Wanted:Environmental volunteers

HAPPY WEEKEND
Gina Dizon

Talk about a favorite motherhood statement such as environmental protection and you will readily relate the need for it in Mountain Province -- forest fires, depletion of water sources, pollution of the Chico River, landslides, and sinking barangays.

Mountain Province surely needs responsive action on the current environmental woes besetting the province and its people before this terrible damage to mother earth claw back more at us.

Travel around the province and you see black and burned mountains all over. It’s a very sad and deplorable sight. What do the mountains deserve to get this entire wanton disregard by humans? If the mountains will cry, they will cry a hundred times.

The rationale of forest burning as commonly known among some village folks is that there will be fresh grass for cows to graze on, and that burning of the mountains means renewed soil fertilizer for the next cropping season. Yet, this is a big environmental blunder.

Besides making mountains ugly, burning forests surely does kill baby trees and vegetation, living organisms and other animals living in the forest while it deprives them of their habitat. Forest fires do not in any way balance ecology nor does it make better soil fertility and sustainable livelihood.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources must have done their job and officials must have done their job too in protecting the forests from getting all these forest fires, yet, the work is not good enough. It takes respective communities to specially do their part also.

What do barangay officials do to rally the village people to protect the forest from burning? Surely, organized sectors must have ready response in guarding the very mountains where livelihood is sourced from.

Just recently, it was pointed out by Dr Ireneo Ramat of the DA’s Bureau of Soils and Water Management during the 5th Cordillera Organic Agriculture Congress held in Mountain Province that soil in the province is very sick. Ramat called on farmers to shift from synthetic to organic farm inputs if they want to save their soil. It was known that farmers are rampantly using chemical fertilizers.
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Let’s look at Buguias, vegetable producing town of Benguet. As found out in many research studies, the consistent use of chemical fertilizers has depleted the vegetable gardens of Buguias of its natural nutrients. Egged on by targets of realizing High Yielding Varieties, chemical farming gained practice among farmers and also made the soil dependent on commercial fertilizers, increased soil acidity of the soil and eventually killed nitrogen fixing bacteria. Further studies note that chemical farming lead to soil erosion due to increased porosity and lessened water holding capacity of the soil. This meant more environmental problems and complicated farming not sustainably beneficial to communities.

The Department of Agriculture, to cure its HYV program resorts to telling farmers to practise organic farming which is strongly advocated in Buguias. The DA- Mountain Province understandably must be doing their best to advocate organic farming too, yet the cooperation of farmers is direly necessary to make this happen.

Organic farming is an age-old practice done the indigenous way in many ways- composting, green manuring, and decomposing pig and chicken manure eventually mixed with the soil as fertilizer.
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Time and again, Kalinga officials have reminded Mountain Province officials to do something about the pollution of the Chico River. The waters are dirty with solid waste gliding its way to Tinglayan, Kalinga. This is too much. While the pollution is not making the environment any better, it is also not making good relationships with neighboring province Kalinga.

For sure, Mountain Province can contain its dirt in Mountain Province and find ways where to dump its dirt. Officials must have done their best but their best is not good enough. At the same time, community people reminded themselves not to dump garbage down the waters of Chico River.

Citizen volunteer groups could surely find some ways of how to make rivers clean, soil healthy, and mountains green the whole year round.

I would like to draw inspiration from the women of Bontoc- the Women’s Brigade who consistently help maintain peace and order in the capital city. Perhaps citizen groups can hold related-education sessions with respective groups about environmental protection, cleaning the rivers, constructing fire breaks, monitoring forests, catching and punishing forest burners, holding meetings with farmers with the help of barangay officials.

I guess we don’t have to wait for an NGO to provide funds to protect our environment. But should there be an NGO offering help to conduct training on protecting the environment or provide some planting materials, that would be helpful. And if there are no funds, it does not mean protecting the environment will not be done.

If the Women’s Brigade of Bontoc can volunteer their time and commitment to help maintain peace and order, surely other sectors can do a relatively similar cause for environmental protection.

Surely, it doesn’t have to take the issue of climate change to protect the environment. It’s a clear and present danger of arresting the plague that is besetting the mountains, rivers, and the soil where our very food is planted on. Then we can enjoy breathing fresh air, eating organic vegetables, staying healthy, drinking clean and safe water, incurring less or no medical expense, ensuring domestic water supply, saving our forests from erosion, having healthy relationships with our neighbors, and ensuring precious and necessary source of livelihood- farming.