Shun GMOs, promote ecoagriculture Greenpeace

Environmental advocacy group Greenpeace Philippines

called on Filipinos to stand up and fight for the countrys
diversified food crops, and promote ecological agriculture, as
the Philippines joined other nations in marking World Food
Day last week.

Mandala illustrates a farming system that works in harmony

with nature, and has provided Filipinos with safe and
complete diets.
In Mindanao, Greenpeace has won the support of Muslims
against genetically modified organism (GMO) without much
fanfare.
Participants of a one-day Halal Awareness forum recently
issued a signed manifesto in support of the programs of

Demand for governments support for ecological agriculture

highly vital in addressing food security and health issue,
Greenpeace Ecological Agriculture Campaigner Daniel
Ocampo said. There is no room and need for genetically
modified organisms (GMOs) such as Golden rice.

Greenpeace. There, the participants declared that they will

not patronize nor avail (themselves) any GMO products in all
forms that are apparently unhealthy for human consumption,
economy and nature.
The anti-GMO group partnered with the Cotabato City-based
Muslim Mindanao Halal Certification Board, Inc. (MMHCBI)

GOING ORGANIC (AP) Police officers join a crowd as they avail

for the event held at the office of the Bangsamoro

free, organically grown fruits and vegetables following a post-World

Leadership and Management Institute (BMLI) in Crossing

Food Day event

Simuay, Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao.

by environmental

organization Greenpeace

Saturday, Oct. 18, 2014 at a suburban park in Quezon City. The event
aimed to raise peoples awareness on the many health and nutritional
benefits of traditional farming without resorting to genetically modified
organisms.

Senator Cynthia Villar has also expressed her full support on

initiatives that promote ecological agriculture.
[Ecological agriculture] empowers citizens to plant, grow,
and harvest their own food that is clean, grown naturally and
free from synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, Villar said
during World Food Day activities at the Quezon Memorial
Circle in Quezon City, where a giant food art installation
made up of organically produced fruits and vegetables was
mounted.
Greenpeace Philippines, alongside various civic groups,
came up with a giant food Mandala (Sanskrit for circle)
composed of some 1,000 kilos of common fruits and
vegetables, a move that is expected to get the Department
of Agricultures (DA) support in promoting ecological
agriculture in the country.

Luwaran.com, official online portal of the Moro Islamic

Liberation Front (MILF), revealed that Greenpeace has been
raising public awareness in Mindanao on GMOs various
aspects through a series of fora.
Greenpeace and the MMHCBI wanted to raise public
awareness by providing packages of information on the
nature of GMO products and its implications to human health
and nature.

Rare
dwarf
buffalo
charges against extinction

from 300 in the mid-2000s to 600 by 2020, Gregg Yan, a

local spokesman for the WWF told AFP.
This requires ramping up forest patrols to ward off poachers
and installing hidden cameras in the mountains to better

The population of the Philippines dwarf buffalo, one of the

understand the behaviour of the beast, Yann said.

worlds rarest animals, has grown to its largest since efforts

to save them from extinction began, conservationists said
Friday.

A team of 30 forest rangers patrol a 37-acre portion of a

mountain that is considered the buffalos core habitat,
Boyles said.

Dwarf buffalo / Photo source: German Brockhaus KonversationsLexikon, 1895. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia

They are hunted down for food and trophy. When a species

Commons

is rare, their price in the black market also goes up, he said.

An annual survey counted 382 tamaraws in a protected

mountain area this year, an increase from 345 in 2013,

Boyles said conservationists had held meetings with locals

according to data from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

to discourage them from eating tamaraw meat.

The tamaraw, famed for its distinct v-shaped horns, can be

People also have this misconception that the flesh of wild

found only in the mountains of Mindoro, a farming island in

animals taste better than farmed ones, he said.

the central Philippines.

The effort is paying off as the tamaraw population has been
The stocky tamaraw, with its chocolate brown coat, runs wild

increasing every year for the last 12 years, WWF data

in the forest and weighs half as much as the more common

shows.

carabao, which is used by farmers in the Philippines to

plough rice fields.

This years survey also showed an increased number of

young tamaraws, indicating that they have been reproducing

The tamaraw is the flagship species of the Philippines. It is

in the wild, Boyles said, adding past attempts at captive

our moral obligation and international commitment to

breeding have failed.

preserve them, forest ranger Rodel Boyles, who heads a

joint government and private sector conservation effort, told

We are hopeful that their numbers will continue increasing,

AFP.

he said.

