BENCHWARMER
Ramon
S. Dacawi
(Written six
years ago years ago, this revisited piece comes to the fore anew as we try anew
to present a neglected view of the important role of the Cordilleras in
national development, a region whose gold has been mined out in the name of
national development, who hydroelectric power dams are being rehabilitated and
whose rivers continue to be exploited for energy, sometimes at the expense of
its villages which were the last to be energized. – RD)
FOR quite
some time now, our official, legal and actual view of what makes a disaster is
anchored on its immediate impact on human life, limb and property.
A state of
calamity is determined and declared as such by the number of lives and
properties lost or damaged in the wake of a typhoon, fire or earthquake.
It is
measured by the number of houses, bancas, fishponds, farmlands and public
infrastructure destroyed, by the number of schools, roads and bridges to be
rebuilt.
Unless
human lives and properties are involved, a forest fire, however extensive the
swath of destruction it leaves on trees, flora and fauna, is hardly viewed as a
disaster. It doesn't merit declaration of a state of calamity that would allow
funding for rehabilitation. Let nature rehabilitate itself.
Between a
mature tree and a house built recently beside it, the former must go. It has to
be cut for it poses danger to life and property. Why the house, in the first
place, had to be built beside the tree is hardly a legitimate question to ask.
So when the tree is cut, the property owner is rewarded for his acquisitive
foresight for material things -- in terms of free lumber to expand his
house.
Notwithstanding
our ability to define "sustainable development", tree, forest and
watershed conservation and protection remain beyond our sense of urgency or
mental grasp. Otherwise, we won't be having this protocol that lumps
suppression of any fire under the command of the Bureau of Fire Protection
which, for all intents and purposes, is equipped and trained to combat
infrastructure – not forest - fires.
Otherwise, Congress
would not have sat on the country's forest management plan our foresters
drafted and submitted decades ago. Otherwise, Congress would have gone beyond
taking to task the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) for
the denudation of our watersheds and forests.
A DENR
official down there in Metro Manila told me why Congress can't provide as much
budgetary allocation for watershed and forest conservation and protection as it
does for farm production: Trees can't vote but farmers can and do.
And yet,
the official added, "we get the flak whenever rice production dips due to
the drying up of the forest water source".
Up here in
the unique and remaining Cordillera pine stands and mossy forests, a disaster
has long been in the offing. It is triggered by years of neglect of a region
which mineral, forest and water resources were harnessed in the name of
national development, yet short-changed of benefits accruing from their
extraction and exploitation.
Some giant
firms that mined out the gold now want to still hold on to the land. New,
speculative ones promise "responsible mining", to soften opposition
to further exploration and eventual extraction of what remains of the lode in
tribal lands
For some
time now, the lowlands have been blaming us up here whenever they are flooded
yet do not comprehend our sacrifice that allowed the construction and operation
of the dams and mines.
They now
complain that we have not preserved the mossy forests that, for generations,
have been the life-blood of their farms. Yet we up here were and are
practically alone in their upkeep through the “muyong” “lapat” and other
indigenous and time-honored watershed management practices, without substantial
support from down there.
Fact is the
lowlands can’t care less if we don’t get our share from national wealth taxes
and other benefits from the operation of hydroelectric power dams, funds that
would have enabled us to maintain the integrity of the watersheds for their
benefit.
Now they
want to talk to us, hopefully about shared responsibility in conserving these
watersheds that generate electric power for their homes and industries and
irrigation for their farmlands. For quite some time now, we've been trying to
tell them so.
Still, we,
the watershed keepers, have been slow in aggressively fighting for what is due
us. For one, it was only recently that we launched a serious push for a
redefinition of a "host community" under the Electric Power Industry
Reform Act (Epira), to entitle us to shares from the one-centavo set aside for
every kilowatt hour the dams produce and sell. Like our concept of fire as a
disaster, the law's definition of a "host community" is
infrastructure-based, limited to where the dam is located.
Over a
decade after the controversial Epira was passed, the narrow definition remains.
This issue was raised by Forester Manny Pogeyed immediately after the Epira law
was passed. Manny, by the way is one of the only three or four of the country’s
trainors in forest fire management who are all from the Cordillera.
We raised
the issue before the Cordillera Regional Development Council and to then Energy
Secretary Vincent Perez when he came to Baguio for a public hearing to gather
inputs to the implementing rules and regulations of the law. The same was raised
by regional economic and development director Juan Ngalob during that public
hearing.
Perez
described that input as an “insightful observation” and promised to consider it
as part of the IRR of the law. As it turned out, that provision was never
reflected in the IRR which was a copycat of the IRR of the Energy Crisis Act of
1992.
We raised
the issue before then Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes during a press conference
here. Told the secretary my cousins in Hungduan, Ifugao were keen on diverting
the flow of the Hapao River, a major feeder to the Magat Dam, to dramatize
their protest over the lack of support to them as keepers of the watersheds
that keep the dam’s turbines running.
The
secretary was startled by the idea. We clarified it was an Ifugao joke, but
meant to draw government attention to the years of inequity in the distribution
of benefits from resource exploitation. On second thought, the Ifugaos might as
well take that plan seriously. After all, they can do it, as did their
ancestors in carving whole mountainsides into rice terraces with the crudest of
tools.
It took
come-backing Ifugao governor and now Rep. Teddy Baguilat to raise the
issue again, during the First Cordillera Regional Watershed Summit in late
2008.
With or
without a summit, Baguilat felt this and other resource-based issues should now
be on top of our regional development agenda, an agenda anchored on fighting
for what is due us from the exploitation of what remains of our natural
resources up here.
For so
long, the agenda for national development has been "user-friendly",
friendly to the beneficiaries of development down there but disastrous to us,
the resource base up here. In sum, what happened – and is happening -
reflects my myopic and warped view of what the build-operate-transfer (BOT)
scheme of development actually is on the ground, especially in the
Cordillera where, I guess, it was piloted. They built and operated the mines
and dams up here but transferred the gold and electric power to
Metro
Manila and other places down there.
With
another environmental disaster in the offing, we ask the same old question:
Will development and exploitation of our resources up here be forever for those
down there at our expense up here who are blamed for the flooding and drought
down there?
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