Here’s a new tightly edited book that portrays 53 striking Filipino faces. Most say: “If we don’t do the impossible now, we shall face the unthinkable soon.”

“Forest Faces: Hopes and Regrets in Philippine Forestry” is co-published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Environmental Science for Social Change (ESSC) at the Ateneo de Manila University.

“In few countries have forest management’s successes and failures been played out so dramatically as in the Philippines,” writes He Changchui of the FAO. “The scale of forest loss … irrevocably altered the identity of many Filipinos.”

This book “gives a face” to the interplay between Filipinos and forests. “Not all embrace the value and indispensability of trees and forests,” it says. “Currents of regret for what has gone before and cautionary notes for what may yet be to come” resonate throughout.

“Forestry is not about trees,” the legendary forester Jack Westoby taught. “It is about people.” And “Forest Faces” hews to Westoby’s insight through striking photographs and interviews. These were arranged by the FAO’s Christopher Brown and Patrick Durst with ESSC’s Peter Walpole.

Interviewees include “the weak and the powerful, unknown as well as most influential” Filipinos. Among these are “lumad” [indigenous peoples], rebel commanders, forest guards, a climatologist, a cardinal, a European Union diplomat and policymakers.

“No more dirges for Philippine forests,” songwriter Joey Ayala insists. In Mount Banahaw’s forests, he gathered material for his songs. Ayala “dreams of a time” his songs and poems will no longer be “elegies of treasures we lost as a people, but rather hopes turned real.”

“Hunger defines our lives,” says South Cotabato province’s T’boli tribe leader Timbang Tungkay. His photo, with his mop of silver hair and firm lips, are superimposed on a satellite montage of deforested Mindanao gullies. These grace the book’s cover.

Tungkay’s people used mountain forests down to Allah river—until lowland migrants shoved them off the land. Tungkay, his Hilongo wife and 24 children, recall gutom (hunger), stretching over months. His family was not spared from high infant death rates that chronic hunger spawns. Now, gutom is seasonal.

“One can distinguish tree species from sawdust washed up on river banks,” says historian Gregorio Hontiveros. In his book “Butuan of a Thousand Years,” he documented the town’s history as a pre-Spanish trading port up to World War II. A historian’s eye notes the devastated landscape that unchecked logging caused, and the exodus of loggers and their families. What was once a thriving timber export center now imports wood for a few minuscule mills.

“Today’s degraded forests reflect a history of logging and abandonment,” writes Walpole in an overview that distills scientific assessment in lucid readable style. Degradation of vital watersheds continues. Encroachments wreck ill-protected areas “though they are at the core of receding biodiversity.” And we’ve moved to mining as a national model for joining new rich nations of Asia.

“All is not lost,” he adds. “Regeneration is taking place … as the old secondary forests regain their original stature. Cogon fields that blanket logged-over areas shelter a new generation of pioneering seedlings. “[This] is a phoenix forest that could restore and regenerate our landscape.”

There is hope. But it “needs a nurturing hand.”

That “nurturing hand” is exhibited by many in the book. There’s forest guard Raul Zapatos. He spent 23 months in prison because he impounded illegally cut logs. The Supreme Court reversed the vendetta by people whose pocketbooks he hurt. “Maybe this has changed?” Zapatos asks 17 years after that bruising incident.

“I don’t go to the forests anymore,” says 60-year-old farmer Juanito Saday. “There used to be a lot of trees here. But Picop (a logging company that operates in the area) cut them. Catholic social action officials have assailed Picop for continued deforestation. Saday and others have “leftover memories of forests replaced by what the land can still grow…”

“Rainfall is changing in Mindanao,” says climatologist (and Jesuit priest) Jesus Ramon Villarin. His major work focuses on monitoring air quality through light detection and ranging lasers. He has explored rainfall patterns in Mindanao over the last 50 years. Their impact on croplands in Cotabato province and other major river basins will be considerable.

Accounts of other contemporary environmental leaders, like former Bukidnon Bishop (now Manila Archbishop and Cardinal) Gaudencio Rosales, former secretary of environment and natural resources Victor Ramos and Datu Michael Mistura are engrossing.

Story No. 32, “Talisay Home Forest,” can jolt. It turns out to be English translations by Nick Joaquin of Jose Rizal’s poems of forests in the 16-hectare farm in Talisay, Dapitan, and as well in as on Mount Makiling. “The forest always had a human face to it,” writes development planner George Aseniero. “And it was always Rizal’s forest.”

Do the challenges exceed our capacity? “We spend more on a ‘fiesta culture.’ This does not shape strategic coherent action,” Walpole writes. We lack “a common perception as to what lessons (were) learned,” let alone the commitment needed for decisive action. “We live by anecdote and the hope of sunrise.”

Filipinos must define a new path of responsibility for the common good and preserve it in perpetuity. Otherwise, inaction “will allow the prophets of doom to prevail… We must reckon with decisions needed to transform hopes and regrets to resolute action.”

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Email: juanlmercado@gmail.com