Category: disasters

coconut dis-ease, coco levy fund, and buko juice

jarius bondoc’s column Authorities, please act on these readers’ woes includes a desperate plea from a coconut farmer.

From Mr. Bert Tomas of Tanauan, Batangas: “This is about the pestilence in my town, the rest of Batangas province, and parts of Laguna. Scale insects are infesting coconut trees, causing the leaves to turn brown and wilt. Eventually the pests attack the core of the trunk until the trees die.

“Planters have resorted to felling the trees for sale as coco-lumber, for some income before they become useless. I cannot imagine the economic hardships our planters would suffer when all their trees and earnings are gone. Millions of us depend on coconut for a living.

“Replanting coconut seedlings is useless. The insects attack young trees as well. If spared, the saplings will take five to ten years to fruit.

“Last Sept. I met with personnel from the Philippine Coconut Authority. They could do nothing as they lack funds and knowhow to combat the pestilence, they said. There are only nine of them servicing the whole Batangas.

“I personally have seen the same coconut infestation in Mt. Makiling, in adjacent Laguna province. I am hoping against hope it has not spread to the next province of Quezon.

“I have heard President Noynoy Aquino and Agriculture Sec. Proceso Alcala (who is from Quezon) talk about the bright prospects for coconut products domestically and abroad. I wonder if they, and our local officials, are aware of the problem. If they are doing something about it, we have not been informed. The country’s entire coconut industry could be wiped out.

“Please, help us send this message to the authorities, before it’s too late: save whatever is left of our coconuts.”

last year, in march, the philippine coconut authority (PCA) alloted 1.4M php to mitigate with extensive measures the scale insect infestation in affected areas in 41 barangays of seven municipalities in the province of Batangas.

june 30, the agency said only 6 percent of batangas’ total coconut area was affected by the deadly scale insects.

in october, a month after the PCA told  bert tomas that they could do nothing for lack of funds and knowhow, the department of agriculture (DA) issued a press release to the effect that the PCA was “anticipating a sigh of relief,” with coconut farmers attesting to the effectivity of the mitigating measures implemented to combat the coconut scale insect infestation, which infected nine municipalities in the province of Batangas.  obviously premature, the anticipation.

in fact the scale infestation has worsened.  check this out, from interaksyon, dated january 2013: VIDEO | After being milked dry of coco levy, Batangas farmers suffer blow from another ‘parasite.’

in february, the DA’s bureau of agricultural statistics posted this top item of the monthly regional agricultural situation report:

In Batangas, the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) reported that 20 percent of the total area of coconut trees were greatly affected by scale insects. These were the municipalities of Sto. Tomas, Tanauan, Malvar, Mataas Na Kahoy, Talisay, Lipa City, Lemery, Calaca, Agoncillo, Laurel and Talisay. Continuous control measures like pruning, burning and spraying of crude oil and dish washing liquid were undertaken to eradicate the spread of the insects.

from 6 percent infestation in june 2012 to 20 percent in february 2013.

february 4, 2013 agham partylist rep. angelo palmones delivered a privilege speech in congress.  the scale infestation has spread to some parts of laguna and quezon, and combined efforts of government with the private sector, PPP daw, are proving woefully insufficient for lack of funds and manpower.

now we know that it’s not the usual seasonal infestation, now we know that it won’t go away without major intervention, why are not more drastic and effective measures being undertaken to combat the spread of the deadly scale infestation?  no money?  but there’s the coco levy fund.  who, what are we saving it for?  surely the ailing coconut industry deserves all-out government support.  surely this is an emergency operation that deserves funding from the billions of bucks that coconut farmers unwillingly paid for close to a decade back in the dark days of martial law; money that’s now sitting in san miguel stocks and bank deposits earning interest for who-knows-who.

