Parishioners Plant Trees to Save Rice Terraces

INTRODUCTION

Northern Philippine Church workers are planting trees and campaigning against quarrying to help restore the famed rice terraces that face removal from the United Nations’ World Heritage List. “We are aware of the various threats to the rice terraces and we are doing our part to respond to these through our Integrity of Creation program,” Rowena Ngitiw, Bontoc-Lagawe vicariate’s Social Action and Development Center coordinator, explained.

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The vicariate, which covers the provinces of Ifugao and Mountain Province, is based in Bontoc town, Mountain Province, 260 kilometers north of Manila. About 58% of the 280,000 area residents are Catholics, and the rest are mostly other Christians or followers of traditions associated with the various indigenous groups, collectively called Igorot. Their ancestors used traditional tools and bare hands to build terraced rice fields that reach from valley floors to about 1,500 meters up the sides of mountains in the Cordillera range.

In 1995, the Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras was added to the World Heritage List as a continuing landscape devoted exclusively to one of the three staple crops of the world. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) maintains the list of sites chosen as exemplars of national and cultural heritage, currently numbering 851. According to the World Heritage evaluators’ report, the archeological technique employed in constructing the terraces has been in use in the region for at least 2,000 years. They cited its “outstanding universal value.”

In 2001, however, UNESCO placed the terraces on its List of World Heritage in Danger. In mid-September, soon after Governor Teodoro Baguilat of Ifugao met with UNESCO representatives in Manila, he told reporters they discussed the two-year ultimatum the United Nations organization is giving the government to restore the terraces before they are removed from the World Heritage List.

Ngitiw recalled it was also around 2001 when the vicariate started campaigning “to stop destructive industries such as quarrying” in Mount Polis, a mossy forest and crucial watershed bordering Ifugao and Mountain Province. The social action coordinator said the vicariate complemented the campaign with efforts to save, rehabilitate and replant the forests and watersheds. She said this would ensure irrigation for the rice terraces. She also said the vicariate has obtained funds from the Foundation for Philippine Environment (FPE) to maintain tree-seedling nurseries for reforestation. Incorporated in 1992, FPE funds initiatives to help reverse the destruction of Philippine natural resources.

A study by Tebtebba Foundation, a private research and resource center based in Baguio City, west of Bontoc, found that a longtime “giant earthworm menace” in Ifugao terraces heightened in the 1990s, when water began to dwindle. Researcher Wilfredo Alangui found that the thumb-sized earthworms reproduced in greater numbers with less water in the terraces, worsening soil erosion. The worms contribute to erosion by burrowing deep into the soil.

The terraces in Ifugao are more prone to earthworm infestation because they are not secured by carefully piled rocks and stones, as other Cordillera rice terraces are, Alangui noted.

However, the Tebtebba study blames tourism for the deterioration of the terraces. Tourism “encouraged the commercial production of woodcarvings and handicrafts, and this helped deplete local forest resources,” it says, while the growing number of hotels, lodges and restaurants also competes with the paddies for water supply. Eventually, more Ifugao farmers began migrating to the lowlands, where they can cultivate rice up to three times a year compared to the slower growth of rice plants in the cooler mountains. www.ucanews.org

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