A Cause That Unites

By: René B. Azurin
(This column appeared in Business World on Thursday, June 14, 2007. IF YOU SUBSCRIBE TO THE CAUSE DESCRIBED, PLEASE VOLUNTEER NOW AND FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS.)

Ten thousand stumps, all that remained of felled trees, had been set up to make the front lawn of the Cultural Center of the Philippines look like a tree graveyard. The message of artist Junyee could not have been clearer: no leaf, no life. Then, on June 5 last week, World Environment Day, artist and art patroness Odette Alcantara of the Green Army Foundation placed newly-grown seedlings beside the dead tree stumps and organized a ritual babang luksa dance in this “graveyard”. Her message too could not have been clearer: new leaf, new life. 

This evoked in me memories of one of the first books I used to read to my children, The Lorax by Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel). In that imaginative rendering of what must be the most vivid and eloquent environmentalist manifesto ever written, the merchant Once-ler comes upon a glorious forest of bright Truffula Trees and clear ponds where playful Bar-ba-loots and singing Swomee-Swans and humming Humming-Fish frolicked. It was a time “when the grass was still green… and the clouds were still clean”. Once-ler, ever alert for a business opportunity, begins cutting down the trees to turn them into Thneeds “which everyone, EVERYONE, EVERYONE needs!” Once-ler builds a Thneed factory, invents technology (the Super-Axe-Hacker) to cut trees down faster, “biggers” his money, and ignores the repeated warnings of the “shortish” and “oldish” Lorax “who speaks for the trees… for the trees have no tongues”. In one such warning, the Lorax tells Once-ler:

“NOW…thanks to your hacking my trees to the ground,
there’s not enough Truffula Fruit to go around.
And my poor Bar-ba-loots are all getting the crummies
Because they have gas, and no food, in their tummies!
They loved living here. But I can’t let them stay.
They’ll have to find food. And I hope that they may.
Good luck, boys,” he cried. And he sent them away.

Narrating his story to a solitary passerby, long after he has finally cut down all the Truffula trees and all the creatures have fled and the land is bare and the air is full of smog and the streams are filled with “glump”, Once-ler says:

I, the Once-ler, felt sad
As I watched them all go.
BUT… business is business!
And business must grow
Regardless of crummies in tummies, you know.

Maybe reading The Lorax many times years ago is what draws me to the environmentalist movement. I find myself admiring passionate advocates for save-the-Earth causes mainly, I think, because their motivations seem to be about as pure as human motivations can be. Other causes – even religious ones – are almost always driven by an interest in profits or power. But those who espouse environmental causes – even when one disagrees with the solutions they propose – can rarely be faulted for their intentions which are generally based on a respect for all living things and the long-term well-being of the entire race. Certainly – and this is what is refreshing in these ultra-materialist times – committed environmentalists do not do what they do because they want to acquire the latest 7-series model BMW or a penthouse in Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Anyway, while I was recalling the bossy Lorax that sunny June 5 morning, the multi-sector group Green Army Foundation launched a joint project with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources called “Trees for Life: 20 Million Seedlings for Planting”. It is a joint private-public sector effort to plant 20 million trees over the next five months in logged upland forest areas, denuded watersheds, coastal mangrove swamps, and population centers. “Let us not focus on issues that divide, but on causes that unite,” declared DENR Secretary Angelo Reyes in his keynote message. Well, in times like these when political issues create deep, perhaps unbridgeable, divisions among the Filipino people, here certainly was a cause that unites. It made the diverse audience that included environmentalists, artists, civil society groups, businessmen, academics, youth groups, and religious groups – visibly from all ends of the political spectrum – applaud enthusiastically. For a project not only to conserve but to actually repair irresponsibly damaged parts of our natural habitat, it would be difficult to imagine that there would be naysayers.

Uncontrolled deforestation over the years has already severely compromised the ability of our forests to retain water, spread this around to replenish our water tables, and hold back erosion. This has made the regular monsoon rains and the usual typhoons that visit the country especially devastating. As an indication, at least 200 people were killed by heavy floods and landslides in 2003, 412 people in 2004, and some 2,000 people in February 2006. With those statistics in mind, it almost seems unnecessary to mention how trees clean our atmosphere of carbon dioxide and other pollutants and, by acting as carbon sinks, mitigate the effects of global warming.

Two maps of the Philippines – one showing its forest cover in 1904 and then again in 2004 – were flashed by Mr. Reyes onto a screen. In what was clearly a tragedy of monstrous proportions, these showed that the country’s leaders had allowed over 19 million hectares of forest cover to be whittled down to only 7.2 million hectares, of which only some 829,000 hectares remained of primary forest. Pointing, “This is what we lost”, Mr. Reyes said dramatically, “and this is what we will regain.” That, indisputably, was an emphatic statement of political will. One only hopes that Mr. Reyes will be permitted by the political powers that be to carry it out.

Since it is a story for children, Dr. Seuss ends on a note of hope as Once-ler bequeaths to the young passerby the last remaining Truffula Seed that he had been carefully saving and says:

“Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care.
Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air.
Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack.
Then the Lorax and all his friends may come back.”

It is enough to make one weep for all the things that we have irretrievably lost.

The “Trees for Life” project needs 20 million volunteers to plant 20 million seedlings. To register as a volunteer, one need merely text the following to 5777 (for both Smart and Globe users):

GREEN REG firstname/midinitial/lastname

(Example: green reg Juan/C/De la Cruz)

If we all volunteer, maybe our children will still get to meet the Lorax and all his friends too. Our generation would then have been able to restore to the generation of our children at least part of what should really be their precious heritage.