BENCHWARMER

Baguio staking its claim over its land
RAMON DACAWI

A Baguio being revisited by those who first came up when they were young, say the ‘60s, is now felt obligated to explain to them the lost scent of pine. It’s easier to listen to those who wax nostalgic after taking time to calm down from the shock of it all than to those who demand answers to accusations of our neglect.

So the late Baguio journalist Willy Cacdac and I wanted to do a Pacquiao performance on the face of a fellow Baguio boy who left early to find his place and material fortune somewhere – away from the local sun. He came home for a high school reunion and bristled the moment he saw us. I almost swore I saw smoke and fire blowing out of his nostrils, until Willy gave him his come-uppance. .

“You went away to get rich and then come back now to blame us who never left and are still working within our limited givens to teach children to plant,” Willy told him, not exactly in those words but quite gibberish as he was trying to rein in his fists from flying.

That’s right. We are more angry than you who come home for a while to find fault, then leave in disgust without leaving behind a centavo for what those who are trying to man the fort, are trying to do – save what remains of your boyhood
environment.

Anybody who has been up here pine for the lost scent of pine. Problem is, over a hundred years after the Americans drew a wide circle from the center the house of Ibaloi headman the Mateo Carino and declared it as site for the country’s summer capital, everybody, itseems, still aches to own a piece of what remains of this former paradise turning into a concrete jungle like any other down there.

This is what I tell friends from Metro-Manila who ask what we’ve done to undo their fond memories of Baguio: Your yearning to buy a home or open a business here encourages subdivision and commercial developers from where you come to also come up and buy what remains of Baguio’s pine stands.

We did raise little hands of protest, only to find ourselves wringing them out of helplessness when environmental compliance papers get approved in Metro-Manila. That’s where moneyed developers come from. That’s where emanate now and then orders for us to protect Baguio’s environmental integrity.

But we are not that helpless or un-empowered (to borrow that development gobbledygook) from stopping more concrete from covering and sealing what remains of our urban green. We can level the playing field and slow down urban infrastructure congestion and sprawl.

The key to that comes from the experience of The (and truly THE) Nature Conservancy. Founded in 1951 and based in Arlington, Virginia, The Nature Conservancy has, under its protection, 117 million acres (473,000 hectares) of lands of all types and 5,000 miles ofrivers worldwide. With over a million members, it operates in all the 50 United States and in more than 30 countries.

How does the Conservancy ground its slogan, “ Protecting Nature. Preserving Life.” The Nature Conservancy’s key protection tool, as you can glean from its web page, is land acquisition. The strategy works against land speculation towards urbanization. It preserves and protects the natural habitat of all the plant and animals naturally living in a piece of desert, swamp or forest, which, like Baguio may also serve as a traditional wintering and refueling station.

Wintering, also for people who believe they are part of and can really commune withnature. It started buying land in 1955, when it acquired 60 acres along the Mianus River Gorge on the New York-Connecticut border. In 1991, The Nature Conservancy launched its “Last Great Places: An Alliance for People and the Environment initiative, a multinational, $300 million effort to protect large-scale ecosystems by making people part of the solution. The initiative emphasizes core reserve areas surrounded by buffer zones, where appropriate human uses are encouraged.”

Baguio and the Cordillera are two of the Last Great Places in the Philippines where a similar initiative in partnership between government and private sector, between locals and those who came up and fell in love with it, can be done.

Perhaps next year, and the years after, the city council can set aside P100 million from the annual city budget for the purchase of a remaining forest stand, a historic or heritage site, a still un-built area within the central business district, and preserve these as a nature or open space. This would mean sacrifice of some service projects. Yet the impact of it would be tremendous in the long run, when our kids are the ones managing the environment they will inherit from us.

The Nature Conservancy, I’m sure, would be only too willing to support this program of reclaiming what remains of nature for nature, to teach us how to take the steps that this great institution took over the years.

I’m sure, too, that Baguio expats would be only too willing to support such an effort by way of donations while we locals can unite as stewards of land preserved by such program. Same with those who come and visit and tell us we’re destroying the natural Disneyland of their youth. In this way, people like Dr. Julie Camdas-Cabato, who is doing a quixotic job trying to muster support for the revival of the Balili River, won’t be that lonely.

This idea is connected to some thing personal. I grew up seeing my father, a gardener at the Pacdal Forest Nursery, coax year in and year out, pine seeds to sprout, petunias and carnations to bloom. Some of the pine saplings he tended were eventually balled andreplanted at that pinestand beside the Baguio Convention Center.

We’re all sentimental about Baguio. Perhaps this land reclamation program can be the rallying point towards transcending shouting matches over who to blame for the pervasive “utak semento” and land-staking. (e-mail:rdacawi@yahoo.com for comments).