Time running out on Banaue Rice Terraces

Banaue Rice Terraces, one of the eight wonders of the world dating back to the antiquities that include the Pyramids of Egypt, Pharos of Alexandra, Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Temple of Diana at Ephesus, Statue of Jupiter by Phidias, Artemisia’s Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and Colossus of Rhodes — is on the verge of disintegration.

Something must be done for this World Heritage. And fast. Or else your postcard pretty heritage will someday be just that–pretty on postcard. Time is running out for this labor of love and work of art that took 2,000 years to finish.

Rising to an altitude of around 5,000 feet above sea level, this so-called "stairway to the sky" covers some 4,000 square miles of ricefields carved out from the harsh terrain of Ifugao province by generation upon generation of hardy native farmers.

For seven years running, the rice terraces have been in the list of the World Heritage in Danger. For reasons both man-induced and nature inflicted. Foremost cause of degradation is the destruction of watershed in and surrounding areas.

Other than that, the irrigation canal-laced system that sustained the mountainside rice fields in two millennia were damaged by the big earthquake that hit northern Luzon on July 16, 1990. Too, there was a time when giant earthworms contributed to the degradation of the terraces.

Moreover, it has been noted the young generation of the native tribesmen are no longer interested in the tedious farming of the terraces.

Against this background, the rehabilitation of the Banaue Rice Terraces was one of the focused concerns during the 25th session of the Bureau of World Heritage Committee held in Helsinki, Finland. In the convention, the Banaue Rice Terraces was inscripted in the List of World Heritage in Danger. The idea is to draw whatever necessary human and financial resources, international technical assistance and rally fervent political will and public support for the conservation of the terraces.

According to Antonio M. Claparols, president of the Ecological Society of the Philippines and regional councilor of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, Ifugao Governor Teodoro Baguilat Jr. is very earnest in rehabilitation work for the terraces, but lack of resources is hampering immediate repair — which is urgent — of the damaged portions of the fields.

Baguilat also laments that funding from the National Government has been cut off in the aftermath of the abolition of the Banaue Rice Terraces Task Force. The governor is campaigning hard for private donations and government funding, on top of the $70,000 pledged by President Arroyo. No need for another task force, he says. A foundation which he plans to set up can do the job of soliciting funds from corporate, government, and individual donors.

There is hope for the restoration of the world-famous Banaue Rice Terraces to its old glory, if every Filipino of means will do his/her share, Claparols stressed.

Records show that the first foundation for the terraced ricefields was laid 5,000 years ago. At its biggest, the terraced fields stretched to Cagayan on the northeastern flank of the Cordilleras and to as far south as Quezon Province. Now the remaining 4,000 miles are found only in the six Cordillera provinces and some parts of Nueva Vizcaya.

More than a thousand farming families from the northern Luzon highlands are tilling the rice terraces. These comprise about a million tribesmen collectively known as Igorot (the ethnolonguistic groups include the Ifugao, Kalinga, Bontok, Kankanoi, Tingguian, Tapayao and Isneg). Migrant lowlanders are part of the farming communities in the mountain region.