considering that the prez has been promoting buko juice and waxing ecstatic about the planned $15-million dollar investment by U.S. companies, it is strange that he has not seen fit to assure us, and the foreign investors-to-come, that everything is being done, no expense being spared, to stop the infestation and rejuvenate the coco industry.

and then, again, who knows what government plans for the coco industry and the levy fund.  for all we know there is no great concern or grief for the dying trees because anyway they’re mostly old trees, past the prime of their fruiting life, time to replace them with high breeds that fruit more frequently and plentily.  hmm.  if they’re on that track, sana they’re prepared to use the levy fund to replace the lost trees, along with all the old trees that survive the scale infestation, just because coco farmers are in no position to shoulder the costs.  it’s payback time.  and sana they’re prepared to see the majority poor coco farmers through the 4 years or so until new trees start fruiting.

meanwhile, the media should be echoing the questions raised by the kapisanan ng magbubukid ng pilipinas (KMP) in 2011, posted in bulatlat.com.

The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) feared that the 3.3 million hectares of coconut lands would be controlled by US agro-corporations.

“We fear that Aquino’s pasalubong would replicate the experience of farmers in Mindanao where US-based agro-corporations like Del Monte and Dole now enjoy lifetime control over tens of thousands of hectares of lands,” Randall Echanis, KMP deputy secretary general, said, referring to the country’s 50-year leaseback agreement with the US corporations that is renewable for another 25 years.

Echanis called on Aquino “to divulge the terms” of the investments fearing that this could lead to “one-sided and onerous land lease deals” between the US and the Philippines.

“These land lease schemes have turned farmers into mere low wage-earning agricultural workers instead of being empowered owner-cultivators,” Echanis said adding that the schemes “undermined the rights of farmers over their lands.”

There are 3.4 million farmer-families dependent on the country’s 3.37 million hectares of land devoted to coconut or 26 percent of the country’s total agricultural lands. http://bulatlat.com/main/2011/09/29/farmers-fear-aquino-selling-out-to-foreign-firms/

… Echanis also said if the Aquino administration is really sincere in developing the coconut industry, it should “immediately return to small coconut farmers the more than P150 billion coconut levy funds trapped in his uncle Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco’s San Miguel Corporation.”

“The $15 million investment from the US is no match to the P150 billion ($3.488 billion) coco levy funds and the billions of pesos of agricultural funds being plundered by corrupt officials. The immediate return of the coco levy funds to genuine small coconut farmers is still among the solutions for the development of the coconut industry and not through onerous and one-sided investments,” Echanis said.

hayy.  i have a sinking feeling that something’s going on, deals being made, behind the scenes that augurs well only for the usual suspects.  matuwid na daan?  more like madilim.

pablo, logging, mining *updated*

the president has every reason to be apalled by the 1000+ deaths and still counting, 800+ still missing, and P15 billion damage to agriculture and property, not to speak of the despair and misery of the tens of thousands of homeless and hungry, in compostela valley and davao oriental, wrought by typhoon pablo.

Aquino, in a keynote speech during the change of command of the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), stressed that preemptive measures should be in place whenever there are incoming typhoons to avoid lost of lives and tremendous damage to properties.

“If there is a need to double our warnings; if there is a need to triple our preparations; if we need to evacuate them one week before massive rains and flooding bring havoc to the people, we will do all of these because it is our duty to save lives to the best of our ability,” he said.

The President said he was appalled by the devastation in New Bataan, Compostela Valley, and Boston, Davao Oriental, both in southern Philippines, during his visit there last week.

senator loren legarda likewise harps on the need for preparedness.

“These would have been avoided if our local government units and all our citizens had knowledge of geohazard maps,” the senator said during the briefing called by the Senate Committee on Climate Change on the use and implementation of the geohazard maps.

She said that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources “should not only distribute these maps, but also, and more importantly, educate LGUs on how to read the map and how it will help them in their disaster risk reduction and management efforts.”