If they are not protected, the species might get wiped out in
five years, he said.
The tamaraw is considered critically endangered two
steps away from extinction by the International Union for
Conservation of Nature.
Hunting and the destruction of their habitat to make way for
grazing areas for cattle led to their near decimation, as the
population fell from 10,000 in the 1900s to just 154 by 2000,
according to the WWF.
The government and private sectors Tamaraw Conservation
Programme aims to double the dwarf buffalos population

DENR-8 launches
Leyte Gulf beach forest
project
Tacloban City, Leyte The Department of Environment and
Natural Resources office in Region 8 (DENR-8) has
launched the beach forest plantation project for Eastern
Visayas in Barangay 89, Payapay here recently, according to
a report from the agency Tuesday.
DENR-8 Regional Executive Director Leonardo Sibbaluca
told reporters in an interview that the project is part of the
Leyte Gulf mangrove and beach forest rehabilitation project
of his office for Eastern Visayas. The estate covers some
20,000 hectares (ha) of land, of which 8,800 ha are beaches
in areas affected by the onslaught of super-typhoon
Yolanda (Haiyan) on Nov. 8, 2013.
BEACH FOREST Department of Environment and Natural
Resources office in Region 8 (DENR-8) Executive Director Leonardo
Sibbaluca plants his tree during the beach forest plantation project
launch held in Barangay 89, Payapay, Tacloban City, Leyte. (Restituto
A. Cayubit)

The launch saw 8,000 tree species, including talisay, bituon, narra, andputat, planted on a one-hectare patch of land.
Sibbaluca said that the plantation is situated in areas not
prone to flooding. The tree species, he added, are suited for
beaches while mangroves are allotted to the muddy and
water-soaked areas.
The project, according to Sibbaluca, will restore and
strengthen natural barriers along beaches when storm
surges occur during typhoons.
Leyte Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Officer
Ranulfo Arbiol informed reporters that for Leyte, a total of
208 ha of beaches are targeted for planting until the end of
next month.
The project, he said, covers one city and four municipalities
for a total of 36 barangays: Tacloban City with 15 barangays
and a total of 128 ha, Palo (four barangays, 22 ha), Tanauan

(five barangays, 15 ha), Tolosa (six barangays, 19 ha), and

Dulag (six barangays, 29 ha).

Lack of ocean heat

puzzles NASA hunt for
global warming hiatus

The findings present a new puzzle to scientists, but co-author Josh

Willis of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said the reality of
climate change is not being thrown into doubt.

The sea level is still rising, said Willis. Were just trying to
Washington New questions about why global warming appears to

understand the nitty-gritty details.

have slowed in recent years emerged as scientists have noticed that

global average surface air temperatures have stopped rising along
with the continued increase of greenhouse gases in the first part of
the 21st century, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) said Monday.

Some studies have suggested that heat is being absorbed

temporarily by the deep seas, and that this so-called global warming
hiatus is a temporary trend.

But latest data from satellite and direct ocean temperature

measurements from 2005 to 2013 found the ocean abyss below 1.24
miles (1,995 meters) has not warmed measurably, NASA said in a
statement.

A separate study in August in the journal Science said the apparent

slowdown in the Earths surface warming in the last 15 years could be
due to heat being trapped in Atlantic and Southern Oceans.

But the NASA researchers said their approach, described in the

journal Nature Climate Change, is the first to test the idea using
satellite observations, as well as direct temperature measurements of
the upper ocean.

The deep parts of the ocean are harder to measure, NASA JPL
researcher William Llovel said. The combination of satellite and
direct temperature data gives us a glimpse of how much sea level
rise is due to deep warming. The answer is not much.

Philippines breaks
world tree-planting
record
Manila (AFP) Philippine officials said Saturday they
had set a new world record for the most trees planted
in an hour, with 3.2 million seedlings sown as part of a
national forestation programme.
Official certification from Guinness World Records will
still take weeks but government officers expressed
confidence they had broken the old record of 1.9
million trees planted in India on August 15, 2011.
The trees were planted in six different areas on the
southern Philippine island of Mindanao by an army of
160,000 people including government employees,
students and volunteers, said the regional
environment director Marc Fragada.
Our official count is about 3.2 million trees in one
hour. But we are still getting reports. We still have to
prepare the packaging of documentary evidence (for
Guinness), he told AFP.
The trees planted were a mix of forest varieties as
well as commercial crops like cacao, coffee and
rubber trees, he said.

They were chosen by the planters in hopes that the

local people will take good care of them because it
will be part of their livelihood, he said.
The organisers had originally targeted 4.6 million
trees to be planted in one hour, said Environment
Undersecretary Demetrio Ignacio.
Based on our count, we have planted more (than
India) but whether the record is broken, only
Guinness can say that, he told AFP.
The Philippine archipelago, once densely-forested,
has lost much of its forest cover due to development,
logging and slash-and-burn farming.
Official figures show the area covered with closed
forest cover declined from 2.56 million hectares (6.32
acres) in 2003 to 1.93 million in 2010.
President Benigno Aquino has launched a programme
to reverse that, targeting the planting of 1.5 billion
trees in 1.5 million hectares before he steps down in
2016