Hottest of the 'bio-diversity hotspots': A bleak future for Philippine flora and fauna
Tuesday, 03 October 2000

By Michael Bengwayan {Pan-Philippine News and Information Network}

Baguio City--The Age of the Dodo is dawning in the Philippines.

.....Its bio-diversity is being destroyed at a fast clip, perhaps reaching an irreversible trend. Sooner rather than later, many of its plants and animals may be as dead as the proverbial dodo--the large, flightless bird that is now extinct.

.....No country has its plant and animal life being destroyed faster than the Philippines, to go by the recently released Red List of Threatened and Extinct Species by the Swiss-based International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) based in Switzerland.

.....Another group, Conservation International (CI), describes the Philippines as the hottest of the 25 so-called "bio-diversity hotspots" in the world--a record that does not speak well of the government's environmental conservation program and reflects the public's apathy to environmental concerns. Hotspots are areas with the least number of species existing, the least number of species found in an exclusive ecosystem and an alarmingly high degree of threat these species face.

.....The IUCN Red List, released on September 28, indicated the precarious future faced by Philippine flora and fauna. Of the 11,046 endangered and extinct plant and animal species documented in 112 countries, 932 or nine percent are in the Philippines.

.....The list is the most comprehensive analysis of global conservation ever undertaken, involving 120 national governments and 735 environmental non-governmental organizations. IUCN has been in the forefront of environmental documentation for the past 20 years.

Threatened species

.....On record, the Philippines has the world's fourth highest number of threatened species with 387, after three other Asian countries--Malaysia with 805 species, Indonesia 763, and India, 459. Threatened species in the Philippines include 50 mammals, 67 birds, 8 reptiles, 22 amphibians, 28 fishes, 3 mollusks and 16 other invertebrates.

.....However, with regard to extinct and threatened plants and animals, the country heads the list in Southeast and South Asia, and is second in the world after Africa. The country has 318 extinct or endangered animals, and 227 extinct or endangered plants.

.....Philippine animal species that are extinct or threatened with extinction include: 2 extinct, 47 critically endangered, 44 endangered, 103 vulnerable, 7 conservation-dependent and 84 near-threatened. Thirty-one species have insufficient data.

.....Some of the threatened animals are the Philippine eagle, considered the rarest and the second largest eagle in the world, which is now down to about 350-600 birds compared to 6,000 forty years ago. Another is the Mindoro crocodile (Crocodylus mindorensis), which is near extinction. It is recovering only because of help from captive-breeding programs and conservation measures. The three-striped box turtle, which used to abound in the Sulu Sea, is under threat because it is being hunted down for use in traditional medicine.

.....Among Philippine plants, 37 are critically endangered, 28 endangered, 128 are vulnerable, 3 conservation-dependent, and 24 near-threatened and. Seven species have deficient data.

Marine, aquatic life unspared

.....The country's marine and aquatic life are equally endangered. Its coral reefs, among the most diverse and largest in the world, may not be around for long. The World Bank, in its Environment Monitor report for September, said only 1,161 square kilometers or 4.3 percent of the country's once-sprawling 27,000 square kilometers of coral reefs are in good state. The remaining good reefs may eventually die as there is very little effort to save these natural fish-breeding grounds, the World Bank said.

.....With the impending loss of the coral reefs, 10 to 15 per cent of the country's marine fisheries production for human consumption will be lost and adversely affect the livelihood of an estimated 65,000 fishing families, the report added.

.....In 1998, the environmental think-tank Earthwatch Institute called for aggressive conservation efforts, warning that 30 per cent of Philippine coral reefs were already dead. But politics interfered with genuinely committed conservation efforts, rendering coral reefs more vulnerable to destructive fishing methods, aqua-culture development, and pollution.

.....Mangroves, equally important breeding and spawning grounds of fish and shellfish, have not been spared, either. Mario Carreon of the Fisheries Resources Management of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) said the country had already lost 11,543 square kilometers of mangrove forests. These were indiscriminately cut for firewood, construction materials, and charcoal, or to make way to the establishment of fishponds.

....."The coral reefs, sea grass beds and mangroves support 80 percent of all commercial species of fish and shellfish. In the last 20 years, these have declined as much as 57 per cent in the Philippines," he said.

.....The Philippines, with more than 7,000 islands, 2.2 million square kilometers of territorial waters and 300,782 square kilometers of land, once had the most expansive mangrove and coral reefs in Southeast Asia. This is no longer true, with 4,000 hectares of mangroves being destroyed yearly.

World's other hotspots

.....Aside from the Philippines, the world's other bio-diversity hotspots are the Tropical Andes, Mediterranean Basin, Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, Mesoamerica, Caribbean Islands, Indo-Burma, Atlantic Forest of Brazil, Cape Floristic Region of South Africa, Mountains of Central China, Sundaland, Brazilian Cerrado, Southwest Australia, Polynesia and Micronesia, New Caledonia, Choco/Darien/Western Ecuador, Western Ghats and Sri Lanka, California Floristic Province, Succulent Karoo, New Zealand, Central Chile, Guinean Forests of West Africa, Caucasus, Eastern Arc Mountains and Coastal Forests of Kenya and Tanzania, and Wallacea.

.....The World Bank and CI recently released US$150 million to support the protection efforts of these bio-diversity hotspots. In the Philippines, CI is working in the protected Palanan (Isabela) Wilderness Area of the Sierra Madre Ranges where 10 per cent of the country's remaining rainforests exist.

