by: Joseph Rosal

This pretty much sums up the homily from a local parish priest stating that the Ondoy disaster episode was in fact, a whipping from the Lord. We were reminded that we came from mud and to an extent we will return to this. And return was not the operative word that came into my mind during that memorable Sept morning. Private institutions including academe based groups have related the recent catastrophe as an act of man, and aided by a natural hazard. Storms and typhoons are a natural occurance but not the descent of tons upon tons of top soil from the Sierra Madre mountain ranges.

Call for action? First, time and again, we have been told to respect nature, and if you can help conserve and protect, do it and do it now. The funny thing is that, most of us have been helping Mother Nature by planting trees and in fact if we cite the figures given by the DLSU Manila community to the Lasallian one million trees initiative, we have managed to plant a total of seven thousand saplings. And hundreds of those in the foothills of Tanay, Rizal. Yet the call of the times leads us to demand more tree planting activities, in critical areas where the mud’s came from. And equally important is the planting of the right kind of trees, so we must bear in mind native, endemic and indigenous species.

Second, we should now consider tree planting not just on its purely biological conservation merits but also as a strategy for disaster mitigation. This means, planting more bamboo along river banks or aiding the natural regeneration of mangroves along coastal area as a protection against storm surges. More importantly however is that our efforts must not only emphasize numbers, but this time, ensure that these actually grow to become mature plants and trees.

Third, our role in this whole effort must now expand to accomodate environmental education not only for our own students moreso for the local partner communities. We have seen the vibrant participation of locals during the recent greenbelt restoration activity in Ilin Island MIndoro. It would be better if we now move towards making the local residents become part of our environmental initiatives and if possible, owning these interventions. The more important message is that it is the local residents who are at risks during disaster episodes thus they need to be part of the effort.

Fr. Larry, the parish priest from Marikina cited earlier suggested that it is about time we get angry with people who does not seem to care for the environment. The disaster episode in the eastern part of Metro Manila occurred because of them. So net time you see a fellow commuter throw a candy wrapper on the LRT floor, act appropriately