Text by Stephen J Pedroza | Photo by Anthony Jacob C Karagdag
“The Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) has to be a crucial tool not just for decision-making and policy implications on environmental protection but as a way of thinking, a way of doing things,” said Secretary Juan Romeo Nereus “Neric” Acosta.
Speaking at a dialogue hosted by the Research and Social Outreach (RSO) of Xavier University, a day before the Earth Day celebration, the Presidential Adviser for Environmental Protection shared the urgent need for a sustainable mechanism to address environmental woes in the country.
PES acts as a “rewarding cycle” designed to protect our forest in the highlands of Mindanao so that when it rains, the water will not be devastating by the time it reaches urbanized areas such as Cagayan de Oro City.
Different sectors (corporations, cooperatives, the academe, religious groups, and households) in CDO will reward the lumad community with economic incentives for acting as forest managers to ensure that watersheds along the region develop high water infiltration capacity.
“PES really has to do with putting a clearer, more understandable value to the environment, to the resources of the earth, to the challenges of climate change, and the impacts to our communities,” Acosta said.
The new normal
He also urged the participation of everyone to this green endeavor as our country faces drastic climate effects over the last few years.
“The most vulnerable country to climate change now is the Philippines. That is our call. That is our challenge, whether you are going to be a scientist in the future or a teacher, engineer, doctor.”
In 2008, according to the Brussels-based Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), the Philippines was one of three countries hit by the most disasters, and leads the list of (vulnerable) nations most in danger of facing frequent and more intense storms.
In Northern Mindanao, the PES project is piloted within the ancestral domain of the Miarayon-Lapok-Lirongan-Tinaytayan Tribal Association (MILALITTRA), one of the 12 indigenous people communities in the protected area of Talakag, Bukidnon where Mt Kalatungan prominently stands 2,824m above sea level.
Mt Kalatungan – the sixth highest peak in the country – has long faced environmental threats such as illegal logging and the hunting of endangered species.
“This is truly a call not just as citizens of the earth, not just in terms of scientific research or community involvement or the understanding of how governance and policies work. We do it primarily because our life depends on it. We all need LAWS—land, air, water, sun,” the Bukidnon-born Acosta said as a challenge to fellow Mindanaons.
The Mt Kalatungan-PES is frontlined by CDO-based non-government organization Xavier Science Foundation as the fund and resources manager, together with partners from public and private sectors.
Human face of PES
Part of this project is to mainstream its “rewarding” principles through the Valuing Ecosystem Services Together (VEST) project with a slew of activities to encourage Kagay-anons to participate in the fund drive to reforest Mt Kalatungan and reward the efforts of the indigenous people community as the forest managers.
The 5-year master plan of MILALITTRA aims to reforest 832 hectares, while 816 hectares will be allotted for agroforestry.
VEST, the social marketing arm for PES, highlights people’s participation and a paradigm shift to the “new normal” to prevent another catastrophe from inflicting Northern Mindanao.
Acosta commended the efforts of VEST in putting a “human face” to the complex ecological systems and services, since it was launched in November 2014. VEST is a collaborative effort of the McKeough Marine Center (MMC) and RSO, supported by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
“You cannot protect what you cannot first value, and you cannot value those which we do not first understand. So the work of VEST is really about understanding the challenges first—understanding the science, the realities of degradation of our forest, our rivers, our seas, our farms, our food insecurities, our water insecurities,” Acosta said.
This green project is grounded upon the philosophy that what happens at the top trickles down to the lowlands. Evidently, during the lash of Typhoon Sendong (Washi) in December 2011, most water which came down and ravaged CDO originated from the headwater tributaries in Bukidnon.
“We are part of ecology, fundamentally as human beings. And ecology is the very basis of any economy, not the other way around,” Acosta shared.
He added: “We have to contribute to the environment in its protection, because it will protect us if we protect it first.”