15TH Festival Of Trees Benefits 1, 720 ARMM Schoolkids

The recent 15th Festival of Trees (FOT-15) has raised funds to rehabilitate and reforest one of the major sources of drinking water from the endangered rainforests of Northeastern Metro Manila and Rizal province, as the annual fund raiser highlighted efforts last year in assisting flood-prone urbanized areas in Northwestern Manila and farflung public elementary schools in Central and Western Mindanao in the Southern Philippines.

A decade and a half after the first FOT in 1996, the annual society event has raised funds to help reforest more than half of the 28,000-hectare aquifer serving Marikina City in Eastern Manila and Antipolo City in Rizal, especially in the aftermath of the Typhoon Ondoy-Ketsana tragedy last year.

The Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), the nation’s largest corporate-led social development foundation, has been the recipient of various FOT undertakings led by the Makati Garden Club (MGC), like helping raise funds for the building of drainage systems in a flood-prone housing estate in urban Malabon City after the 14th FOT in 2009.

The fund-raising festival also helped provide textbooks and chairs for at least 1,720 schoolchildren in Maguindanao province in Central Mindanao and Basilan province in the Southwestern Philippines, two of the less fortunate provinces of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

For 15 years, the ladies of the Makati Garden Club have been using their stature in society to raise millions of pesos to benefit various poverty-reduction projects of PBSP. The FOT has evolved to be the top fund-raising gala event in Manila, and to date has raised close to a hundred million pesos to support PBSP programs in Cebu Hillylands, Maqueda Bay in Samar, the Bicol region, and areas in Mindanao.

The year 2010 is also the joint Ruby anniversaries of the Makati Garden Club and PBSP, both established in 1970. The theme for FOT-15 is What a Wonderful World.

In past years, Christmas trees were decorated and auctioned off to raise money, and the auction was expanded to art works. In the last few years, prizes included premier resort accommodations to Amanpulo and overseas destinations.

In one FOT year, the art auction included masterpieces from Anita Magsaysay-Ho that attracted collectors from Singapore, and donations raised during that year funded PBSP’s Samar technology center which has developed aquaculture technology to benefit fisherfolk primarily in the Visayas.

Business tycoon Manuel V. Pangilinan, chair of the PBSP Board of Trustees, together with PBSP executive director Rafael C. Lopa led the 15th FOT on Tuesday evening (Nov. 23) at the Manila Polo Club along McKinley Road in Forbes Park, Makati City.

In his keynote speech, Pangilinan cited the FOT’s contribution to Project Escuelas last year which provided Muslim Mindanao schoolchildren with 1,600 textbooks and 200 chairs to help decongest crowded classrooms in at least six public schools in Lamitan, Basilan and in Datu Abdullah Sangki and Datu Paglas, Maguindanao.

Through the Project Escuelas initiative, these new chairs and textbooks have helped both teachers and students in the two ARMM provinces to improve the conduct and quality of their academic exercise in a spacious classroom now more conducive to learning.

He also pointed out that the FOT last year assisted urban poor household from a total membership of 560 housing associations in the four-hectare Maysilo estate-village in Malabon, which has been perennially affected with floods during heavy rains and rising seawater.

The FOT donated the funds which facilitated the construction of 250 linear meters of road running parallel 250 equal meters of a water drainage system to mitigate the effects of heavy flooding in this urbanized community in Sitio Rosal, Barangay Maysilo, with 115 households occupying 7,000 square meters of the 4.2-hectare Maysilo estate.

Of the 28,000 hectares in the Marikina watershed, fund raisers have aimed to cover at least 54 percent or more than half (around 15,120 hectares) of the aquifer, as the minimum required forest cover to mitigate any rainfall rampage or prevent the onslaught of another Ondoy.

But the Marikina watershed now has an estimated remaining rainforest cover of only a fifth or around 20 percent (more or less 5,600 hectares), as the FOT aims to reforest more than a third or around 34 percent (about 9,520 hectares) to complete the minimum 54-percent forest cover requirement.

