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Total log ban

The Philippine forest is threatened. The forest cover is way below the 54 % required for a balanced environment. And the culprit for the fast disintegration of our forest cover is the state itself, traceable to its policies and program.

The Philippines has been exporting lumber ever since but the rate of tree cutting has been unequal with the state’s rehabilitation or reforestation programs which remains at a turtle pace.

The present situation of our forest and the environmental catastrophe in the provinces of Quezon, Aurora, and Bulacan ignited peoples’ discussions, formal or informal, to think of alternative program to the state’s authorized logging.

The state-issued logging permits are nightmare for the Cordillerans and the nearby regions. During the American period, logging in the Cordillera provided timber for the American-controlled mining industries. Logging companies emerged and logged the forests of Benguet, Mountain Province, and Ifugao. Benguet Consolidated Inc. (BCI now Benguet Corporation) was issued concession of 26,500 hectares; Lepanto Consolidated Mining Company 9,060 hectares; and Heald Lumber with 18,973 hectares. The mining corporations control of logging operations continued up to the end of World War II.

After World War II, there was a shift from logging for mining to logging for exports. The government issued logging permits and the logs were exported to Japan, which badly needed these for rehabilitation. The country became one of the world’s top log exporters with 80 % of its produced bought by Japan. The facts on logging activities in the Cordillera are described in detail under the Cordillera history book published by the Cordillera Schools Group (CSG).

The same policy continued afterwards. Cordillera became a target as laws were passed, including Presidential Decree 705, the Marcos Revised Forestry Code, which legally declared the Cordillera as forest area as it is above the 18 percent slope. I remember the Cellophil Resources Corporation (CRC) logging the forests of the Kalinga, Abra, and Mountain Province. Permits were granted to concessionaires to log in Apayao. Most of the areas logged were virgin forests.

Despite the huge profits acquired by these companies in their logging activities in the region, they failed to rehabilitate the logged areas. Instead, the communities were left alone for that task.

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With our present forest cover, a very strong sentiment to stop logging is gaining ground. The latest survey of Ibon Foundation, an independent research institution, showed that respondents are in favor of the total log ban. The ban is a means to protect our forests and to prevent disasters caused by forest denudation or destruction by mining.

Based on the survey, 88 % of the Cordillera respondents are in favor of total log ban. The survey was made in December 2004.

The result is understandable given the Cordillera experience. The indigenous people have been suffering from the state policy on logging. In fact, their indigenous forest management systems ensured the slow but appropriate reforestation of the logged-over areas.

The survey result in the Ilocos region also shows that 61 % of the respondents favor total log ban. The Ilocos provinces have been suffering due to the effect of the legal logging activities in the Cordillera.

The communities along the Abra River are affected by land slides from logged areas of Benguet during typhoons. Even the communities in Abra and Ilocos protested due to the effects of the logging by the CRC.

The state always blames the indigenous peoples as the culprit. The state claims that the indigenous practice of slash and burn and small logging activities contribute to this environmental catastrophe. But reality speaks cannot be denied anyway. The culprit is the state due to its legal logging. I join these people in their call for total ban on logging. #

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