A Billion Trees
Nobody is against planting
trees; hence no one has objected to Speaker De Venecia's announcement that
the House of Representatives will allocate P1.7 billion a year for three
years for the planting of 1 billion trees. The Billion Trees Act of 1993,
the speaker said, is part of President Ramos's Philippines 2000 action
plan.
Still we should look at what the
speaker's plan entails.
If the government is to
distribute one-month-old tree seedlings for propagation all over the country,
the Bureau of Plant Industry should grow and ship out house seedlings at
the rate of about 30 million seedlings a month. If 12 seedlings can be
grown on one square meter, the BPI will need a full 250 hectares of nursery
space.
And if we assume that during
the month that a seedling is in the BPI nursery, that seedling will require
only one minute of watering and care per day, this means that only 480
seedlings can be taken care of by one gardener during his regular eight-hour
working day. If we talk of 30 million seedlings a month, the BPI would
have to hire an additional 62,500 gardeners.
But even if the BPI can
produce the necessary seedlings, there is much larger problem of where
the seedlings are to be planted. If trees are to be planted ten meters
from one another, each tree will require an area of 100 square meters.
Speaker De Venecia assumes that the Department of Environment and Natural
Resources will be able to find 100 billion square meters of space or 10
million hectares.
Now where is the DENR going
to find 10 million hectares of free space? We may have lost millions of
hectares of forest cover, but it does not mean that this land is free space.
Part of this lost forestland has been converted to agricultural, residential,
and other purposes.
True, we can assume that
part of the 10 million hectares will be private property and the owners
will presumably be responsible for making sure that the seedlings grow
to maturity. Still much of the 10 million hectares necessary will be public
lands -- and the government will have to hire people to take care of these
seedlings and to make sure that nobody cuts them down.
And, to the extent that
this land is former forestland that has been taken over by cogon and other
weeds, it will be necessary to clear the land first and to make sure that
the cogon does not come back. If we estimate 8 million hectares of public
land, how many people will the government have to hire to clear the land
and to take care of the seedlings?
Speaker De Venecia says
the House will allocate P1.7 billion a year for three years or a total
of P5.1 billion, that is, a measly P5.10 per seedling -- to
grow it, determine where to send it, pack it, send it to its destination,
and care and protect it as it grows to maturity. Apart from the direct
costs, there are the administrative and management costs of running this
logistic nightmare.
Of course Speaker De Venecia
is notorious for operating his mouth when his brain is not fully engaged.
But what are his highly paid staff members for, if not to help him come
up with rational plans or at least to keep him from putting his foot into
his mouth? And what about Speaker De Venecia's colleagues in the House,
whose votes he has committed to this impractical scheme?
And what about those brilliant
people in Malacanang who are supposed to head the committee that will pump-prime
the economy? it is in support of their program that Speaker De Venecia
has proposed his P5.10-per-tree project.
If these bright people in
Malacanang cannot see the unrealism of the speaker contribution to making
the Philippines a newly industrialized country by the turn of the century,
one can only worry about the realism of the rest of their plans.