“Am I living in a landslide area? Am I living in a flood-prone area? Filipinos in every barangay in the country need to know this information long before any typhoon signals are raised. Coupled with early warning signals at least seven days before any typhoon arrives, we should be able to radically minimize the casualties,” Legarda said.

hmm.  so the solution is to evacuate threatened communities early enough, at least a week before an imminent typhoon. never mind if  that the typhoon could suddenly change course, better safe than sorry.  of course there would have to be properly provisioned evacuation centers that would have to be located on certifiably safe ground or there would be no point to the exercise.  the logistics would be major, the costs considerable, but such is life, or rather, such is the price we pay for an environment degraded eroded raped over the decades (up to the present) by government’s capitalist cronies administration after administration.

not surprisingly, there is no talk of calling for an absolute stop to all logging and mining activities that are mainly to blame for the ecological decay that bring deadly floods and killer landslides during heavy rains.

“The heartbreaking reports of deaths and destruction in New Bataan, Compostela Valley and several Davao Oriental towns and elsewhere show how Mindanao’s environment has reached its maximum limit,” Sr. Stella Matutina, OSB, Panalipdan Mindanao secretary-general, said in a statement.

The group said President Benigno Aquino III’s visit last Friday to disaster-stricken areas “should compel him to stop large-scale mining and other extractive industries that caused the tragedy.”

… She cited a report made by Panalipdan Southern Mindanao that both provinces are swamped with many large-scale mining and logging companies, with Davao Oriental accounting for 31 mining tenements, application and operations while Compostela Valley has 43.

googled and found this: MINING TENEMENTS STATISTICS REPORT AS OF JANUARY ‘2012, Region XI, obviously an incomplete list if sr. stella’s figures are correct.

last year in the wake of sendong, the president was not receptive to talk vs. logging and mining.

Asked about the need to seriously look into illegal mining and illegal logging and amending the existing laws, the President said the rights of businesses must be respected.

He said logging concessionaires have the right to harvest the trees that they planted and the government can’t easily stop their operations.

i wouldn’t be surprised if, like other presidents before him, the prez would rather leave it to the next admin to make the major changes in policies, specifically, a shift from logging and mining to the reforestation and rehabilitation of our denuded and damaged highlands and watersheds.  the prayer now probably is that ondoy, sendong, and pablo were freak disasters, and maybe the streak is over, the next typhoons will be kinder.

otherwise, the environment is an urgent agenda waiting for a president to happen. a president who would see that there is nothing sustainable about the mining and wood industries that have done, and continue to do, so much damage to our lands and waters.  surely there are alternative development strategies that are not so destructive of our island ecologies and that do not enrich a few at the expense of the many.

*

Crisis in the aftermath of ‘Pablo’
Not learning from Sendong and Pablo
How Aquino log ban was ignored 
Aquino’s Log Ban Plan Flawed, Say Environmentalists
Storms more deadly as Philippines gets hotter 
Disasters and the poor 
Mindanao lumad, green groups blame Aquino’s mining policies for devastation wreaked by typhoon Pablo
Confirmed: Deforestation Plays Critical Climate Change Role 
Mining, logging contributed to RP disaster — experts 
Disquiet 
AFTER MARCOPPER The Canadian quandary
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AS SPIRITUAL AND REVOLUTIONARY PRAXIS

philex, marcopper, waste spills

It will be total closure for listed mining firm Philex Mining Corp. if it does not pay within 45 days a P1.034 billion penalty for violations of the Mining Act of 1995 imposed by the Department Environment and Natural Resources.

that’s the good news.  the bad news is, philex spokesperson mike toledo says the company will file a motion for reconsideration.

“We will exhaust all administrative remedies provided for under the law, under the department circulars and administrative orders… We will appeal the MGB decision finding us liable for the payment of this fine,” he said.

