THERE has been a tree massacre on Quirino Avenue. Huge trees, some of apparently almost 2 feet in diameter, felled. They were on the middle island of Quirino Avenue, now they are dead. And the killers did not just do it in the trees on the middle island but went over to the sidewalks and cut down the trees there, too, to the shock and dismay of the neighborhood.
The newspaper report said it was the price of progress. The paper was probably being sarcastic as the photo that accompanied the story was a ghastly scene of felled trees.
It seems that the responsible party, San Miguel Infrastructure, has a Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) permit to do what it did, plus an environmental clearance certificate. One has to wonder what these two agencies were thinking or were told to think. Meanwhile, was the city of Manila consulted? Quirino Avenue is a major thoroughfare.
All of the above for the so-called Salex, a connector road to the still incomplete, or rather hardly initiated Bulacan airport that is another San Miguel project. San Miguel is also the proponent of the bridge to Boracay that it seems bent on constructing despite province-wide community opposition. If that bridge materializes, the carrying capacity of Boracay, already in peril, will be compromised.
Here are the questions: Is Quirino Avenue to be sacrificed for this project? Why are expressways being given first dibs when they destroy the city landscape literally, inconveniencing the neighborhoods where they decide to take over, all for private gain? Doesn’t the public have some rights, some consultative role, or are we to give way to big business at its most monopolistic and money-grubbing as a matter of course?
This is not progress but suicide. We are in the midst of climate change where temperatures are rising to deadly levels. Trees mitigate climate change because they lower temperature, through photosynthesis they create oxygen and thus counter air pollution which is already at dangerous levels in Metro Manila.
Again what are priorities here, big business before the general population, city landscapes allowed to be uglified with concrete expressways, public health compromised by the effects of tree disappearances bringing on heat, air pollution and lack of oxygen?
It is time to educate the ignorant and the venal. The natural environment is what makes this planet livable. Destroy or compromise it and it becomes less livable. We have been on this destructive road for too long — logging our forests to nil, polluting our seas and waterways, wasting water, using plastic uncontrollably, getting rid of open spaces that mitigate floods, have greenery and provide leisure places.
The American botanist Elmer Drew Merrill working between 1906 and 1923 in the Philippines counted 3,600 species of trees in this country. No one has continued the work. Maybe there were more than 3,600 and maybe now there are less. Some have disappeared through our carelessness, self-serving ways. Others are on the verge of disappearance. This is the road to perdition. Worse, in full public view, we watch trees being cut down without objection.
We have failed to educate ourselves and our progeny on how to conserve, protect, defend our natural environment. Some people cut down trees because their leaves fall to the ground, and they do not want to sweep them up. Others because the branches fall on their roof. These are not problems that need drastic solutions like killing trees. We ignore discerning why this is happening, which is greed, stupidity, ignorance and callousness. Tolerance of those who exhibit such behavior has brought us to this mess.
We sin against the environment not only by what we do by thoughtlessly taking it for granted and harming it in more ways than one, as well as by what we do not do — oppose its destruction by others in our presence.
It is time to fight big business and other vandals doing environmental damage. Developers who appropriate farmlands, open spaces, city landscapes, big business with their so-called public-private partnership projects using government property or public property for private gain. At this stage of our environment, these activities bring on environmental havoc. Cutting trees wantonly and for reasons of pure profit for some to the detriment of all is a clear example of environmental crime. Which at this stage of this planet’s life and Metro Manila’s terrible environmental problems makes it a heinous crime.
I will not ask the culprits to explain themselves, their motives are obvious. But I do request the DENR to explain itself on how it allowed the tree massacre on Quirino Avenue to happen. Some critical thinking seems to be absent in this agency.
