AFTER LOGGING, DU30 SHOULD TARGET MINING

THE economic group under the heading of “resource extraction” can be called by another name—the “sector.

Logging means clear- cutting timber stands that may have been there from time immemorial. The requirements to clear-cut forests are minimal: jumbo bulldozers to build saws, chains and hooks and trucks haul the logs from the logging base to the log-stocking area.

There is no such thing as “responsible logging.”

A logger just plunders awesome gifts of nature for maximum rewards, with a quick, super-high rate of return never known in any included. In the 1950s and the 1960s, real wealth was possessed not by diversified conglomerates but by loggers and the sugar barons. In the 1970s, just prior to and after the proclamation of martial rule, the players were the martial law mandarins, their cronies and presidential relatives. Most of the martial law mandarins and their cronies built their great wealth on logging.

It is also true that the mahogany that built all those basketball courts in the US and elsewhere from the 1950s to the 1980s came from Filipino loggers.

From 12 million hectares in the 1950s, the country’s original timber stand dropped to below 1 million hectares in the late 1980s, when a proper accounting of the country’s remaining original timber stand was accomplished. The lush tropical forests in the awesome Sierra Madre were almost gone and the famous Isabela logging camps had dropped down to a trickle. Much of the country’s logging operations had by then shifted to the Visayas and Mindanao. Multilateral institutions such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB) committed tons of money to reforestation. But no amount of money can make a difference in a context where less than 1 million of the so-called “virgin forests” had been eviscerated.

As the original timber stands disappeared, great floods that devastated much of Central Luzon and the Plains started their deadly, vicious cycle. Remem just before the proclamation of buried what is now Metro Manila and Central Luzon with water from the denuded uplands.

The giant Pantabangan Dam, with its reliable watershed areas in the Sierra Madre raped by loggers, started drying up as well during long, dry spells. The spire of the church of the submerged township jutted out from the murky deep during vicious summers.

From the pillage of Luzon’s biodiversity, the national economy and the broader society earned nothing. Only the well-connected loggers made their pile.

The truth is, most Filipinos, given the alarming state of the country’s timber stands, have never realized that logging still exists. So when Agriculture Secretary Manny Piñol recorded that video that prompted President Duterte to suspend all logging operations in the Zamboanga Peninsula, there was shock that loggers were still at it – and doing it with impunity in upland areas adjacent to very vulnerable communities.

Environment Secretary Cimatu should enforce the order of the President, asap. And thank you Secretary Manny for the vigilance.

DU30’s attention and forcible intervention should next shift to mining. Deal with it harshly, Mr. President.

The powerful and well-funded lobby work of miners (of course, this is the era of fake news and the moneyed miners can easily spread misinformation), have made the public believe that mining is one of the most important economic activities in the country – and that a cease-and-desist order on reckless mining would terribly impact on the national economy.

Wrong. Fake news. Mining contributes little to the economy, according to figures from the