.....Among the factors being blamed for the destruction of bio-diversity are deforestation, booming population, poaching, over-hunting, indiscriminate logging, pollution and urban sprawl.

.....In the Philippines, various sectors--farmers, fishermen, government and non-government groups, globalization advocates and environmental policymakers--have been tossing the blame at one another. The answer may be any or all of them.

.....But governmental policies take a big share of the blame, as well as government agencies that lack the political will to protect the national patrimony and foster a sense of natural stewardship among the people. All this, plus the fact that conservation programs are hardly a priority or carried out in earnest.

RP 'has the best coral reefs'

.....Deploring the country's sad state of coral reefs, the World Bank said: "The Philippines, which has perhaps the best coral reefs, does not give importance to its water resources. The people should find ways to rehabilitate these coral reefs because almost 55 per cent of the fish consumed in the country depends on them."

.....The World Bank itself is not free of any blame for global environmental decay. It is often being held largely responsible for the poverty of developing countries-one reason why deforestation is widespread worldwide.

.....The World Bank continued: "Dynamite and cyanide fishing is still rampant in the Philippines and Indonesia, and the governments have done little to curb these destructive fishing methods, which are illegal under Philippine laws as well as under the 1975 Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES)."

.....The Coral Reef Alliance (CRA), which monitors coral reef developments worldwide, said the Philippines has not done well in protecting its coral reefs and, instead, is a major illegal exporter of coral reefs for aquariums especially in the United States.

.....In the Philippines, coral reefs are protected under Presidential Decree1219, which, however, is not rigidly enforced. The CITES law, to which the Philippines is a signatory, prohibits the sale of coral reefs.

Tracing the culprits

.....Last year, according to Sen. Loren Legarda, then the head of the Senate environment committee, the loss of forests and other forms of environmental damage were due mainly to flawed government policies.

.....Over the years, she charged, different administrations passed laws favorable to logging concessions while half-heartedly carryout forest protection measures. That is why, she said in her Senate committee report, the 'nation's virgin forests are down to only 700,000 hectares from a sprawling 11 million hectares way back in 1934."

....."Unchecked illegal logging remains the main culprit," she said. "Government negligence has prompted the devastation of not only forests but all that live in them."

.....From 1920 to 1960, the country was Asia's greatest exporter of rainforest timber. However, overzealous extraction, disregard for future supply, and poor logging practices exacerbated by illegal logging, have all but wiped out one of the nation's richest resources.

....."Philippine forestry laws passed since 1930 have failed to provide adequate security provisions for virgin and secondary growth forests, thus the forests had virtually no protection at all. For instance, there is only one forest guard for every 3,000 hectares of forestlands," Legarda said.

.....Until today, said Marvic Leonen of the Legal Resources Center (LRC), the government's environmental laws remain defective and need to be overhauled. For instance, he said, conservation programs have not been effective because the laws deprived local, including indigenous, people of involvement, portraying them as "enemies," rather than allies, of conservation.

....."While the Philippine Strategy for Sustainable Development calls for local participation in forestry and conservation programs, the truth is indigenous peoples' participation is marginal, solicited only for the purpose of lending projects cultural credibility," he said.

.....Indeed, many environmental policies look at conservation without regard for people living in the places where conservation or environmental programs are intended. Social forestry, where forest productivity and protection rests on local community participation, may be making headway in some parts of the country. But, Leonen said, a lot more needs to be done.

Corruption

.....Flawed government policies have been worsened by corruption in environment conservation programs. Certain program implementers and some local officials are known to have dipped their fingers into the coffers of large conservation programs, especially by those funded by international bodies.

.....For instance, Dr. Frances Korten, former head of the Ford Foundation here and the Upland NGO Assistance Committee (UNAC), an umbrella for125 NGOs working in upland communites, said the 1990 national forestation program funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) "went to the dogs." Had it been properly implemented, the US$325 million project would gone a long way in rehabilitating natural habitats and ecosystems, and ensuring sustainable forestry in the country.

.....UNAC said the program was a failure because government forestry officials themselves became contractors. It also bred "fly-by-night NGOs," there was very minimal community participation, it promoted non-sustainable tree species, and the reforestation targets were never reached.

.....In the first place, Korten said, the program was ill advised and managed, and relied on insufficient data. She noted that the function of the multilateral banks like ADB is to make hard currency loans for projects that can generate foreign exchange for repayment. As such, they are ill suited to solve environmental problems. "ADB's provision of massive environmental loans to the Philippines accelerated the very damage it intended to reverse," she charged.

.....The recently concluded National Integrated Protection Action Program (NIPAP), a conservation project funded by the European Union, has also come in for its share of criticism.

.....It may have proved successful in El Nido, Palawan, but it failed in Mount Pulag, Benguet, where it has only created a rift between the people and the implementers. The points of conflict were land ownership and forest management practices, which obviously NIPAP was not in a position to address. The program, local people claimed, only benefited the foreign consultants and employees of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, who, they said, received very high honoraria.

.....The continuing loss of forests and bio-diversity in the country may thus be said to be the collective result of administrative mismanagement, corruption, and social inequity. For too long, the symptoms, rather than the root causes of environmental decay, have been addressed. Consequently, only a dent, if any, has been made in solving the problems.

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