Needed: A New Way to Treat Rivers

Our posting on President Noynoy Aquino's "slip of the tongue" on rivers was originally sent as e-mail to the senior foresters' google group to which I subscribe. Almost right after I clicked "send", I got the following feedback.

From: "Aljoy.Abarquez@csiro.au"
To: srforester@googlegroups.com
Sent: Mon, August 2, 2010 2:59:37 PM
Subject: RE: [srforester] (ST) On P-Noy, Rivers and Foresters

You should send this to a newspaper near you, Charlz!

Aljoy

MY REPLY:
Send it to a newspaper? Not a bad idea, Aljoy. Thanks. Will try to reformat it into a letter to the editor of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

In fact, I'm slightly revising the item now, en route to being posted in my blogsite (whose construction, by the way, took me off temporarily from participating in the village forestry, Laguna Lake, Ilocano language, etc. conversations in this e-group that you have been so gallantly contributing to).

Oh well, kai-start ko pa lang ang aking webpage. Wala pa siya gaanong laman, kaya di pa siya pwedeng iwagayway sa madlang readers. In other words, to the friends (and detractors) of charlz castro, please wait for further notice until it will be announced in this e-group that your kuliglig gubat now has a blogsite.

...

From: emmanuel salvosa
To: srforester@googlegroups.com
Sent: Mon, August 2, 2010 3:23:46 PM
Subject: Re: [srforester] (ST) On P-Noy, Rivers and Foresters

You just made my day, my Manong Kumpadre. The voice from the river has to be heard.

In the gentle province where I got transplanted (the Vizcaya of your Boyhood), the toiling and unwashed masses, troop to Villa Carayan (river), for their summer retreat, since the fancier named Villas are way too expensive for their meager budget. In no small measure, we could revisit the rivers of our youth, or of this present time, reconnect and do something to bring back vitality.

I guess foresters should have a better way of looking at rivers and treating them too. Maybe we can show them how to do it differently.

By my own account, one of the refreshingly beautiful rivers I saw (in 2007) was the Pandan river, in Pandan, Antique. Caught a glimpse of a group of young people huddled around a guy strumming on the guitar, while the boys gleefully take the dive from the outstretched branch of a tree. I would love to share with you pictures of rivers that I saw over the years.

MY REPLY:
Dear Kabsat Sonny, I like your line "the voice from the river has to be heard."

Thanks to P-Noy's Cory memorial speech (I almost called it "slip of the tongue"), it really dawned on me that despite their ubiquity a great injustice is being done to our country's rivers, particularly the ones that serve as supermarket of sorts for men, women, children, senior citizens, and yes the "unwashed masses" particularly in the boondocks that have no access to government services.

While I don't belittle the efforts to make the Pasig River sing and smell good again, it would be heroism indeed (probably qualified as future entry in the CNN Hero Awards) for somebody bold and caring to also do something significant enough to save the small freshwater rivers. I'm doing some snooping now at our river policies, using as point of departure what I heard a few years back in one GOP-World Bank mission that my friend Ernie Guiang and I participated in somewhere in Bicol, that there are laws prohibiting the occupancy/disturbance of both sides of the river. As it is, despite such laws(?), I believe many of our small rivers now are fast becoming mini-versions of what has happened to the once inspiring and poem-inducing Pasig.

You're right, we foresters should have a better way of looking at and treating rivers -- and showing other people how to do it differently. I have in my laptop a draft of one small but beautiful approach (I haven't forgotten E.F. Schumacher, pare ko!) on how to do that, using as launching pad the forester's presumed mastery of the upland landscape, hydrology, and forest communities -- and using as framework the need to ease the negative impacts of climate change. Kumukuha lang muna ako ng buwelo.

...

From: Ric Umali
To: srforester@googlegroups.com
Sent: Mon, August 2, 2010 3:18:36 PM
Subject: Re: [srforester] (ST) On P-Noy, Rivers and Foresters

Dear Charlz,

Just like you I was very glad to hear something from PNOY on the environment with focus on rivers.

Thanks for explaining the importance of rivers to forests and foresters. Your footnote on the Cagayan River basin is much appreciated in view of on-going efforts related to climate change which I am expounding below.