Toledo said Philex is aiming to complete a clean up and rehabilitation of Padcal mine by the second quarter of 2013. The company hopes to restart operations by the second half of next year.

so i suppose the media spin goes on:  that it was an accident, that philex responded right away with financial help to victims, that the waste spill is not as toxic as marcopper’s in 1996 — even if this last were true (we have yet to see toxicity studies) the sheer volume of the waste spill, some 20 million metric tons, said to be 10 times that of marcopper’s, still makes it the worse disaster, if not the worst, it would seem, ever.

it was no accident.  it could have been avoided had philex built a new tailings pond instead of continuing to use an old one that was due for decommissioning by june 2012 at the latest.

read bulatlat‘s Philex’s 20 MT mine waste spill, ‘An act of God, or Greed?’

Since day 1 (last Aug 1) of the latest reported leak from the Philex tailings pond in the north, Philex has actively projected an appearance of taking responsibility.

Philex boasted that they shut down operations a day ahead of the government suspension. It also promised it will only continue mining operations at Padcal after assuring the “safety and integrity” of tailings pond 3, Padcal’s sole operational mine tailings pond at the site.

But contrary to Philex’s projection, it is not telling the public that instead of repair and remediation, it should have been decommissioning the Tailings Pond 3 as early as 2010 or at the latest, this June of 2012. The said tailings pond has reached the end of its 18 to 20 years’ lifespan this year, based on DENR data on the dam. An earlier waste spill from the same dam occurred in December 2009, and it should have been warning enough, the Katribu Partylist said in a statement.

victoria fritz, in ricardo saludo’s column space, submits that it would have cost philex much less if it had earlier built a new tailings pond instead.

Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) chief Juan Miguel Cuna said that Philex violated terms in its ECC for discharges “way beyond regulatory levels.” Cuna added that penalties for ECC violations were separate from fines for violation of the Clean Water Act, imposed by the Pollution Adjudication Board.

And if the ECC is revoked, closing the copper and gold mine would mean losing over P10 billion in revenues a year, going by the facility’s 2011 earnings of P9.29 billion from gold alone.

With those kinds of losses, it clearly would have been far cheaper to build a spare pond for P300 million, so tailings could be diverted there after two storms damaged the tailings facility on August 1. Now, on top of suffering massive losses and fines, Philex will still need to build a new pond or repair the old one, as it is considering so as to resume mining sooner.

in developed countries, here’s the drill in preventing and containing mining accidents:

For the Tailings Management Handbook of Australia’s Department of Industry Tourism and Resources, a state-of-the-art tailings storage facility is a safe, stable landform not requiring constant management after mine closure, and blending with the surrounding landscape.

That’s a tall order, since a tailings pool takes up a large area hard to hide. It must store huge volumes of water without letting any contamination to seep into the ground. And there are dust problems. Not to mention the threat of typhoons and floods in the Philippines.

For greater efficiency and economy, the facility’s processing plant must remove excess water from tailings before transport. More water and processed chemicals are recovered for reuse, to lessen the volume discharged to the storage facility. This reduces the risk of seepage to surface waters.

Many mines in Australia use thickened and paste tailings, once difficult due to the cost or lack of thickener technology. Today, expenses are down, and equipment has improved, producing high underflow densities. The thickened or paste tailings improves water and process chemical recovery at the processing plant, reduces storage volume and seepage, and creates a more stable landform.

Mining companies in developing countries like the Philippines should send staff to observe and train in the mines of select developed countries using state-of-the-art technology in minimizing mining risk.

… One cannot and should not force a false choice between prosperity from mining and environmental sustainability. With technology, enlightened management, and earnest, honest dialogue, solutions can be forged to prevent accidents and mitigate their effects. Only then can the national patrimony truly become a blessing for the Filipino people, not a resource exploited for profit to the detriment of nature and nation.

so it’s not true, as suggested by an environment advocate to rina jimenez-david, that “responsible mining” is an oxymoron,  that there cannot ever be a mining operation that is “responsible” or which safeguards the community even as owners profit from it.  responsible mining is doable but it means that both the DENR and the mining industry would have to level-up.

