By Ted Mead
To most Australians the names nato, narro and ipil mean nothing. To the people of Palawan island in the Philippines, these names represent the splendid hardwood trees that dominate their magnificent forests. These forests, together with the fringing tropical reef, have always provided the people's basic necessities.
Exploitation by multinational developers is changing all this.
There are more than 20 ethnolinguistic groups in Palawan, but three main indigenous groups — the Tagbanuas, Palawanos and Batacs — are being marginalised to the point of imminent extinction.
Palawan is situated between the south-west China and Sulu Seas, and is the most western of the islands of the Philippines. It is about 450 kilometres long with an average width of 28 kilometres and rises to approximately 1700 metres in the highlands.
The vegetation on Palawan is distinctly different to other regions of the Philippines. The 54% of the island's forest remaining is located in the highlands and is considered pristine wilderness. It is renowned for its high proportion of native flora, and is a habitat of the rare Palawan bear cat and the Palawan peacock pheasant. Palawan is also a refuge for the threatened Philippine sea eagle.
Commercial logging and tourist developments by multinational exploiters are rapidly degrading this tropical wonderland. 61% of Palawan's forest has been dedicated to commercial interests, thereby subjected to potential logging.
Thirty per cent of these forests are in the control of Jose Alvarez, who has almost total control of all logging operations on the island and the smaller islands off Palawan. Alvarez's monopoly is a generous gift from politicians, including Palawan's parliamentary representative, Ramon Mitra, whose electoral campaign was funded by Alvarez.
Mitra's friendship with Alvarez indicates that little has changed since the overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. Favouritism did not begin with Mitra. Teodoro Pena served in the central government as natural resources minister in the Marcos era. During this period he helped Alvarez gain his two huge (186,000 hectare) forest concessions in north Palawan.
It is estimated that the cost of forest destruction in Palawan is $24 million per year — through soil nitrogen, water and fish catch loss. Royalties to the Philippine government from the Alvarez logging operation are said to be minuscule, whilst the value of
timber production to date exceeds US $1.1 billion.
The logging provides access to the poor migrant farmers (Kaingineros) who are forced to flee from poverty on outer islands. Kaingineros is from the word kaingin, meaning to slash and burn. These poor farmers enter after the loggers have left, burn parcels of the forest, then cultivate subsistence crops for a season or two before moving on to repeat the cycle elsewhere. The farmers practise this shifting cultivation because the soil that once nurtured tropical hardwoods is thin and easily leached of its nutrients by agriculture, so that crops fail after a few plantings.
Approximately 500,000 ha of Palawan's agricultural land are threatened by flood and erosion. In 1987 a report by a group of scientists recommended that the government declare the island a biosphere reserve in order to provide a legal framework for the protection and conservation of its resources. It was simply ignored.
The cutting cycle in Palawan is 20 years, too short for regeneration. If current destruction continues, then all the primary forest will have been logged by the year 2000. One company controlled by Alvarez — Pagdanan Timber Co. — is tearing the forest down at a staggering rate of 19,000 ha per year. This is one-fifth of the Philippines' national deforestation rate. Most of the harvest is exported to Japan, Korea and Taiwan.
Palawan is fringed by an exquisite tropical reef. Secluded bays abut limestone cliffs and mountain peaks, overhung with dense jungle. In the north, El Nido bay is a tropical paradise. Japanese proposals to construct a holiday village, complete with an exclusive international airport, will destroy the entire nature of the area. Within the spectacular cliffs of El Nido lives a native swift whose nests are considered a delicacy by the Palawanos, who remove them conscientiously. The development would threaten the swifts.
Commercial dynamite and cyanide fishing has reduced fish production by 50% within the past decade. Along with mining for silica and chromite, these issues have sparked the Palawan conservation movement, Haribon. It fights for the protection of the reef, against clearing, mangrove destruction, siltation and slash and burn agriculture, and for ownership of ancestral lands.
Earlier this year 16 members of Haribon were arrested and charged with subversion for revealing information on illegal logging and timber smuggling. Little is known of their current welfare and fear is held for their safety.
Haribon has a vision of sustainable development based on social equity. Poverty constitutes the biggest drain on the country's resources. Haribon seeks to break this vicious cycle by demanding
an outright transfer of these resources to local communities, with the rights to manage and develop it.
Haribon focuses on four fundamental points:
- social equity to correct the destructive difference between the granting of the natural resources, and the needs of the whole society to conserve and benefit from them;
- training communities to use natural resources sustainably;
- establishing and protecting critical areas for endangered species of flora and fauna;
- managing pollution and waste to safeguard regeneration.
One glimmer of hope for Palawan is the expansion of the current national park to encompass the entire pristine forested regions and the undisturbed reefs.
The St Paul Subterranean National Park was created through a debt for nature swap program. This includes the area adjacent called the El Nido Marine Sanctuary. It was funded by World Wildlife in the United States at an expense of $2 million.