One Saturday morning, some 60 of relatives, friends and associates gifted One Philippines co-publisher Giselle Montero with her fondest wish to join her tree planting adventure. She provided transport which brought our group to and from Salikneta Farm in Bulacan, one of several sites where the Lasallian community has acquired acres of property to implement its ecological vision of planting at least one million trees by 2011 as a tribute to a centennial of Lasallian education in the country.
Each of us carried at least two seedlings. On our way to the planting site, our guide told us that the taller growths along the trail were from seedlings planted by another group of volunteers a year earlier. In five years, the robust ones will have survived pests and other risks of growing in the wild and, in a hundred years, will have proliferated into a hard wood forest.
Our planting area turned out to be a 200 square meter grassy plot bordered by high frail trees. Some of us were lucky enough to find ready dug-up holes on the ground into which one just stuck the seedling in, pat upright with soil, then water. Most of us, however, had to clear vegetation first before breaking ground and, this last, we had to do using dull trowels. In half an hour, all of us signified having planted at least a seedling for the day. It hardly mattered that I planted one of my seedlings less than a foot away from another newly planted seedling. I violated one of the guidelines laid down by our host. One of these days, one of them will have to give way to the other while competing for space under the sun. Darwin’s survival of the fittest applies to plants too, right?
We walked back to the reception building, which was temporarily turned into a mess hall. While waiting for our lunch, we gazed across the rolling lay of the land, a man-made pond where nothing seemed to move at noon and a parade of mango trees in the distance acting like barriers against strong winds.
How green is my lunch
A tractor arrived and unloaded our meal plus a crew of waiters. The hum of diesel-fueled engine got me thinking: how does the fumes’ impact on the immediate environment compare to the future benefits from the trees we have just planted?
We had a sumptuous lunch and retired to a papag under a shady tree. Sated, I asked myself—how does my latest food intake compare to the calories burned during the trekking and planting activities?
Engr. Bienvenido “Ben” Eusebio, volunteer executive director of the Lasallian Institute for the Environment (LIFE), the organization behind the Eco Camps, raised questions of costs vs. benefits during his welcoming talk to our group. He said that “One Million Trees and Beyond” is a laudable step forward for ecological regeneration, but the initiative alone would not address the root causes of the country’s massive environmental woes. After all, tree-planting programs have been going on for decades and yet the state of the environment has actually slipped from bad to worse, if one goes by reports of global environment watchers.
A water resource expert by education and professional experience, Eusebio knows whereof he speaks. He is a certified chemical engineer who openly admits having worked on both sides of the ecological divide, starting with the polluters and moving on to the pollution controllers.
And it would actually be hard to find a “greener” person than Eusebio, who survived 10 years of mentoring from elementary to high school in La Salle Greenhills and five years of college life as a Green Archer in De La Salle University (then De La Salle College). After graduation, he worked for a local firm to gain experience. He really wanted to pursue post-graduate education so when the opportunity came up, he went to the U.S. to earn a master’s degree in chemical engineering at MIT.
From polluter to controller
After getting his master’s degree, an American company offered to employ him with the promise of helping him secure his Green Card. He then worked for ten years in the chemical industry, which at that time was considered a major source of environmental hazards.
After a decade with the “polluters,” Engr. Ben spent the next 30 years developing pollution control devices at the US National Air Pollution Administration, forerunner of today’s US Environmental Protection Agency, one of the world’s leading policy-making and regulatory agencies .
He was a retired U.S. pensioner based in Seattle on a private consulting engagement in Indonesia when the call to go back to the Philippines came. La Salle in the Philippines had just adopted its Synod Mission Action Plan (MAP) #7 otherwise known as “Stewardship of God’s Creation.”
LIFE was established to be the core organization to pursue the objectives of MAP #7. A watershed project initiated in Lumban, Laguna would help its flagship project and Engr. Ben Eusebio looked like the right man for the job. Since then he has flown to and from the U.S. for his advocacy work. He is also rallying the people of Washington state to raise funds and do volunteer work for LIFE.
Livening up Laguna Lake
The big task was to stem the slow death of Laguna Lake, the largest body of fresh water nearest Metro Manila and source of livelihood to hundreds of thousands of fisherfolks. The bigger challenge was that the clean-up process would have to begin at the source and flow down step-by-step to the water’s final destination, Laguna Lake.
Lumban’s river is one of three major water systems flowing into Laguna Lake. LIFE’s engagement entailed generate an up-to-date profile of the municipality.
LIFE trained local leaders in profiling their barangay, the basic unit of governance in the country. Armed with a compass, a line meter and sometimes a global positioning system (GPS) device, local leaders, housewives and fishermen surveyed their neighborhood providing baseline data for a barangay profile. LIFE’s technical staff then translated the profiles into a resource map of Lumban.
The map has become the basis in developing the natural resource management plan of the municipality. It is being used to look into the environmental impact of local practices that may be contributing to environmental degradation all the way down to Laguna Lake.
The integration of its components is a major feature of the Lumban watershed project. Engr. Ben thinks, “We’re trying to educate people who may not have been in a classroom in their lifetime. What they know about living in their community can be valuable in planning at the municipal level. We are happy to hand hold them through the process and watch them get the hang of it and deliver first-hand data for use by local government executives.”
A new forest of trees
“One Million Trees and Beyond” is the more accessible and media-friendly face of LIFE. The advocacy foresees that a million trees will help prevent the present untrammeled denudation of forests. In the process, LIFE acts to its assumed role as steward of the environment.
The target is to plant 200,000 trees a year starting in 2006. The math goes this way: If the 100,000 alumni and 50,000 students plant at least two seedlings a year, one million trees will probably be planted by 2011. Afterwards, the trees will be turned over to the community to manage and sustain into a future income generating source.
Ben explains, “What we’re doing at LIFE is not easy. It’s hard but it’s something that has to be done. It can be frustrating especially when other people don’t want to see beyond surface approach to saving the environment.”
Green for a day
A volunteer organization, LIFE struggles with the limitations imposed by volunteerism. Ben and his small crew can only do so much and the absence of proper support could one day take its toll even on the most selfless souls. LIFE needs all the help it can get and Engr. Ben is eyeing assistance in funds or in kind from talented Lasallians who are making things happen elsewhere around world.
Ben says, “I don’t expect to see the fruits of my labor. I just plant seeds and if I see that there are moves in the direction of a holistic, integrated way of thinking about protecting the environment, that would be enough vindication for what we’re trying to do at LIFE. ”
On the way back to the city, I smiled at the thought we went “green” for a day – me and the people from One Philippines, Giselle’s friends from U.P. Los Baños, her colleagues fromDe La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB) where she is a faculty member and Head of the Office for Partnership and Development of the School for Deaf Education and Applied Studies, Powerplay Interactive and Jorge Buenaventura, Project Director of One Million Trees.
My body looked forward to the rewards of a warm bath to wash off the sweat and grime of staying too long under the sun, and the refreshing thought that the day’s black soot of pollution is about to be washed off by and for something green.
For more information on OMT: http://life.net.ph/ b
Pix 1 - Engineer Ben Eusebio: “What we’re doing at LIFE is hard, but it has to be done.”
Pix 2 One Philippines Editor Ces Rodriguez waits for lunch
Pix3 T he kids helped out, too
Pix 4 The birthday girl at work.
Pix 5 Time out for kodakan: “Say trees!”
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