The Cordillera, the watershed cradle of Northern Luzon, had green mountains because of the numerous assorted species of trees that thrive in the various places around the region. The water flowing to the major river systems providing abundant supply for irrigation, domestic, power generation, domestic and other uses, was clean and clear that allowed people to maximize the use of the water for their daily needs. Time and again, it has been said that water is life because an individual can survive without food for a good number of days by taking in water alone. The Cordillera is also the ancestral domains of many self-identifying indigenous peoples. In the late 60s to the 80s, the struggle to defend the ancestral domains along the Chico river and between Abra and Mountain Province were in fact a struggle to preserve these headwaters. The Marcos administration then wanted to dam several sections of the Chico river for hydropower that will serve mostly the lowland areas. At the same time, a large concession to log the forests between Abra and Mountain Province were given to a crony. Because their very survival was threatened, some members of affected ancestral domains took up arms as an ultimate measure against the destruction of their homelands.
The Cordillera has a land area of more than 1.85 million hectares where 85 percent of the same are classified as grasslands and forested areas based on the standards of Presidential Decree (PD) 705 or the Forestry Reform Code of the Philippines and other related laws, rules and regulations. With the introduction of the commercial production of temperate vegetables in some towns of Benguet during the American colonial period, the extensive cultivation of these crops have grown over the years expanding to parts of Mountain Province and Ifugao. These has entailed the clearing of forested areas, a sad consequence of so-called “development”. Slowly, the inherent culture of the indigenous peoples to preserve and protect the environment has become secondary in the priorities of our people as we have embraced the market economy where agricultural production is geared to meet market demands. Thus, we now see denuded mountains, defoliated forests, disappearing water sources, and other consequences of an unhealthy environment. The reality is, what matters to people is their source of livelihood which is mostly through the agriculture farms and the operation of large-scale mining and power generation companies, aside from the infrastructure development being introduced by concerned government agencies to realize the so-called countryside development.
The spate of development that is happening around the region has actually heavily impacted on the state of the environment because from the previous green mountain ranges, most of our forests have become barren and has resulted to the occurrence of catastrophic erosions that already claimed the lives of thousands of innocent individuals and inflicted significant damages to private and public properties and more to come.
The alarming state of our environment aggravated by the proliferation of forest fires that converted our mountains into blackish color and contributing to the haze is now causing serious problems for communities. Actually, many people living in elevated areas are now complaining of the deterioration of their water supply that now affects their daily living. Forest fires caused by the unscrupulous disposal of cigarette butts, unattended burning dry materials among, others has now become a major threat to the state of the region’s environment because it actually destroyed millions worth of assorted tree species that were planted by not only the government through various reforestation programs but also the private sector and concerned individuals just to help in bringing back the greenery of our mountains.
Today, the situation is aggravated by the El Nino phenomenon continuously threatens the region’s forests because of the numerous forest fires that proliferate in different places thereby compromising the remaining forest cover and the newly planted tree species. The forest fires have now become the modern day threat to the desire of environmentalists to slowly bring back the region’s forest cover and establish a better state of our environment.
We believe that development is inevitable but not to the extent of sacrificing the state of the environment because it is the one that sustains life in the Cordillera. There are many ways by which development could co-exist with the environment that is why people should earn to adopt to the said ways before it will be too late. Let us not allow our remaining forest cover to easily vanish because we are actually risking the lives of our children and our children’s children.
Let us realize that we should be the ones that should adjust to our environment and not the other way around. We must be vigilant in the way we do things so that we will prevent instead of cause forest fires within our midst as there will come a time that our lives and properties will be compromised because of our sins to the environment.
We should act now and be instrumental in the implementation of mitigating measures that will slow down the effects of climate change to our daily lives. Let us start such things in ourselves before allowing it to radiate in our own communities and to the world, Individually and collectively, we should not allow our forest to be ablaze as we might wake up some day that what we see around are no longer green but all black.