Sarangani seeks to plant 1 M trees in 3 years

by Joseph Jubelag, Manila Bulletin

ALABEL, Sarangani – The Sarangani provincial government launched on Wednesday, Oct. 5, a reforestation program that seeks to plant and grow some one million trees across the province in the next three years.

SARANGANI Gov. Ruel Pacquiao and wife, Jobelle, lead the launching of the One Million tree-planting project in Barangay Bagacay, Alabel, Sarangani on Wednesday, Oct. 5.

Provincial officials led by Gov. Ruel Pacquiao attended the kick-off ceremony of the Sarangani One Million Trees project at the watershed areas of Barangay Bacagay here.

Hundreds of local officials, national government employees, and non-government organizations planted some 1,000 seedlings of iron bamboo and fruit trees, including coffee, langka, durian, rambutan, and lanzones.

Pacquiao urged residents and community stakeholders to take part in the environmental project.

“It could be a long way to go, but with the support of the community stakeholders, we can possibly save the depleting watershed of the province,” he said.

Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Officer Rolando Tuballes said the provincial government launched the environmental protection program amid a study conducted by the USAID-Safe Water Project that showed that some 20,000 hectares of the province’s forest covers have been degraded from 2015 to 2020.

He said the degradation had caused soil erosion and siltation triggered by perennial flooding.

“The massive tree-planting and tree-growing project for the next three years will intensify the reforestation of the denuded watershed areas which aimed to improve the quantity and quality of the province’s water supply,” Tuballes said.

A world without trees

Several months ago, I asked here how a world would look like without water. And, is there any difference? My today;s question is, "What would happen if all the world’s trees disappeared?"

As the Amazon fires continue to burn, writer and journalist Rachel Nuwer asks in an BBC-report: How dependent are we on the survival of forests?

In Mad Max: Fury Road, Charlize Theron’s Furiosa strives to return to “the Green Place” – a tree-filled oasis in the otherwise lifeless wasteland that the Earth has become. When Furiosa arrives at the sacred spot, however, she finds only skeletal trunks and sprawling dunes. She screams in anguish. Without trees, all hope seems lost.

Ask yourself: how would you feel? Hopeless too? Furiosa’s feelings were justified. “Forests are the lifeline of our world,” says Meg Lowman, director of the Tree Foundation, a non-profit organisation in Florida that is dedicated to tree research, exploration and education. “Without them, we lose extraordinary and essential functions for life on Earth.”

Following the Rachel Nuwer's report, trees’ services to this planet range from carbon storage and soil conservation to water cycle regulation. They support natural and human food systems and provide homes for countless species – including us, through building materials. Yet we often treat trees as disposable: as something to be harvested for economic gain or as an inconvenience in the way of human development. Since our species began practicing agriculture around 12,000 years ago, we’ve cleared nearly half of the world’s estimated 5.8 trillion trees, according to a 2015 study published in the journal Nature.

Sad to say but it's unfortunately so very true: much of the deforestation has happened in recent years. Since the onset of the industrial era, forests have declined by 32%. Especially in the tropics, many of the world’s remaining three trillion trees are falling fast, with about 15 billion cut each year, the Nature study states. In many places, tree loss is accelerating. In August, the National Institute for Space Research showed an 84% increase in fires in the Brazilian Amazon rain forest compared to the same period in 2018. Slash-and-burn is also especially on the rise in Indonesia and Madagascar.  

Making me sad and angry, or even better expressed angry first and sad then is the reality, that there have been more than 70,000 forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon in 2019. Barring an unimaginable catastrophe, however, there’s no scenario under which we would fell every tree on the planet. 

“Let me just start with how horrible a world without trees would be – they are irreplaceable,” says Isabel Rosa, a lecturer in environmental data and analysis at Bangor University in Wales. “If we get rid of all the trees, we will live [on] a planet that might not actually be able to sustain us anymore.”  And Isabel Rosa is so very right.

I am living in a big compound in Davao City with many trees and a wild tropical garden. Every time, trees have to cut or shortened, I have to leave. It's painful for me. But it's the wish of my neighbors, because branches of some trees keep on destroying their roofs.

Fact is, if trees disappeared overnight, so would much of the planet’s biodiversity. Habitat loss is already the primary driver of extinction worldwide, so the destruction of all remaining forests would be “catastrophic” for plants, animals, fungi and more, says Jayme Prevedello, an ecologist at Rio de Janeiro State University in Brazil. “There would be massive extinctions of all groups of organisms, both locally and globally.”

The loss of trees from the world would throw the climate off kilter. The planet’s climate would also be drastically altered in the short and long term. Trees mediate the water cycle by acting as biological pumps: they suck water from the soil and deposit it into the atmosphere by transforming it from liquid to vapour. By doing this, forests contribute to cloud formation and precipitation. Trees also prevent flooding by trapping water rather than letting it rush into lakes and rivers, and by buffering coastal communities from storm surges. They keep soil in place that would otherwise wash away in rain, and their root structures help microbial communities thrive.

So what's the difference between my first and today's question? Can you imagine a world without water? Can you imagine a world without trees? Or without both? Worth to think about. Worth to act about it! Even if we could live in a world without trees, who would want to?

Plant Trees and Get Land Tax Discount

 

Amazing. I thought, it's a joke. No, it wasn't!

The news came from Malaybalay City in Mindanao. Provincial board member Jay Albarece has proposed an ordinance granting real property tax discounts with lots with high density of trees to serve as incentive to residence who have been planting and protecting trees in their own lots.

I am doing this since many years. Most of my expatriates and Filipino friends and neighbors do it the same way. 

"One of the  encouraging private individuals and entities to actively participate in the reforestation of the province is to grant real property tax to those who have been growing and protecting the trees in their respective lots!" Albarece said in his proposed ordinance. 

Great idea Sir!