The Marikina Watershed Initiative of the Philippine Disaster Recovery Foundation (PDRF) began with 600 hectares, setting up community-based seedling nurseries and initial livelihood programs for the local residents and indigenous community, primarily through the adopt-a-hectare nursery package.

The watershed initiative has also helped develop an integrated watershed management plan to reforest the Marikina-Antipolo aquifer, involving an estimated 6.7 million trees and 1.3 million required annual seedlings in a reforestation target for the next five years. (PBSP)

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Focus On Science And Technology Development To Spur Job Creation - Angara

Senator Edgardo J. Angara called for a renewed push to make the Philippines more competitive by developing a strategy for the science and technology sector to improve the capacity for innovation and spur job creation in the country.

Angara, Chair of the Congressional Commission on Science, Technology and Engineering (COMSTE) reiterated the need for a sound S&T strategy in light of the World Competitiveness Report for 2010-2011 which ranked the Philippines at 85th among 139 in terms competitiveness.

Last year, the Philippines was ranked 87th, but despite of the slight improvement Angara said that, “our efforts to improve our competitiveness must continue, especially when it comes to innovation and S&T platforms.”

The same report also listed the country as ranking a lowly 108th for quality of research institutions, 96th in terms of availability of scientists and engineers and 85th in terms of University-Industry Collaboration in R&D.

“COMSTE has long pushed for the development of Public Private Partnerships (PPP’s) that can boost the capabilities of our research institutions, improve the quality of R&D and at the same time create an environment for stronger industry-academe linkages,” noted Angara.

Angara noted that COMSTE has identified four priority thrusts for 2011, electric vehicles and green transport, disaster science management and mitigation, the establishment of the Industrial Research and Development Institute (IRDI) and the Renewable Energy Research and Development Institute (RERDI). All four are projected to have strong PPP foundations.

“By developing our S&T strategy, we can better align our initiatives with that of other countries. If we have similar priorities, we can build on this and develop a basis for international collaboration, while at the same time stimulate the creation of new jobs in the S&T sector,” said Angara.

Angara noted that innovative Filipino companies are already breaking ground in the semiconductor and electronics industries, with the emergence of Filipino branded communications and computer products, like ex-Intel chip designers that formed an electronics service company in chip design, and Ionics EMS, Inc. which is the first ASEAN manufacturer of WiMax, wireless broadband access system components.

In the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector alone, projections are that by 2016 employment in the sector would rise to 1.4 million, an average of 135,000 new jobs per year.

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Stakeholder Assess Laguna Bamboo Industry, Draft Action Plan

In a workshop initiated by the Laguna Provincial Office of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the local governments of Siniloan, Nagcarlan, Lumban, Rizal, Famy, Magdalena, Calauan, and entrepreneurs, representatives of national government agencies and experts met to assess the province’s bamboo industry.

Marilou Quinco-Toledo, DTI Calabarzon Regional Director, provided background information and motivated participants to actively share their part in the development of the bamboo industry as it is hoped to significantly contribute to the economy by providing livelihood and employment to many sectors including local governments.

The province of Laguna is identified by the DTI to be the pilot area in Calabarzon for the bamboo development project.

The Philippine Bamboo Industry Development Council (PBIDC), as discussed by DTI Central Luzon regional director Blesila Blantayona, is created under Executive Order No. 879 which provides to promote the bamboo industry development project and direct the use of bamboo for at least 25 percent of the desk and other furniture requirements of public elementary and secondary schools. PBIDC is also mandated to promote the use of bamboo in furniture, fixtures and other construction requirements of government facilities.

Need for massive planting

Currently, there are only 40,000 hectares of land planted with bamboo in the country out of the estimated 200,000 hectares of bamboo plantation required to meet local demand.

“The industry is in the very scarce level of supply thus there is need for massive planting of bamboo, and even public lands are eyed to be tapped for planting”, added Director Lantayona of DTI Central Luzon.

The DENR on its part is tasked to reforest at least 500,000 hectares with bamboo which is the Philippines’ commitment of contribution to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) commitment of 20 million hectares of new forest by 2020.

The bamboo, with its myriads of uses, is in high demand yet supply is very low.

