By: Ali Mac
BULUAN, Maguindanao, Philippines (The Redline News Philippines) – An intensive bamboo-propagating
segment of the government’s Sustainable Integrated Area Development (SIAD)
project was launched in this province on Wednesday, with proponents and
beneficiaries prospecting it to end crime-breeding poverty, abate flooding
incidents, stimulate social cohesion, and further harness the country’s immense
biodiversity potentials.
Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR)
Secretary Gina Paz Lopez and Governor Esmael “Toto” Mangudadato led the
launching rites here and in nearby Pandag town, where the lady official
dramatized initiatives to bring Moro revolutionaries and military contingents
together as partners in the project implementation
The project has an initial fund of P21 million to pilot
bamboo propagation in Rajah Buayan town and supply seedlings for planting
across a 1,000-hectare portion of the 280,000-hectare Liguasan Marsh, the
largest Mindanao water basin Sec. Lopez claimed to be abundant of flora and
fauna as basic elements of biodiversity.
The Philippines is known globally for having immense endemic
flora and fauna, Lopez enthused as she estimated in her aerial view that the
Liguasan delta contains some 51 percent biodiversity potentials. She and her
party arrived here and left Wednesday by private choppers.
Local authorities said the delta, especially its heavily
silted portions, spills over flood waters during rainy days to low-lying
villages and towns in the neighboring Maguindanao, Sultan Kudarat and North
Cotabato provinces The trend makes flooding a common problem in the three
provinces, especially Maguindanao, which literally means “land of flooded
plains.”
Yet, they said, local leaders of the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front (MILF), the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), the outlawed
Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), a few political partisan armed
groups, and many village people maintain enclaves in the marsh because of its
vast grounds for fishing, farming and other forms of livelihood.
In her keynote speech here, Sec. Lopez underscored the need
for comprehensive government interventions such as the just-launched bamboo and
mangrove planting to stimulate the Maguindanao people, notably the marsh
dwellers, into productive cohesion necessary to end local enmities and
alleviate high poverty rate in the province.
“The basic foundation of economic growth is love…There can
be no progress in an atmosphere of enmity,” she said.
After presenting in power-point documentaries some
DENR-initiated projects that economically empowered hundreds of villagers
elsewhere in the country, Sec. Lopez led participating representatives of the
MILF, military, local govern units, women and youth groups, and NGOs in
cohesive dynamics of handshakes, lively cheers, and singing of unity-building
songs.
Sec. Lopez, Gov. Mangudadatu and Rajah Buayan town Mayor
Zamzamin Ampatuan signed a covenant mandating a cohesive implementation of the
SIAD project. The signing rite was witnessed by MILF truce committee chair
Butch Malang, OPAPP Usec. Deosita Andot, DENR-ARMM Secretary Kahal Kedtag, the
Army’s 601st Brigade commander, 20 other Maguindanao mayors, and heads of
participating delegations.
“There will be no room for failure,” Mayor Ampatuan assured
in his acceptance speech, citing the clear-cut dynamics of the bamboo planting
and propagation project starting with a two-hectare nursery in his town.
Ampatuan confessed that amid the seven or so years of
Maguindanao’s massive banana and oil palm farming, his town has reserved its
force for the hosting a timely national initiative such as SIAD project to make
his turf as the country’s “bamboo town.”
He shared Gov. Mangudadatu’s previous remarks that while
bamboo planting is another tool for ecological balance abating floods and soil
erosions, it can also provide additional livelihood to Maguindanaons through
the production of bamboo-based toothpicks, chop sticks for millions of mostly
Chinese users, and construction materials.
Ampatuan tickled local journalists when he announced that
some of the more than 300 surrendered and reformed illegal drug users in his
town will be tapped in the bamboo seedling production to “make them better
citizens.”
He also cited the project’s significance to Moro culture,
citing a history during the Spanish occupation about the raising of a
traditional flag in Lanao del Sur through a tall bamboo pole.
From here, Sec. Lopez alongside local officials led by Gov.
Mangudadato proceeded to Pandag town and planted water-resistant tree species
on a soil dike along the Buluan River, one of the tributaries of the Liguasan
Marsh.
Host Pandag Mayor Jehan Mangudadatu warmly received the
visitors, even as she hailed Sec. Lopez as the “first national dignitary” to
have set foot in her town on a “very meaningful occasion.” (Ali G. Macabalang/Posted by Becky D. de Asis-The Redline News Philippines)
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