*

After Philex mine spill, a world of gray
Untold story of Philex’s mine waste spill
Philex spill ‘biggest mining disaster’ in PHL, surpassing Marcopper – DENR

habagat blues

yes, it’s wonderful that again, as in ondoy, faceless nameless good-hearted people are pitching in, helping out the government and the red cross in rescue and relief operations for flood victims.  but if, when, this happens again, and again — if indeed this is the “new normal” — volunteer fatigue will surely set in, sooner rather than later.

thank goodness then that despite claims that various measures undertaken by the government had mitigated flood problems and prevented another flooding on the scale of the one caused by tropical storm “Ondoy” in September 2009 — really? — the president is promising long-term solutions, such as flood control infrastructure and better garbage disposal, even if these seem inadequate to the enormity of the problem that includes denuded forests and silted rivers and waterways clogged with trash or taken over by squatter colonies with nowhere else to go.

here’s hoping this aquino admin welcomes unsolicited advice (something cory didn’t) from well-meaning citizens and, even, pinoys abroad.  check out the comments section of this new york times piece, Rains Flood a Third of Manila Area, Displacing Thousands.  read too alex magno’s Deluge, rigoberto tiglao’s The typhoon curse and what to do about it, and alejandro del rosario’s Looking like a shoal.

meanwhile, i’m glad pag-asa’s color coding has changed from red-green-yellow to red-orange-yellow, better late than never.  red makes sense, as in red alert, danger; in traffic red means stop or else!  yellow too makes sense; in traffic it means caution, prepare to stop or go, change coming.  but green, as in green grass and leaves, chlorophyll and oxygen, is good; in traffic green means go, it’s safe, coast is clear.  as intermediate point between caution and danger, green just did not make sense.   orange is the appropriate color code between yellow and red, between caution and danger.  add a little red to yellow and you get orange.  why didn’t pag-asa see this from the first?  what kind of thinking was going on over there?

as for dost’s project noah, that the aquino admin is so proud of, tina monzon-palma’s talkback episode monday night, when the rains started in earnest, said it all.  project noah is helpful and accessible only to english-speaking and computer-literate government officials with internet connections.  sabi nga ni tina, kailangang i-layman-ize ang language (in both  english and tagalog, may i suggest), at kailangang maiparating sa local government officials on the ground, or else, as in this habagat, it is of no help in getting across warnings of great volumes of rainfall coming.

not that getting the message across will guarantee that people living in high-risk areas would be more willing or eager to leave their homes.  unless they can be assured that their homes and property will be secured against looters, as in provident village (a rare case), there will always be those who will wait until the last minute in the hope that god heeds their prayers and stops the rains before the floods rise too high.

the real solution is to relocate all communities away from high-risk areas.  but apart from the problem of where to relocate them and their expected resistance, there’s this that ondoy and the habagat showed:  what used to be low-risk places that never flooded are now high-risk, too, thanks to climate change and trash dams.  it doesn’t help that goverment mismo is saying it’s the “new normal,” as though to say we’ve got to get used to it, which is of a piece with the president saying that there are no instant solutions.  already you doubt that anything significant is going to get done before the next deluge descends upon us.

i know, there’s nothing instantnoodle about infrastructure, but hey, the dredging of rivers, esteros, canals, etc., the clearing of waterways and underground drainage systems metro wide is something that can be done the moment the weather clears.  and garbage management is something that government can grapple with right away, as in now na.  stop with the spin that we are all complicit in the garbage problem, stop laying it at our doorsteps, because what’s lacking is government initiatives and support for serious solid waste management.  people are willing to segregate their household trash but what’s the use if truckers just dump the biodegradable and non-biodegradable, etc. in the same old overflowing garbage dumps, and worse, into rivers and creeks, and even into manila bay.

it’s more fun in the philippines?  no, just more trashy, and pretentious.