ANL March 2012 Issue

E  D  I  T  O  R  I  A  L

Deeper look at month of  “March”

MARCH is the third month in both the Julian and Gregorian calendars; likewise ending the first quarter of the year. It used to be the first month of the year for ancient Rome. March did have a share of history but we will not go that far as it is best done for you by Wikipedia.

We intend to look more intensely on the peripheral significance of March to the obtaining condition of our times—let’s say to women, to the environment, to politics, to the economy, and what have you.  Objectively, all of us here are at stake, Asinganians or otherwise.

To begin with,  March is nationally declared and observed as Fire Prevention Month.  ANL is ill-prepared here to present some facts on how March came to be so but it is said that it holds the distinction of most fire occurrences so far on record as against any other month of the year.

Sparingly, sort of a fire was ignited in the prairie of Philippine politics! Heating up and spreading like a wildfire, the first-ever act to unseat via impeachment a head of the country’s Supreme Court hit feverish pitch in March as the defense unloaded a barrage of its own witnesses to debunk charges of felonious acts on Chief Justice Renato Corona. The guy is said to be a former “lapdog” of a “cat-size” former tenant of Malacanang.

Meanwhile, a day in March was slated to honor the first big strides in history of the erstwhile “weaker sex”. Their heroic awakening in the early 1900’s shook the industrializing world with organized struggles never before seen with unified voice and militancy zeroing in on the rights and welfare of the otherwise socially, politically, economically and culturally discriminated women—their fight for shorter working hours, better pay,  and the right to vote.  The snowballing women’s movement at that point in time was responsible in fixing March 8 to become the now famous International Women’s Day.

Equally highlighting March on the calendar since 1993 is the 22^nd day of the month wherein it was designated by the United Nations as the very first “World Water Day”. On its first anniversary celebration in 1994, World Water Day carried the theme: “Caring for our Water Resources is Everybody’s Business”. In 1995, it bannered the theme: “Women and Water”, again stressing on the vital role women shall pursue in both caring for her water source and the wise utilization of this life-sustaining resource.

This year, 2012, World Water Day upholds the theme: “Water and Food Security”, aptly reminding mankind of the all-encompassing relation between the two where one won’t work without the other;  more so for water in food production and economic security. 

Incidentally, March 23 is World Tuberculosis Day. Sadly though, TB is known to be an illness of the poor and malnourished which sounds familiar around here. Asingan NewsLine  joins everyone in the campaign effort for a tuberculosis-free Philippines and in asserting, “Water is Life!”  eb . anl

 N   E   W   S   L   I   N   E

Dam  waters  “off ” for months

By:  Engr. Joe L. Sevilla [Asingan Correspondent]

THERE you go again.

Summer 2010—following the onslaught of typhoon Pepeng in late September 2009— when the virtual drying up of the Agno River was first witnessed by rural folks rendering arid and idle hundreds of hectares of lands in Asingan unplanted with the prescribed crops for the period. Worse, it was a repeat performance in 2011.

No irrigation water, no planting activities. No crops, no income, wailed the hapless small tenant-farmers. Lay blame to whom?

Apparently sensing a longer dry spell after Pepeng, the mammoth San Roque Dam  reportedly implemented in 2010 a haphazard decision to close down its spillways pouring downstream Agno without official advisory to the unsuspecting public.  On second take, in 2011, management reportedly sounded off verbally but none of a coordinated information campaign to lessen the damage and placate the victims.

This 2012,  as what the San Roque Dam management did last year according to a friendly source from within management, the Dam would close spillways beginning April until August to ensure operational water level for the dam’s turbines to generate electricity in full capacity.

But what really is the underlying policy objective of the San Roque Dam as a “development project”?

Simply put, it’s an 80-20 benefit sharing  scheme for industry and agriculture respectively. Meaning, San Roque Dam is on the main 80% electricity generation for commercial industries; and 20%  for  agriculture in terms of irrigation and related services.  A decade since San Roque was declared partly operational in 2002, the irrigation canals winding from the supply outlets of the dam remain largely unfinished up to this day.

So there goes the wrong notions that firstly, agriculture is the prime concern of San Roque; secondly, the irrigation component of the dam is now operational. No, sir. Irrigation supply in Asingan and other towns along the Agno River in Pangasinan still comes from small improvised irrigation systems [mini-dams] built and tapped by small farmers from the banks of Agno right after rainy-typhoon days.

During rainy season these mini-irrigation systems are being washed out by cascading flood waters tilting back the cycle to square one for the hapless small and poor tenant-farmers whose absentee landlords hardly give a damn, much less a hand—fees, etc.—to  the damning problem of irrigation. They do give a damn demanding equal share from the famers’ produce nourished by the latter’s sweat and blood.  jls . anl

P   U   N   C   H   L   I   N   E

A Commentary :  “Who is who?” [Last of Two Parts]

By:  Ruben M. Balino

“WE DO NOT burn trees, only the wild grasses in the clearings done over by loggers…Big trees are sacred to us…” —a Kankannaey elder

This assertion of a Cordillera native in northern Benguet province is firmly buttressed by a book written by the Bakun Indigenous Tribes Organization [Bito] and published by the International Labor Organization in 2002. The book says that any major activity of the natives including cutting of trees and fishing need some rituals to ask the nod and blessings of the unseen gods and spirits known as “tumungaw” whom they consider as guardians of the entire forest ecosystem—the trees, soil, rivers, springs included. [newsinfo.inquirer. net]

In cases where indigenous peoples are actively engaged in logging, these are done in a manner more sustainable than the practices of big-time loggers using huge machines and logging roads. In some countries in Asia and Africa, natives are using elephants in moving logs out of the cutting site with very minimal damage to the environment. [www. createspace.com] via rmu

The Yanesha in the upper Peruvian Amazon and the Tibetans in the Himalayas can teach us some amazing indigenous practices. Over a period of time, these peoples have devised traditional knowledge in conserving and managing their local resources,  going as far as enriching biodiversity. They have also fine-tuned  ways to adapt to and mitigate climate change. The Yanesha’s mastery of creating new biodiversity is done by breeding new cultivars.

