In a joint statement released recently, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) announced that they will work together to fight illegal logging and quarrying to protect the country’s remaining forest covers and habitats.
They better act fast. The DENR’s own records show about 47,000 hectares of forest cover are lost every year from rampant logging and lack of security in areas declared as protected wildlife sanctuaries.
In last week’s editorial When Will We Ever Learn, we noted that President Duterte’s order to go after illegal logging after the record flooding in Cagayan and Isabela is nothing new.
In 2017, expressing his anger over the unabated logging that was blamed for the massive floods that claimed lives and destroyed properties in Northern Mindanao, he ordered then Environment Secretary Gina Lopez during a Climate Change Commission to “stop all logging operations with no exemptions.”
The President then already asked the DENR and DILG, along with the Department of Agriculture, to form a committee to create the implementing rules of a nationwide logging ban.
Similar crackdowns on illegal logging have been ordered by past administrations. In fact, the National Anti-Illegal Logging Task Force was created through Executive Order No. 23 in 2011 during the term of President Benigno Aquino III.
So another full-court press against illegal logging is now in the works.
But first the government must stop falling for the false dichotomy. It must stop distinguishing between illegal and legal logging. At this point no logging should be allowed. Whatever passes for legal logging is actually and very surely illegal.
Almost three decades ago, during public hearings in the Senate, then Senator Orly Mercado said there’s hardly any difference between illegal loggers and legal loggers. He said the only difference is that the so-called legal loggers have the political clout to get timber license agreements.
Indeed, for years environment groups have blamed legal logging for the denudation of Philippine forests. They say logging companies have used their legally allocated cutting permits to illegally access logs in areas outside the official limits of their permits.
Enforcing partial logging bans has actually been more difficult than enforcing total logging bans. To begin with, primary forests from which absolutely no logging must be done have not been properly or clearly identified by the government.
Also, the government does not have the manpower to monitor logging activities in restricted areas. And even if they have people in these areas, they’re usually no match to the military might big-time loggers wield.
For instance, the police team that was conducting operations against illegal logging in Cagayan last week was assaulted by timber poachers. A police officer was hurt in the skirmish.
One of the loggers who was caught after firing upon the police already had an arrest record for violating the Forestry Code.
Surely criminal loggers like him who habitually escape justice are legion. If they are bold enough to engage in gun battles against the police, then it is no wonder that many forest rangers and environmental defenders have come under deadly attacks from them in recent years.
What makes them so bold? Is it because they enjoy the protection of certain officials in government?
Is this why, even the stolen and illegally cut timber can be sold and become legally clean?
Is this why a massacre of trees can still happen today, even in forests like the Masungi Geopark in Baras, Rizal, a joint reforestation project of Masungi and the DENR, which has been declared a protected area since 2011 due to its importance as a watershed reservation?
Forest laws around the world have hardly been enforceable. This is why logging has been generally unsustainable. It is a problem deeply rooted in poverty, corruption and environmental abuse.
In pursuing logging bans therefore, let us make no distinction between legal and illegal, partial or total. A total ban is not only right but long overdue. The bigger question, however, is whether such a ban can really be enforced. Because it has been done before and yet nothing has really been done.
Coming out with any kind of ban or law is one thing and having it followed is another. In the real world, implementing it has less to do with justice than with political will and strategy.
The government has not successfully acted against rampant logging and our people have paid for this negligence dearly with their lives.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano