," said Orlando Mercado, a former senator who tried and failed to
pass bills outlawing logging in the 1990s.
"The only difference... is that the legal loggers have political
clout and that's the reason they can get the timber licence agreement," he
told the Reuters news agency.
The Philippines does have laws to restrict logging but the country's
forest cover has fallen below 20% from more than 60% in the 1920s.
ITEM #2
Title: Philippine Leader Bans All Logging After Deadly Storms
Source: Copyright 2004, Agence France-Presse
Date: December 5, 2004
REAL, the Philippines, Dec. 4 (Agence France-Presse) - President Gloria
Macapagal Arroyo banned all commercial logging in the Philippines on
Saturday, as rescuers rushed aid to nearly a million wet and hungry
survivors of storms that have left at least 1,100 people dead or missing.
Improving weather on the main island, Luzon, allowed military cargo planes
and helicopters to reach the worst-stricken areas of the Pampanga River
basin, while navy craft carrying aid headed for the Bicol peninsula and
the northeast coast.
Mrs. Arroyo flew by helicopter to the towns of General Nakar, Infanta and
Real on Saturday and "ordered the suspension of logging permits all over
the country," said Corazon Soliman, the social welfare secretary, who
accompanied her.
Officials have blamed logging in the Sierra Madre for the deluge of mud,
logs and boulders that buried much of the three towns.
"We are determined to make those responsible for widespread death and
destruction to pay the price for their misdeeds, and we shall prosecute
them the way we do terrorists, kidnappers, drug traffickers and other
heinous criminals," Mrs. Arroyo said in a statement.
Mayors of the three towns told her the floods and landslides that followed
a storm late Monday left at least 495 people dead and 508 missing, Ms.
Soliman said.
ITEM #3
Title: Philippine storm deaths blamed on logging
Forests that prevented slides have been cleared
Source: Copyright 2004, Reuters
Date: December 3, 2004
REAL, Philippines - Saturnino Monreal remembers when there were more large
trees than people around his village on the eastern Philippine coast,
close to where hundreds have died in floods and landslides this week.
Now, over 2,000 families live here on subsistence rice and coconut farming
and the huge trees he remembers from the 1960s have disappeared.
^ÓAs the number of people here increased, the trees started disappearing,^Ô
said Monreal, a 72-year-old farmer, whose village escaped the landslides
and floods that devastated nearby communities that have also suffered from
deforestation.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo turned her anger on illegal loggers as
the
week^Òs toll of death and missing rose over 1,000, ordering a nationwide
crackdown on the activity.
But experts say the problem is more complex and warn the environmental
cost is likely to rise without a more comprehensive policy approach.
Poverty drives many farmers and other rural residents to cut trees with
little regard for the law.
Illegal, legal logging blamed
Hernando Avellaneda, the mayor of badly-hit General Nakar town, told the
Philippine Daily Inquirer that 40 percent of his constituents relied on
illegal logging.
But legal loggers are also responsible for much of the damage, and often
cut trees outside permitted areas while corrupt officials and local
politicians turn a blind eye.
The country^Òs rapidly growing population -- set to double over the next 50
years from a current 84 million -- is also raising demand for farmland.
But the staunchly Roman Catholic Arroyo has refused to back tougher birth
control policies.
^ÓThere^Òs hardly any difference between so-called illegal loggers and legal
loggers,^Ô said Orlando Mercado, a former senator who tried and failed to
pass bills banning logging in the 1990s.
^ÓThe only difference in this country is that the legal loggers have
political clout and that^Òs the reason they can get the timber license
agreement.^Ô
Under a selective logging ban imposed in the mid-1990s, licensed loggers
are only allowed to cut trees in areas that have more than 20 percent
forest cover.
Forest cover has shrunk
The country^Òs forest cover has fallen to less than 18 percent, mostly
located in the large southern islands of Palawan and Mindanao, from 64
percent in 1920, forestry statistics show.
Some environmentalists forecast that primary forest could have vanished
from the Philippines within 20 years at current rates.
^ÓThe government just needs to implement the law, particularly for these
big illegal loggers,^Ô said Annabel Plantilla, head of the Haribon
Foundation, a Philippine environmental group.
^ÓHow can you possibly blame carabao loggers?^Ô she added, referring to the
water buffalo used by Filipino farmers.
In some ways, the Philippine experience mirrors the situation in
neighboring
Indonesia, where corruption has also gone hand-in-hand with the
disappearance of rain forest.
Environmentalists there have blamed large-scale deforestation for deadly
floods in rural areas as well as in Jakarta, where trees on nearby hills
and mountains have given way to housing tracts and golf courses.
A flash flood in November last year in the Gunung Leuser national park in
northern Sumatra devastated a resort village and buried many victims under
mud.
By one estimate, Indonesia has lost more than 75 percent of its forests
over the past few decades, leaving only 148 million acres.
Coral, fish affected, too
Philippine environmentalists say the consequences of deforestation go
beyond the landslides that have become a regular tragedy in recent years.
Loose hillsides mean that water and soil rapidly slide into the sea,
leaving a growing number of areas facing water shortages and damaging
coral and fish stock.
^ÓWe cannot continue to satisfy the loggers,^Ô said Mercado.
^ÓAs far as I am concerned the economic benefit is far outweighed by the
destruction to agriculture and our own lives.^Ô
ITEM #4
Title: Illegal logging a major factor in flood devastation of
Philippines
Source: Copyright 2004, Agence France-Presse
Date: December 1, 2004
Decades of illegal logging, unusually high rainfall and geography have all
contributed to the devastation wrought by storms that have lashed the
Philippines, the government and environmentalists say.
With hundreds dead or missing in floods and landslides in Quezon, Nueva
Ecija and Aurora provinces, blame has fallen on illegal loggers who have
stripped hillsides bare and turned lush green forests into death traps.
Geography has played its part too. The Philippine archipelago of some
7,000 islands sits astride Southeast Asia's typhoon belt and is usually
the first country to be hit by typhoons from the Pacific Ocean.
Infanta, one of the hardest-hit areas, is usually the first port of call
for an average of 19 typhoons and tropical storms that hit the Philippines
every year, said chief government weather forecaster Prisco Nilo.
He said the latest storm was the 25th to veer into the Philippines this
year, making it an exceptional year.
Government hydrologist Richard Orendain said although the residents of
Infanta and nearby Real and General Nakar are used to typhoons, what they
probably failed to anticipate was the consequences of the amount of
rainfall that fell on the region over the past week.
Orendain told AFP that in one 24-hour period on Sunday some 144
millimeters (4.3 fluid ounces) of rain fell over the region. The monthly
average for November is 611 millimeters.
"Even though it was not a strong typhoon, the destructive impact was
magnified by the amount of rain that fell over the area," he said.
"We can't really say whether illegal logging was the main cause, though it
may have contributed to it."
Orendain said the ground water table had "probably reached saturation
point" noting that the area was hard hit by another storm just a week
earlier.
"So the water had no where to go," he said.
With many in the government blaming illegal logging for the current
disaster, President Gloria Arroyo ordered a nationwide crackdown.
"Illegal logging must now be placed in the order of most serious crimes
against our people," Arroyo said in a statement Wednesday.
"The series of landslides and flashfloods that hit several parts of the
country should serve as a wake up call for us to join hands in preserving
our environment and stepping up reforestation."
Senator Richard Gordon has called for an investigation into the disaster.
"For years the the department of environment and natural resources has
failed to go after the illegal loggers operating in many parts of the
country," he told reporters Tuesday.
Vice President Noli de Castro said the country had still not learned the
lessons from landslides and flooding in 1991 on the island of Leyte which
left thousands dead.
"Illegal logging was found to be the main contributor to that disaster,"
de Castro said.
Forest economist Lourdes Catindig, of the government's natural resources
and environment department, told AFP the southern Sierra Madre, which runs
through the eastern section of the main island of Luzon, still has some
forest cover left.
"We issued a logging moratorium in the area in the 1970s," she said.
In the last decade, the Philippines has suffered severely from natural
disasters.
In 1990, central Luzon was hit by both a drought and a typhoon that
flooded practically all of Manila.
Still more damaging was an earthquake in 1990 that devastated a wide area
in Luzon, including Baguio and other northern areas.
The archipelago also straddles the so-called Pacific rim of fire and is
home to some 200 volcanoes of which 17 are still active.
In June 1991, the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century
took place at Mount Pinatubo, just 90 kilometers (55 miles) northwest of
Manila. Up to 800 people were killed and 100,000 made homeless following
the eruptions.
Networked by Forests.org, Inc., gbarry@forests.org
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