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[av_heading heading=’MORE VITAL THAN EVER | Protecting our precious soil ‘ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY EDGARDO J. ANGARA
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Friday, May 12, 2017
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THE PHILIPPINES remains among the world’s most vulnerable to climate change. German Watch’s recent Climate Risk Index 2016 for instance ranks the Philippines fourth in the world’s top 10 countries most affected by climate change in the past 20 years.
According to the study’s authors, “tropical storms and heavy precipitation and flooding” were among the primary reasons why the Philippines often lands on the index’s top 10. This ranking however does not even take into account other factors that make the country even more vulnerable to climate change. Sea-level rise in the Philippines is among the fastest in the world. And land degradation is an unabated problem which Philippines has been battling for decades.
The Philippines encompasses roughly 30 million hectares of land area, 41 percent of which (around 9.516 million hectares) were considered agricultural in 2014 by the World Bank. According to the latest estimates of the Bureau of Soils and Water Management (BSWM), up to 45 percent of the country’s arable lands are either moderately or severely eroded due to massive deforestation and use of unsustainable land management practices, such as excessive use of urea for farming.
Climate change exacerbates land degradation, as more extreme weather turns formerly arable lands into deserts, impairing their agricultural productivity or their capacity to sustain biodiversity. This has far-reaching consequences. More and more Filipinos will be dependent on fewer and fewer parcels of land for food and other resources.
We should now give considerable thought to how the country should utilize its increasingly limited land, making it all the more important for land-intensive industries like mining to ensure their operations are responsible and sustainable.
Several cases around the world, including the Philippines, have been documented on how poorly monitored mining operations have contaminated not just the underground and surrounding waters, but also the adjacent lands. Heavy metal contamination of soil and gravel deeply jeopardizes whatever use future generations would have for such lands and waters.
In 2014, UP Los Baños scientists led by Dr. Edwino Fernando reported the discovery of a new species of plant that naturally consumes large amounts of nickel from the soil. Such an unusual trait makes the plant (R. niccolifera) a prime candidate for use as an effective biological tool to remediate former mining sites.
For the mining industry to become and perceived to be a helpful rather than a hazardous instrument of development, more of such bio-remediation species must be identified and deployed extensively in our mines. That would nicely complement more bio-friendly and responsible mining. (Email: angara.ed@gmail.com| Facebook & Twitter: @edangara)/PN
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