800 attend 3rd International River Summit

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – Around 800 environment experts and advocates attended the three-day third International River Summit to discuss the state of the country’s river systems held in a hotel here Thursday.

The summit, with the theme “Healthy watershed, clean rivers, safer communities,” brought together leaders and stakeholders to share knowledge and best practices to formulate a blueprint of needed actions to address pressing issues affecting river basins and communities.

Archbishop Antonio Ledesma, chair of the Cagayan de Oro River Basin Management Council, said everybody must work together and engage in the mitigation, adaptation and even anticipation of future calamities.

Ledesma, who’s also the head of the archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro, said it is important to learn from past disasters like what Typhoon Sendong brought to this city and Iligan City in 2011.

Mayor Oscar Moreno said the devastation by Sendong has made the Cagayanons resilient as he redefined resiliency to mean emerging stronger and building back better.

For his part, Raoul Geollegue, former Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) official and president of the Watershed Management Coalition, said massive reforestation of the Cagayan de Oro river basin located mainly in Bukidnon must be undertaken.

The present state of the CDO river basin has reached a critical level in that another weather disturbance akin to Sendong could lead to a killer flood that will leave thousands affected, Geollegue said.

The Cagayan de Oro river basin, covering 1,379 square kilometers of forest lands located in the city’s upland, Bukidnon and some parts of Iligan City, is in danger of producing another disaster as portions of it are already without trees that will hold water that would prevent massive flooding.

The CDO river basin is one of the 18 major river basins in the country, eight of which are found in Mindanao.

The river basins in Mindanao are in: Cagayan de Oro, Tagoloan, Ranao (Agus), Mindanao, Agusan, Tagum-Libuganon, Davao, and Buayan-Malungong.