RP now a big log importer

The Philippines is now a heavy importer of logs, a forest resource it lavishly exported decades back.

It also now depends on other countries for a big chunk of its lumber needs.

The log, lumber, and forest resources imports are sourced from various parts of the world, among them Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, China, Papua New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Brazil, Germany, and South Africa.

During the 1989-2003 period, the country imported 7.7 million cubic meters of logs valued at $925.6 million (about P508 billion at the current peso-dollar exchange rate), according to records of the National Statistics Office (NSO).

The Philippines began heavily importing logs in 1989, when it brought in 397,926 cubic meters valued at $29.82 million.

Log importation peaked in 1996 when the country shipped in 877,585 cu m worth $127.412 million. It glided to 768,474 cu m ($117.82 million) in 1997 and further down to 584,759 cu m ($54.34 million) in 2000.

Latest NSO figures indicated that the country bought 355,787 cu m of logs valued at $33.1 million in 2003.

It also imported 4.26 million cu m of lumber costing $1.03 billion during the 1993-2003 period.

The Philippines became a big importer of lumber in 1993 when it bought 462,941 cu m worth $45.24 million.

Lumber importation peaked in 1996 when the country sourced from other countries 567,426 cu m valued at $161.97 million. It went down to 411,657 cu m the following year and further to 296,147 cu m in 1998.

In 1999, however, it went up again to 381,235 cu m and further to 401,086 cu m in 2002 before it settled at 338,064 cu m in 2003.

These facts and figures become doubly disconcerting when one recalls those times when the country was thickly mantled with tropical forests and its population was only a few millions.

Records show that in 1575, at the early period of the Spanish colonization of the country, forests covered 27.5 million hectares or 92 percent of its total land area of 30 million ha.

By 1920 when there were only a little more than 12 million Filipinos, these are still 18.7 million ha of natural forests.

This shrank to 17 million ha in the mid-1930s, when the country was then populated by about 15 million people.

What remained as of the late 1990s, when the population had soared to the 70 million mark, were only 5.4 million ha, much of which were nonproductive, and less than a million ha of virgin forests.

Today, with the population already more than 86 million, forest-covered areas are much less.

The situation is, indeed, now mind-boggling: Against the grim backdrop of an exploding population is the desolate landscape of fast-shrinking forest areas as well as vanishing farmlands.

Thus, today’s and the future generations have to live with the distressing exigency of importing forest products that the country once abundantly had.

At the height of the logging industry in the 1960s, a high of 300,000 ha were deforested per year. In the 1980s, a high of 300,000 ha were deforested per year. In the 1980s, deforestation rate went down to 150,000 ha/year and further to 100,000 ha/yr in the 1990s.

As if the damage to the already much-ravaged forestlands were not enough, rapacious and greedy loggers (legal and illegal) and survivalist mountain dwellers are bent on wiping out what is left of the country’s forest resources.

Thus, floods have become common sights during heavy downpours spawned by strong typhoons. And lives continue to be lost during such catastrophic calamities.

A reading of the country’s forestry history shows that the 20th century Filipino was the most wanton forest destroyers of all times.

With nothing but profit in mind, he greedily and wantonly denuded the forestlands, unmindful of what will happen to the coming generations.

Now and in the future, the generations will never enjoy the paradise that was Philippine forest.

Indeed, time was when the country’s upland ecosystem harbored about 3,500 species of indigenous trees, 8,120 species of flowering plants, 950 species and subspecies of birds, 240 to 260 species and subspecies of reptiles, and 640 species of mosses.

It was not very long ago, too, when there were about 3,800 species of plants endemic (restricted or peculiar) to the Philippine archipelago and not found anywhere else in the world.

Ecologists have lamented that a good number of these flora and fauna have disappeared forever or are headed for extinction because of the unabated destruction of mountains attributed to logging, swidden (kaingin) farming, forests fires, tree pests and diseases, and mining operations.

Alarmingly, the worst has yet to come.

For instance, someone has projected that the Philippines will be the first Southeast Asian country to totally lose its forests within the first half of the 21st century if nothing is done – and fast – to save what is left of the country’s mountains and to reforest much faster the baldish hills.

Consider: A rapidly increasing population in search of land to till and in need of wood continues to exert tremendous pressure on the country’s remaining natural resources.

No less than the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) reported that as of 1999, there were already 18.3 million people in the uplands, 8.5 million of whom belonged to the country’s "poorest of the poor".

The latest figure furnished this writer was 22 million upland dwellers.

It has been projected that the number of people occupying forested areas will swell to 27 million by 2005, soaring to 43.5 million in 2025 when the density level would reach a high of 339 per square kilometer.

If these trends continue, two major adverse consequences would occur, according to an environment expert, Dr. Ma. Concepcion Cruz.

One, to meet the food needs of people living in mountains, more forestlands will be cleared for agriculture.

Two, as upland agriculture intensifies, soil erosion, flooding, sedimentation and siltation will occur, affecting the lowlands. Upland migrants, possessing little cultural adaptation to mountain environments, will reduce the forests into degraded croplands, as vast tracts of mountain areas have already been converted into veritable dust bowls.

Quo vadis, Philippine forests?