‘In the long run, restoring the forest begins with a small step that takes you to the biggest change in the future.‘
The Energy Development Corporation (EDC) launches their sixth and biggest automated nursery, the Vegetative Materials Reproduction (VMR) facility at Bacon-Manito (Bac-Man) Geothermal Project in Bicol, on Friday, April 28.
Aside from being part of the corporate social responsibility, the VMR is also EDC’s business strategy implicating that restoring the environment will help its geothermal business more sustainable in the long run.
As an environmental flagship program vowed by the EDC to revive and address the extinction of the Philippine forest, it also peaks to refurnish the number of endemic tree species starting with the Bicol region.
Heat index and Climate Change
The thought of trees doing their jobs to shelter people from the heat’ becomes a question.
Hence, the benefactors of this program revolves the entirety of not just the environment and the EDC, but also an additional factor to battle the rising heat index nowadays.
“Planting more trees, absorbs carbon dioxide, then even the heat. So nagiging natural cooling effect siya. In the long run, macocombat niya ang effects ng climate change,” Marlon Francia, Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Officer (PENRO) of Sorsogon said in an interview with BicoldotPH.
Highlighting that climate change is needed to be addressed and as a responsibility to every sector in the society, there is a need to achieve a goal acgieved by the public, the private sector, the government offices, and the local communities as a whole.
“We’re not doing this alone. Climate change is very important, this is the responsibility of all the sectors in the society. We collaborate with everyone with the fight towards climate change… to help us mitigate the impact of climate change through different initiatives like forest restoration, taking care of our ecosystems, and helping our communities learn about climate change,” Alan Barcena, the EDC Assistant Vice President and Head, Corporate Relations and Communications said.
Developing this has also improved the nursery technology which can be of help to assist the growth of majority of these forest trees which are sensitive to propagate.
Considered the biggest in the BINHI project, this aims to reproduce dipterocarps such as ‘mapilig,’ yakal, and narra with over 260,000 species.
Livelihood expansion
In terms of livelihood, the VMR also attains to bring back the feat of being a forest ranger in every individual through this initiative.
The DENR, through PENRO Sorsogon’s Francia, encouraged the public to replicate this program and be a source of livelihood where people can also start their nursery in their own accord.
Thus, collaborating with the local communities can help mitigate this program in a wider scope, also initially contributing to their livelihood expansion and the essence of reviving what nature has lost.
“If the public want to be involved in tree-planting, tree-growing, they can avail our seedlings as well as the different tree planting activity of the government like the DENR, LGUs,” Barcena said. | Danica Roselyn Lim
