Hot logs

This should be breaking news: The so-called “hot logs” seized by the anti-illegal logging task force in GenSan and touted as its great achievement turned out to be legally harvested wood.

DENR Secretary Ramon Paje, we will recall, trumpeted the interception in an apparent effort to deflect further discussion about the supposed investigation undertaken by the late Jessie Robredo. This investigation was sparked by information that officials of the anti-illegal logging task force were observed meeting with known illegal loggers.

This interception is truly tragic. It tells us that the guardians of the forest could not tell the difference between forest and plantation logs. They were quick on the trigger and hit the wrong guy. Now the wood is rotting while planter and interceptor argue over who should bear the cost of forwarding the logs to where they must go.

This incident encapsulates what is wrong with our forestry policy: there is absolute chaos in the forests.

One Manobo chief put things most succinctly: since President Aquino issued Executive Order 23 imposing a moratorium on logging last year, the legitimate logging companies came down from the mountains and the illegal loggers went up.

Eighteen months after the executive order was issued, Paje has not even bothered to supply it with implementing rules and regulations. He has failed to undertake the review and evaluation of existing forestry contracts to determine which companies may resume their work. This causes confusion among the legitimate wood producers. An estimated 200,000 jobs have now been shed in this sector.

To compound things, Paje deployed many incompetent and untrained people to enforce the logging ban. Among them, obviously, those who intercepted the shipment of plantation wood while looking the other way when the illegal loggers haul in their loot from the forest. One notorious illegal logger in the Caraga region stores his logs in a warehouse that is only 25 meters away from the checkpoint of the anti-illegal logging task force.

The forests of Mindanao are particularly vulnerable to activities of illegal loggers. The consensus is that forests are more vulnerable today than before Executive Order 23 was issued. Tribal groups, legitimate wood producers and local governments are agreed corruption is at the heart of the plague of illegal logging threatening Mindanao’s forests.

The scale of the threat to Mindanao’s forests does not alarm Paje, apparently.

The secretary has not worked on the implementing rules and regulations of the EO. He has not done the evaluation of legitimate wood producers as provided for in the order. He has even refused to sit down and meet with the association of wood producers to discuss their concerns and help alleviate the impact of the ban on communities dependent on the industry.

As a result, an explosive situation now pertains in many areas where illegal loggers are encroaching into tribal homelands and forests planted (and previously protected) by legitimate wood producers holding contracts with government.

The domestic wood producers are now caught in a cruel vise.

On the one hand, their concession areas are being freely raided by illegal loggers while the ban prevents them from continuing on cultivating their assigned areas. The wood producers pay government a fourth of the value of wood harvested from these concession areas even before the trees are actually cut. The illegal loggers simply come in an cut down the trees without paying dues or even declaring incomes.

On the other hand, our notoriously vulnerable Bureau of Customs has been unable to stem the flood of finished wood products coming in from China. The smuggled wood products are filling a large domestic demand while the ill-advised ban prevents domestic producers from filling.

This is an untenable situation. In a recent statement, Philippine wood producers have clearly indicated Paje to be a large part of the problem.

Simplistic

In a conversation with wood producers, I was reminded the Philippines and Chile both started forest management programs during the seventies. In our case, however, the policy framework for doing these changed with every administration. Chile, by contrast, maintained a stable policy. As a result, Chile is now a wood products exporter while we are an importer.

A few years ago, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) put out a study titled Forests and Floods: Drowning in fiction or thriving on facts? This is an interesting read. Paje might want to browse through it soon.

The FAO study warns against oversimplifying the link between forest and floods. It argues against overstating the role forests play in mitigating flooding in the food producing areas. It argues for more rational policies that do not rely on simply cause-effect relationships. A more adept understanding of the complex dynamics of each case should produce optimal economic benefits for everybody.

In this light, the logging moratorium does look like a measure comparable to attacking flies with a gun or burning a house down to rid it of rodents. It is simply the outcome of failure to think harder and approach the problem with a more sophisticated understanding.

The FAO study points out that total logging bans are often driven by political populism instead of understanding the dynamics between natural environment and a society’s economic needs. That is so true of EO 23. This might be the explanation why it is open-ended and remains to this day without clear implementing rules and regulations.

If he is at all inclined to do so, Paje might want to rethink this crude policy and discuss it with his boss. The wood industry is dying, smuggling is rampant, illegal loggers are on the loose and entire communities are without livelihood. The economic costs mount by the day.