The Tibetans, like the Yanesha, had long emphasized adaptation and biodiversity. They now grow grapes  which previously could not survive from severe winter in the Himalayas purposely for wine making—ice wine being their specialty. They are mitigating climate change by incorporating large amount of organic matter into the soil, conserving forests that are expanding [afforestation] and preserving sacred areas with high biodiversity and old-growth forests.  All these indigenous measures practiced by the Yanesha and Tibetans were aimed at sustainability for the future which science has yet to fully acknowledge and appreciate. [www.sciencedaily.com] via rmu

Back into the Cordilleras—in Ifugao province—similar kind of stewardship-management of local resources known as Pinugo or Muyung is  being voluntarily practiced since time immemorial amongst the indigenous upland populace. This native practice is an indigenous forest management system unique to the Ifugaos—one of seven ethno-liguistic groups inhabiting the six-province Cordillera Administrative Region. They took upon themselves to teach their kids at young age to learn to preserve nature by helping plant trees and dissuade people in cutting trees.

The pinugo/muyung covers clan-owned woodlots or forests located above the rice terraces protecting and sustaining irrigation supply to the terraced farmlands on the lower slopes of the mountains. A set of customary laws and values govern the system based on the indigenous principle that intrinsically attached the Ifugao people to the land and environment. For the Ifugao household, the pinugo/muyung—aside from irrigation—is a source of food, medicine, domestic water, fuel, lumber for housing and woodcarving, botanical pesticides, and cash derived from crop production. It likewise serves as best preventive measure against soil erosion and to at least minimize the impact of typhoons and global warming. [www.youtube.com] via rmu

At the peak of tenured logging operations in the country in the 1960’s, the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization did come out early the next decade with an alarming data saying that unregulated [illegal] logging stripped 90,000 hectares of forest annually. [The Weekly Nation, 24 Apr ‘72].  It is indeed “alarming” since the UN-FAO report did not venture coming out with any data on how much area did licensed logging companies cleared—legitimately or otherwise—annually! 

 

This writer, himself a former company forester and logging supervisor of a big logging company in Cagayan Valley knows only too well how tenured [Timber License Agreement holders] loggers extract trees and profit out of their concession areas while violating the laws of the republic in wanton disregard. On the one hand, logging companies violate labor laws by obliging their employees to work overtime onsite-in-the-woods—most often at 24 hours a day-seven days a week—without overtime pay; salaries at below the minimum wage; less any benefit like SSS premium and hazards pay, etc..

On the other, most logging companies normally strayed out of their allotted “operation area” for the year and exceed twice or over their annual allowable cut; they fake the required building and maintenance of a forest nursery much less conduct any reforestation activity; they violate the restriction on species to cut to include any species like narra, tindalo, almaciga, kamagong, molave and other prohibited hardwoods on the way of their rampaging heavy logging equipment; they ignore the very specific and strict provision of the TLA on the 30-Centimeter DBH [diameter breast height] cutting limit of tree species allowed for harvest. 

Moreover, bigtime tenured loggers and “salabadyok” [illegal loggers] are far more devastating and harmful to the environment with their advance heavy equipment and their use of logging roads cut out of the mountainsides laid down unmaintained, or just remained a dirt road year in and year out enhancing soil run-off and erosion during rainy days.

Mining companies, too, whose extremely polluting and extensively earth-moving operations are doggedly harmful to forest ecological balance and lowland agriculture were never indicted of their culpability for these damages to the environment—air, land and water ecosystems.

What’s the business of a UN-FAO monitoring the country’s illegal loggers whilst keeping blind on its client-country’s licensed loggers who also sit in government as politicians, warlords and dynasty bosses? And why gang up on the so-called “kaingero” as the whipping boy on a “crime” he is not at all capable of doing, e. g., logging? The poor and small kaingero has only his hand and a hoe, or an axe. He can’t even afford to buy a small chainsaw by the thousands of pesos. He has only foot trails and not logging roads as he has only a small native carabao and not even a ten-wheeler truck and a small bulldozer.

No thanks to UN-FAO and its client country’s bagmen also known as “tenured bigtime loggers”!

L   I   T   E   R   A   R   Y

a.   p o e m

“genial innocence”

           

              - i –

need not a painter

nor an sculptor

need not a poet

nor a philosopher

just be a daring eye

to capture up images

in their barest of bare

be a sensitive heart

to be keen and kind

be a practical mind

to pick up the language

of a newborn child

learning the ropes

of life and living

groping and struggling

from genial innocence.

              - ii -    

need not a writer

to right the wrong

need no historian

to rewrite history

need no  politician

to build dynasties

need no economist

to figure out poverty

need no cartoonist

to illustrate suffering

just be committed

to seek the right path

be brave and resolute

to take the cudgels

for the weak and

the innocent.  –r.m.b.

b.   q u o t e   o f   t h e   m o n t h

E D I T O R I A L    B O A R D

MEMBERS:  Rudy D. Antonio & Arno A. Bautista [Canada Correspondents]; Engr. Silver Casilla  &  RN Merly Grospe-Mayo [U.S. Correspondents];  Engr. Joe  L. Sevilla [Asingan Correspondent];  Col. Lalin Layos-Pascual;  Ross C. Diaz; Engr. Lorie dG. Estrada; CPA Rod A. Layco; Wena Agaton-Balino [Photo & Lay-out Artist]; Ruben “Bencio” Balino [Managing Editor].