Philippine tragedy another symptom of reckless exploitation

The terrible disaster that hit the Philippines island of Leyte on Feb. 17, when a mudslide triggered by weeks of torrential rains buried the remote farming village of Guinsaugon, could have been prevented.

All over the world, similar disasters are waiting to happen as the plunder of nature for profit goes on despite repeated warnings from scientists and environmentalists that reckless exploitation is compromising the stability of the environment, perhaps beyond repair.

In the Philippines, despite frantic rescue efforts, few survivors have been found since a wall of mud, 25 feet high in places, swept down a mountainside and buried Guinsaugon. Nearly a week later, some 100 bodies have been recovered but at least 1,000 people are still reported missing. Over 2,000 evacuees from the town and nearby communities are packed into area schools and churches under abysmal conditions.

Like many tropical areas of the world once rich in forest hardwoods, the hills of Leyte have been the scene of merciless logging that has rendered the earth unstable. Compounding the problem, the area experiences frequent earthquakes and heavy seasonal rains. As global warming—caused by the burning of fossil fuels—increases, so does the intensity and duration of these storms.

The people of the Philippines have little to show for all this economic activity that is changing the world around them. They live in extreme poverty even as wealthy corporations, most based in the imperialist countries, make big profits carting off their natural resources.

Workers World spoke to Lydia Bayoneta, a long-time Filipina activist living in the United States, about the political background of this latest disaster.

“Deforestation is a rampant ecological problem in the Philippines,” said Bayo neta. “Studies have shown that deforestation contributes to the emission of greenhouse gases and eventually to global warming. It also contributes greatly to flooding and mudslides, such as the one in Leyte Province.

“Some 500 years ago, more than 90 percent of the Philippines was covered with tropical rain forest. During the war for independence from Spain in 1898, 70 percent was still forested.”

The U.S. took advantage of Spain’s weakness, declared war and grabbed its rich colonies in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, where U.S. troops ruthlessly suppressed the independence movement.

“Today, after 100 years of U.S. domination,” said Bayoneta, “less than 20 percent is still forested, much less than the 54 percent forest cover that the Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources says is needed to maintain a stable ecosystem in this mountainous country. The book ‘Plundering Paradise: The Struggle for the Environment in the Philippines’ [by Robin Broad and John Cavanagh] is a good source of information on this.

“The greatest cause of deforestation,” continued Bayoneta, “is indiscriminate logging by giant companies, some of which are foreign-owned. Virtually all the logging by these companies is for export. They are also responsible for the large amount of illegal logging that goes on.

“Illegal logging practices include clear-cutting and the cutting of undersized trees. Although reforestation is required by law, often this amounts to planting a few rows of softwood trees visible from the road, leaving the rest completely bare. The laws go unenforced because the large companies use their economic power to corrupt both local and national politicians who are members of the puppet Philippine government.”

She pointed out that “demands from international lending agencies like the International Monetary Fund force the government to maximize their earnings from logging.”

Where trees are coming back

With similar scenarios being acted out around the world, what can people and governments do?

Deforestation is not inevitable. It is the result of human activity and it can be reversed.

Two countries that are outstanding in their commitment to rebuild their forests are Cuba and China. Both had socialist revolutions that took the land and natural resources out of the hands of private exploiters, allowing the government to plan their rational use.

Cuba, just 90 miles from the Florida keys, was once just as much under the thumb of U.S. corporations as the Philip pines are today. But since its 1959 revolution, it has transformed its economy to one that puts a priority on health, education and sustainable development. It has had enormous success in these areas, despite the economic blockade imposed by Washington.

At the time of the Cuban Revolution, only 14 percent of the island was forested. Its precious hardwoods had been largely eliminated, beginning with the colonial period when Cuba was the source of fine furniture made of teak and ebony that graced the homes of the European elites. Today, over 24 percent of Cuba is again covered with trees, thanks to a long-term reforestation program. It is the only country in Latin America to be adding forests instead of losing them. It has also planted bamboo in many low areas to improve the water basins.

China has a long history of devastating floods in the Yangtze River basin, such as the one in 1931 that killed 320,000 people. After its 1949 revolution, the Chinese Communist government made flood control a priority, concentrating on building dams and reforestation.

In recent decades, China has allowed market forces to operate as a stimulus to economic development. But that opened the door to big ecological problems. Severe flooding of the Yangtze River basin in 1998, blamed partly on denuded hillsides after over-grazing and logging, killed 3,400 people and drove 14 million more from their homes. In response, the Chinese government has banned ALL logging in the watershed area.

In 2002, it announced the largest reforestation project ever undertaken in the world, which will add over 293,000 square miles of woodlands to the country.

In countries like the Philippines, the mass movements see socialism as the only answer to rampaging capitalism. Bayo neta recalled the prophetic words of Freder ick Engels, Karl Marx’s closest colla borator: “He said over a century ago that even when humans achieve full equality, the biggest contradiction facing humanity will be how to balance nature and its powerful forces with the needs of humanity.”