Philippine Deforestation At Root Of Flood/Landslide Disaster

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"Tens of millions of people armed with fire and axes are colonizing thinning forests across the Philippines, and nature is fighting back with increasingly deadly floods and landslides, officials and experts say. A weak storm unleashed tonnes of logs, boulders and mud from the Sierra Madre range that buried four towns on the northeast coast of the main island of Luzon on November 29. Accusing fingers pointed to illegal loggers for the loss of more than a thousand lives. But there is plenty of blame to spread around.

Slash-and-burn farmers clearing lands for agriculture as well as communist guerrillas and government officials are also culpable, officials and environmentalists say. "Around one-third of the national population is already in the forest zone," said Environment and Natural Resources Undersecretary Ramon Paje. He estimates that the actual forest cover is down to seven million hectares out of the total land area of 300,000 square kilometers. "Illegal logging is very much related to poverty. As long as the people see trees as the key to getting their next meal those trees don't stand a chance," Paje said.

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Logging has been banned in the mountains around the worst-hit towns of Dingalan, General Nakar, Infanta, and Real for 30 years, but the stress from human encroachment is relentless. The sheared hillsides are replanted with coconuts and other cash crops with shallow root structures that fail to hold the topsoil in place. "Building a logging road opens a forest to settlements," said former senator Orlando Mercado, who proposed a total logging ban in the 1990s. Congress killed the proposed law soon after a similar disaster claimed more than 5,000 lives in the central city of Ormoc in 1991.

Mercado estimates that 25 million people out of the national population of 84 million now live in the 15 million hectares (37 million acres) of Philippine territory that is officially designated as forest land. "We have simply run out of flat lands for habitation," Mercado added."

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http://www.terradaily.com/2004/041205013402.7sqjd6ig.html