The Human Costs 2

A year after that terrible flood, no reforestation had taken place, and no flood-control plans were in place. A city councilor said at that time "We are still waiting for a plan for reforestation that will not disrupt the economy. To make reforestation attractive, the landowners must be convinced that the economic value of the trees will be commensurate to the value of the sugar cane."

     Floods in Butuan City, Manila, and Aparri in recent years have demonstrated that removing the rain forest cover—whether for logging, subsistence farms, or plantations—is having increasingly severe effects. The intensification of storms associated with the El Nino effect is worsening the problem, but it is deforestation that has allowed the damage to occur.

     Once the rain waters have flooded down the denuded slopes instead of entering the groundwater system, they are no longer available to feed the rivers during the dry months. The area of agricultural land in the country affected by drought expanded from 812 square kilometers in 1968 to almost 14,000 square kilometers in 1987, and has continued to increase. In 1992, drought conditions that were widely blamed on over-logging struck over 2,300 square kilometers of prime agricultural land in various parts of the country. On Panay Island, where deforestation is among the worst in the nation, 450 square kilometers of such land were affected, with losses for the island of 118,000 tons of rice alone. Official assistance was limited to farmers suffering 90 to 100 percent damage; the others (about two-thirds of the total suffering serious damage) were left on their own. Many rural families survived by making charcoal from stands of remnant forest, further accentuating the underlying problem. In IloiloCity, the largest city on the island, only two percent of the watershed was forested in 1992 (and it is less in 1997); water was available in the city during the drought only four days per week, from 4 a.m. to 7 p.m. From the Cagayan River valley in the north to the Agusan River valley in the south, many areas have had similar droughts in recent years, and newspapers cite evidence of increasing frequency and intensity.

     In addition to the direct costs of damage caused by deforestation, the loss of income due to deforestation can be great as well, as shown clearly by the example of northern Palawan Island. The 120-square-kilometer Bacuit Bay, with the adjacent resort town of El Nido, is the site of an active ecotourism business based on the beautiful coral reefs of the region; the seas also provide livelihood to numerous subsistence fisherfolk. The Bay is backed by a 78-square-kilometer mountainside watershed that averages 30o slope. In 1985, forest covered over half of the watershed; in the forest, erosion averaged 0.6 tons per hectare per year, but in logged areas it averaged 141 tons. From May to December 1986, after logging expanded, 49,080 tons of logging-associated sediment washed into the bay, resulting in the death of about 50 percent of the corals in the reef closest to the mouth of the BacuitRiver. Estimates made at the time projected fisheries revenues of about $28 million over ten years (economists typically consider ten-year periods in their projections) if there were no logging, and about $15 million with logging. Without logging, tourism during the ten-year period was projected to produce about $25 million; with logging this was projected to drop to $6 million. The logging itself would produce about $8.5 million if carried out, but nothing, of course, if it were terminated. The net sum of these three primary commercial sectors for the Bacuit Bay area thus total about $43 million without logging, and $29.5 million with logging. The difference of $13.5 million is the amount lost to the economy of the region due to logging during the ten-year period. Further, after the ten-year period, ecotourism and fishing could continue indefinitely, but the logging could be done at most only every 20 to 50 years, and perhaps not ever again.

     In steep, wet terrain covered by rain forest, clearing the forest is usually a losing proposition for the people who live there. Development in the Philippines can take place—but protection of vulnerable watersheds and marine habitats is a crucial component of sustainable development. Logging in steep areas does not produce net income—it produces a net cost. Virtually all of the clearing of forest done in the past ten years—whether for timber, agriculture, or mining—has been done on just such steep slopes.

Original URL: http://archive.fieldmuseum.org/vanishing_treasures/Deforestation_4a.htm