Poverty, graft at root of Philippine tragedy

Poverty, graft at root of Philippine tragedy

Stuart Grudgings and Roli Ng,
Reuters/Real, Philippines

Saturnino Monreal remembers when there were more large trees than
people around his village on the eastern Philippine coast, close
to where hundreds have died in floods and landslides this week.

Now, over 2,000 families live here on subsistence rice and
coconut farming and the huge trees he remembers from the 1960s
have disappeared.

"As the number of people here increased, the trees started
disappearing," said Monreal, a 72-year-old farmer, whose village
escaped the landslides and floods that devastated nearby
communities that have also suffered from deforestation.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo turned her anger on illegal
loggers as the week's toll of death and missing rose over 1,000,
ordering a nationwide crackdown on the activity.

But experts say the problem is more complex and warn the
environmental cost is likely to rise without a more comprehensive
policy approach.

Poverty drives many farmers and other rural residents to cut
trees with little regard for the law.

Hernando Avellaneda, the mayor of badly-hit General Nakar
town, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that 40 percent of his
constituents relied on illegal logging.

But legal loggers are also responsible for much of the damage,
and often cut trees outside permitted areas while corrupt
officials and local politicians turn a blind eye.

The country's rapidly growing population -- set to double over
the next 50 years from a current 84 million -- is also raising
demand for farmland. But the staunchly Roman Catholic Arroyo has
refused to back tougher birth control policies.

"There's hardly any difference between so-called illegal
loggers and legal loggers," said Orlando Mercado, a former
senator who tried and failed to pass bills banning logging in the
1990s.

"The only difference in this country is that the legal loggers
have political clout and that's the reason they can get the
timber license agreement."

Under a selective logging ban imposed in the mid-1990s,
licensed loggers are only allowed to cut trees in areas that have
more than 20 percent forest cover.

The country's forest cover has fallen to less than 18 percent,
mostly located in the large southern islands of Palawan and
Mindanao, from 64 percent in 1920, forestry statistics show.

Some environmentalists forecast that primary forest could have
vanished from the Philippines within 20 years at current rates.

"The government just needs to implement the law, particularly
for these big illegal loggers," said Annabel Plantilla, head of
the Haribon Foundation, a Philippine environmental group.

"How can you possibly blame carabao loggers?" she added,
referring to the water buffalo used by Filipino farmers.

In some ways, the Philippine experience mirrors the situation
in neighboring Indonesia, where corruption has also gone hand-in-
hand with the disappearance of rain forest.

Environmentalists there have blamed large-scale deforestation
for deadly floods in rural areas as well as in Jakarta, where
trees on nearby hills and mountains have given way to housing
tracts and golf courses.

A flash flood in November last year in the Gunung Leuser
national park in northern Sumatra devastated a resort village and
buried many victims under mud.

By one estimate, Indonesia has lost more than 75 percent of
its forests over the past few decades, leaving only 60 million
hectares.

Philippine environmentalists say the consequences of
deforestation go beyond the landslides that have become a regular
tragedy in recent years.

Loose hillsides mean that water and soil rapidly slide into
the sea, leaving a growing number of areas facing water shortages
and damaging coral and fish stock.

"We cannot continue to satisfy the loggers," said Mercado.

"As far as I am concerned the economic benefit is far
outweighed by the destruction to agriculture and our own lives."