A death knell in the Sierra Madre

In those early years (of martial rule and as a Columban missionary in the Philippines), I shared the view of many in the social action movement that ecological concerns were more likely to be championed by the upper class, economically secure people who were not engaged in the political and economic struggle. In fact, ecological concerns could appear to be a distraction from the pressing work of building a more just and caring society. Subsequent experience proved how wrong I was.”—Sean McDonagh SSC, author of “The Death of Life: The Horror of Extinction” and several books on ecology.

McDonagh, an Irish, immersed himself for years among the T’boli communities in Mindanao, where he ministered and gathered scientific data and formed theological insights as a priest, ecologist, and author.

How about this: “A tree falls. A tree dies. The forest lives forever.” Nah, the popular saying ain’t true no more. Not literally.

Some forests are deliberately killed to give way to human endeavors that would boost human lives in some places other than the forests. Some of these endeavors will wipe away a whole web of life, an ecosystem that includes trees, flowering and medicinal plants, creatures that fly, creep, and crawl, as well as their human brethren that had been there with them since time began. Include elemental beings as well.

While I am writing this, members of indigenous communities from some parts of the Sierra Madre are on a 148-kilometer protest march from Camp Nakar in Quezon to Metro Manila to protest the construction of the Kaliwa Dam that will inundate 9,700 hectares of watershed areas in the Sierra Madre mountain range in Quezon and Rizal provinces. Spearheaded by the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System, the construction is expected to proceed any time now. It is supposed to boost the water supply in Metro Manila, where population increase is galloping beyond control (Another story).

According to a news report by Delfin T. Mallari Jr., participating in the march are more than 300 tribe members, church leaders and workers, environmentalists, farmers, and residents from northern Quezon. Last Tuesday, the Inquirer had, for its banner photo, a Dumagat-Remontado woman tribe elder explaining, with maps and all, at a press conference the dam’s impact on their survival.

There could be no stopping the construction of the dam meant to be completed in 2026 through a P12.2-billion development assistance agreement with China Energy, but the protest marchers are doing a last-ditch effort. This partnership with China rings alarm bells for me.

Just a few months ago, we wrote paeans to the great Mountain Mother for shielding the lowlands from the fury of the storm that emanated from the Pacific Ocean. Myths and legends about the Sierra Madre sprang back to life, giving glimpses of the mountain’s forest primeval that many could not have visualized.

I did go through the foothills of the Sierra Madre a few months ago for an event at the Carmelite monastery in Infanta, Quezon, where joyful nuns live out their contemplative life in communion with the wilderness and the community around them, a refreshing move from the confining, cloistered life of old. Progressive Bishop Julio Labayen, himself a Carmelite, inspired this monastic community’s founding. Though no longer around, Labayen’s confreres in the Infanta prelature are active in the Save Sierra Madre Network Alliance.

The alliance’s estimate of families to be affected is about 1,465, something like a barangay in Metro Manila. But, hey, 1,465 families in the 9,700-ha in the Sierra Madre ancestral domain cannot be compared. One cannot simply count human heads. As I said earlier, an area in the so-called “last great forest” is host to more than just human beings. Even the forest floor is alive! I, who had climbed mountains as part of my journalistic itinerary, had seen this.

Inexorable could be the word to describe the Kaliwa Dam project, which means there could be no stopping it? The “Stop Kaliwa Dam, Save Our Future!” petition is still hoping for “alternatives” and saying “yes, to better solutions.” Read the full text in bit.ly/stopkaliwadam.

In the petition is a reminder from Pope Francis’ encyclical “Laudato Si” on the environment: “Caring for ecosystems demands farsightedness, since no one looking for quick and easy profit is truly interested in their preservation. But the cost of the damage caused by such selfish lack of concern is much greater than the economic benefits to be obtained.”

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