Ridge, river, and sea

EACH of these elements of the environment affects each other since we have an interactive system. It is reasonable to try to preserve the environment for future generations. Since this is an exhaustible resource, we need to use it efficiently and sparingly. There are many reasons to motivate different participants in the preservation of the environment. And since we have to ask as many as possible to participle in this preservation, we have to organize and coordinate the protection of the environment. Government, banks, financial institutions, corporations, NGOs, and private individual all need to put their shoulders to the task. They would have different motivations and each will have to harness the proper motivation. Recently climate change has pushed this motivation. We have seen that we cannot let things go without looking at what we can do to prevent degradation of the environment. Soil erosion is one of the costliest of the degradation. I have seen top accumulated over the centuries washed away in few hours by rain in newly opened developments.

At effort at such organization was a conference held in Waterfront Hotel in Cebu with the sponsorship of the Archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro. Organizing would reap potential resources needed to protect the environment. And once resources, especially funds, are gathered, to efficiently use them for the protection of the environment. At time this is called climate and landscape finance at scale.

There were only a dozen participants but this is an ongoing effort. Two foreign participants contributed knowledge gathered in other places. Mr. Gerhard Mulder came as a representative of IUCN National Committee of the Netherlands and Mr. Jeff Reeves came from the United States. There are different motivations to help in the funding of landscape finance or protection of the environment. But all of them should be encouraged to participate. Whatever the motivation, efforts should be coordinated and if possible organized at a scale that would be meaningful in the protection of the environment.

Funding of this effort is one phase and necessary to be able to start. The other phase is to efficiently use the funds for the greatest attainment of the objectives. In this seminar the first phase was assumed as achievable. The focus was on the second phase of how to use the resources so that the maximum benefits are achieved. In this case the planting of cacao in the recovery of areas from grasslands was the main topic. Grass lands are poor soil preservers so that using the land for profitable agriculture is needed.

Some of the participants have made connections with buyers of cacao beans and have made arrangements with them for buying the product. The main problems in the production of cacao in the Philippines are the borers that bore into the seed when the variety of cacao does not have a hard enough shell. This happens with the criolio variety which is the most aromatic of the various varieties. The next problem is the fungus that goes with the early morning wind and if it lands on a wet leaf and bores into the branch and into the trunk it can clog the vascular system of the cacao plant. It is therefore is necessary to inspect the branches every two week and cut off any infected branches.

The final problem with cacao is that the price of the beans is not determined locally but by the international buyers in Brazil or West Africa. It is therefore important to process the beans into cacao oil, used for lipstick, and the residue used for chocolates. But there may be other agricultural products that would help solve grasslands in the Philippines. There are many other ways to help preserve the fertility of the soil.