As circulated earlier the National Framework Strategy for Climate Change was approved as part of the Climate Change Act of 2009. River Basin Management, with specified guidelines, is one of the 6 main pillars in the implementation of the Law and principally included as initiatives of the SFFI and presented to Secretary Alvarez and the CCC in Malacañang a few months back.

The program for RBM has been approved for immediate implementation subject to the confirmation of PNOY when he calls the first meeting of the CCC under his chairmanship. It will also be presented to donors during the on-going negotiations this week on CC in Bonn, Germany. This will first be done on the Cagayan River Basin and its watersheds and tributaries. This basin is the largest with a total catchment area of 2.7 million hectares or about 9% of our total land area and water are mostly coming from the Chico and Magat watersheds upstream. Of course the Cagayan river is the longest and biggest in the country. In this basin, preparatory planning and ground work will be started soon and will cover forestry activities on carbon accounting baseline and measurements and payments, REDD+, National appropriate mitigating measures (NAMA), integrated ecosystems, and related to the work of the other pillars on food security/irrigation, renewable energy sources, green infrastructures, disaster risk reduction, and coastal/marine ecosystems. SFM will be addressed too as priority forestry areas include those with CBFM and IFMA tenures.

There is growing consensus now that RBM is in fact the main pillar governing all the other 5 pillars. This is where our forestry expertise is much needed. All of these are also done in coordination with DENR leadership since they will be doing most of these on the ground.

What we cannot do while waiting for SFMA can be done to a large extent under the Climate Change Act -- NFSCC. Thanks to the continuing efforts of SFFI backed up by all the forestry sub-groups.

RICARDO M. UMALI
President and CEO
Sustainable Ecosystems International Corp.
19-A Matimtiman St., Teacher's Village West
Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines

P-Noy, Rivers and Foresters

In President Noynoy Aquino’s speech after the televised mass to commemorate the first death anniversary yesterday of his mother President Corazon C. Aquino, he touched on a subject that particularly tugged at my heart as a rural-born and village-bred forester.

The bachelor president may have said it in passing (which was probably why the usually alert ABS-CBN commentators did not even seem to notice it), but in saying that he would soon move to his new home by the stinking Pasig River, he added a striking one-liner that went something like “the pollution of rivers or environmental destruction is a form of corruption.”

I don’t know about my fellow river-loving foresters. But, to me, P-Noy’s reference to rivers, even if it appeared oblique, speaks volumes.

Forget for a while corruption. Rivers are a component of natural resources that we have not really paid significant and sustained attention to as a nation. Even as rivers are the major source (apart from the rains)of irrigation for the country’s beleaguered rice-producing sector, even as they are still the source of drinking water and fish for many Philippine communities, even if we may have had such movements as “Piso para sa Pasig” and other “sagip-ilog” attempts elsewhere, our river management and protection efforts did not go beyond making rivers unfortunate receptacles of sewage, garbage, excreta, mine tailings, industrial wastes, and other filth.

The last time I looked, river management is said to be the outlook of LGUs. If at all DENR is involved, it merely revolves around the processing of environmental compliance certificates (ECCs) for potentially polluting industries. We all know, however, that most LGU officials have concerns and interests much closer to their hearts and political dreams than rivers. We also know that environmental regulations become enforced only when dead fish begin floating by the thousands or when the mass media cry foul over water that even the most stupid of pigs or carabaos are afraid to wallow in. The BFAR, the NIA and allied water agencies are not of much help either, concerned as they are with mandates that do not include keeping the rivers alive, food-rich and useful.

My contention is that whether they are with the DENR, LGUs, NIA, LUWA, NGOs or other such influential sectors, the stewardship of rivers should be within the bragging rights of foresters, especially those whose professional advocacy is watershed conservation. Of what good are water-giving watersheds if the rivers and streams that they feed with life-giving/life-supporting/life-enriching freshwater become poisoned or buried by municipal wastes and mine tailings, or rendered useless by siltation from agriculture, road-building, earth-moving, and construction activities?

