Another incident of our environment at risk has taken place under everyone’s noses. The alarms were sounded earlier in the year, when trees started dying in Barangay Pucsusan in the territory of a private development project.
A few years back, we had the tree-poisoning incident in Legarda. Trees felled in Ambuklao. We had the cutting of trees to make way for major developments, even as the city’s green cover continues to shrink.
In response, the city decided to push for a blanket ban, a moratorium on tree-cutting that has made its way through the legislative process but has yet to properly gain ground.
The trees have made Baguio the way it is, and are key to the city’s identity as the “City of Pines;” at what point, at how many pines lost does the city lose its right to the moniker?
It is preservation time. Not quite the time for the last wall, for the last stand against deforestation and environmental decay, but the faster we act and the stronger we act on it, the better our odds against the inevitability of population override.
Preservation is not simply the continuation of the status quo. It is an acknowledgement that the situation on its own will worsen—as the world continues to spiral down further environmental degeneration;, even the “healthy” parts will be brought down.
This global phenomenon cannot be stopped by a measly local government in the mountains of the Philippines, but we can mitigate the worst of it at our level.
Not just by preserving the green cover that we have, but by adopting forward-thinking ways of adjusting to the brave new world.
New, more efficient ways of garbage disposal, of reducing emissions, reducing pollution. Planting new swaths of tree cover and forests. Protecting that which remains from exploitation and development.
Preservation is more than what is left behind. It is ensuring that what is left behind survives into the future ahead.