“Farmers and entrepreneurs must be shown and encouraged that bamboo and other bamboo-based products are selling and making money, thus they would be motivated to produce bamboo. Today’s cost of bamboo is very high; it’s a seller’s market”, said Myrna Bituin of Betis Crafts, as she emphasized the bamboo supply and replenishment concept.

“Under EO 879, the Department of Education (DepEd) will procure the equivalent of at least 25 percent of the annual school desks and armchairs requirements of all public elementary and secondary schools nationwide which are made of bamboo.

“The bamboo industry already has its demand waiting to be served, referring to the DepEd, an institutional market procuring bamboo-made desks and armchairs equivalent to 25% of the amount total desk requirements which is in several millions of pesos annually”, declared Director Lantayona.

Frank Bonoan, executive director of the Cottage Industrial Technology Center of the DTI, showed prototypes of desks and archairs and elaborated on the advantages of engineered bamboo ? or the’e-bamboo’ – in furniture-making and as basic construction components such as planks, pillars and floor tiles/parquet.

“Therefore, aside from the DepEd, the Department of Public Works and Highways would be another big institutional market requiring’engineered bamboo’ for the construction of public schools and other government facilities”, added Director Bonoan.

Business development model

The bamboo development framework has three components: propagation, business development and disaster risk management/mitigation.

Propagation involves the production of planting materials, nurseries and growing plantations which could be a big business opportunity.

Business development entails the establishment of nodes and hubs in which nodes will be the initial processors of bamboo into slats and hubs as production or manufacturing centers in which bamboo materials are made into its intended final product.

Bamboo on disaster risk mitigation

As a center of economic and industrial development, Calabarzon’s environment is prone to deterioration and degradation.

“There is now heavy sedimentation in Laguna de Bay due to erosion”, stressed Jose Cariño of the Laguna Lake Development Authority when he spoke of the need to reforest the 3,600-sq. km watershed around the Laguna Lake with bamboo.

“In China, bamboo proved effective in protecting watersheds, riverbanks and hill slopes against soil erosion. Moreover, a hectare of bamboo plantation, if properly managed, will sequester 12 tons of carbon monoxide in a year”, added Cariño.

Prompted by the his experience during typhoon Ondoy, Mayor Aurelio of the municipality of Rizal made said that there is an immediate need to reforest the highland municipality with bamboo. The flooding of the lowland municipalities was due to the lack of forest cover in the highlands that were supposed to arrest the flooding.

“As an incentive, we will give out quantities of rice for every bamboo planted; on the other hand, we immediately need the right quantity of bamboo seedlings for our reforestation project”, declared Mayor Aurelio.

Cariño also cited bamboo for landscaping as showcased in posh Nuvali and Eton City, both high-end residential, business and commercial communities in Laguna.

Advocacy

The PBIF advocates on cooperation and working together of stakeholders for the advancement of the bamboo industry. It is also grants training on bamboo culture and production and echoes the utilization of bamboo as a sustainable environmental protection.

“The Chinese bamboo industry is far way advanced such that they have already found success in using bamboo into garments, towels, soap and cosmetics”, said Romualdo Sta. Ana, president of the Philippine Bamboo Industry Foundation (PBIF).

Dr. Celso Lantican of the Bamboo Network of the Philippines (BambooPhil) – an organization composed of Filipino bamboo scientists, advocates and entrepreneurs – visions a strong and cohesive network working actively for livelihood generation, environmental protection and industrial development using bamboo.

He introduced bamboo carpentry in support of the bamboo industry and as a craft for livelihood as well.

Action plan

At the latter part, DTI Laguna provincial director Susan Palo led the workshop to draft action plans and roles of the respective stakeholders.

It was decided that an assessment and survey of existing plantations and supply of bamboo be made throughout the province including in adjacent areas then identify processing nodes and manufacturing hubs.

Among those identified as hubs are the ABS-CBN Bayan Foundation – Bayan ni Juan resettlement center in Calauan, Laguna; and an existing yet unoperational bamboo processing facility also in Calauan.

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