Those who are into wildlife conservation may not fully agree, but river ecosystems too are vital to biodiversity. The situation may be different now, but as a boy I encountered – and tasted -- more flora and fauna along the rivers than in the deep-blue mountain forests in our barrio. It was in the forest remnants by the river that I learned to identify such trees as anteng (pagsahingin), alukon (himbabao), bitnong (tan-ag), kallautit (kalumpit), appatut (achuete), tebbeg (tibig), lupa (lipang kalabaw), bittaog (bitaog), samak (binunga), pakak (antipolo), and kaburaw (kabuyaw), to name a few.

It was in the river that my grandparents taught me edible flora – e.g. ballaiba, tabtaba, bulbulintik, taratara and other river greens; karot (nami) that is said to be poisonous if not sliced thinly then soaked in running river water before dried and cooked as rice substitute; ariwat and kitkitiwit (vines with edible fruits and young leaves). On weekends this rainy time of the year, we went to the river to comb their then still bushy banks for pako (edible fern), butbutones (wild button tomatoes), wild ampalaya leaves, rabong (bamboo shoots), kudet (tengang-daga), tigi (pongapong), and uong (mushroom).

The river was also our playground. Armed with palsiit (tirador), my cousins and I frequented the river to try our Olympian skills at running barefoot and at times naked after the papa (wild ducks) and tukling (tikling) that cavorted in the reedy portions. When there was not much kaingin or farm work to do, we went to the river with our pana (speargun) and santol-wood antiparra (goggles) to catch bunog (biyang-bato), bukto (biya), ar-aro (martiniko), gurami, tilapia and dalag.

When I could not wean my cousins from their palay-drying chores, I would go to the river alone and look for bayyek (tadpoles) or akasit (talangka) in the shallow portions or I would scour the river debris and driftwood to collect forest seeds of all shapes that I contributed for extra points to my elementary science teacher’s classroom display. In summer, we joined our aunts to gather the edible pearly eggs and nymphs of the abuos (karakara; tailor ant) and at twilight we competed with other village folks in catching abal-abal (salagubang) that we used as toys/playmates as well as to whet our entomophagous appetites.

This goes without saying that the state of Philippine rivers presents a window of opportunity for new programs and policies for both Forester Mon Paje at the DENR and Forester/House-of-Representatives-Person Flor Tesoro and company. I’m also calling on my colleagues in the academe and the R&D sector to give a try at expanding or upgrading their teaching/research/extension concerns by going outside the forestry box and include courses, policy studies, and development thrusts that revolve around river ecosystems stewardship.

Indeed, it will certainly be refreshing one of these days to step into the portals of the UPLB-CFNR and/or the field offices of the DENR and see them under a new morning sun doing justice to the name “Natural Resources” by their including in their programs something on other natural resources/ecosystems -- not only forests and mineral resources. For a start, how about sections/projects/focal persons for freshwater ecosystems such as rivers, ponds and lakes? How about CBFM, social forestry, or village forestry that includes riverine communities, enriching remnant forests, riverbank agroforestry, river ecotourism, aquaculture, vengineering, and the like river-focused activities and concerns?

As a side note, one of the first pronouncements of P-Noy as a president was to eradicate the obnoxious use of the wangwang (siren). Incidentally, this reminds me that in my native town Dupax, we Isinay-speaking half-Ilocano kids used the word wangwang to refer to river. I would be happy if in addition to eradicating the illegal use of the wangwang in Metro Manila and elsewhere and improving the condition of the Pasig River, P-Noy’s administration will also be able to eradicate the abuse/misuse of the rivers that we call wangwang in our part of the Sierra Madre/Caraballo and wawwang in some parts of the Cordillera.

As a footnote, when I was not yet a forester, I didn’t know that my town’s wangwang was officially called Benay and is one of the rivers of Nueva Vizcaya that contributes water to the Cagayan River. First, it merges with the Imugan River of Sta. Fe and the Pampang River of Kayapa, and then passes through and beautifully irrigates Forester Rudy Leal’s town of Bambang, goes on to roar alongside the Cagayan Valley Highway in front of Barangay Vista Hills of Forester Romy Acosta, merges with the Ibulao River and mountain streams coming from the majestic rice terraces of Forester Moises Butic’s Ifugao, and becomes the Magat River that goes on to become the Magat Multipurpose Dam near the hometown of Forester Guiller Mendoza in Ramon, Isabela, and then downstream to other riverside towns of Forester Nestor Baguinon’s Cagayan.