In 2016, I was trying to set up community-based programs around Luzon. One forest community had beautiful landscapes, but I noticed that my local tour guide was actually a charcoal maker, which was illegal in the protected watersheds. We have lost 90% of our primary old growth forest since 1900 — our century-old trees have disappeared.“Why are you cutting trees to make charcoal? Isn’t that illegal?” I said to him in Filipino.
The world has been shattering records for strength of storms and intensity of heat waves as humanity continues to do extractive business as usual. As economies grow, more carbon dioxide is produced and released into the atmosphere, and more resources — trees, water, soil, rare earth are mined or used up. However, we are reaching a tipping point as we can no longer afford to continue in this way, because it will only speed up climate change.
The second economy we are building is agroforestry, where fruit and nut trees are planted around or alongside forest trees. Some of these productive trees prefer shade and so they are a perfect match for the larger forest trees. We have been able to plant over 63,000 trees, with another 25,000 to be planted within 2024.The Philippines imports millions of kilos of cashew a year from Vietnam and China — and so our communities are growing their own cashew to cater to local markets.
As the trees grow, flowers bloom, and the communities are able to harvest forest honey which is a valuable product that is also usually imported when you check supermarket supplies.
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