RIZAL One Hope

ZAMBOANGA One People

DEL NORTE One Town

September 1, 2023

The Honorable Marissa Manigsaca

Mayor
Municipality of Rizal, Zamboanga del Norte
Philippines

Dear Mayor Marissa,

We take the privilege of writing you today in behalf of our member, Elsa
Tangcalagan Apostol, who raises grave concern on the recent logging activities
at our Rizalina watershed. Her family lives at the vicinity of our Rizalina
watershed. She informed us that continued deforestation of our Rizalina
watershed may lead to a calamity of huge proportion at the area.

Aa you well know, when the forest at our Rizalina watershed is continually
denuded due to continued tree-cutting, a landslide may occur following soil
erosion when there is heavy rain. God forbids, a landslide will result in the
destruction of the properties of the residents in the area and the loss of lives of
the residents living at the area.

This is the concern of Ms. Tangcalagan Apostol. Her concern is helplessly

shared by the 4,441 residents of the seven barangays located at the foot of our
666-hectare Rizalina watershed, i.e., Balubohan, Damasing, La Esperanza,
Nasipang, Nilabo, Rizalina, and Sebaca.

As the issue before us is a matter of life and death, of provenance and

destruction, we respectfully ask for your serious attention and urgent action on
the issue with an end in mind to come up with proactive measures that will
prevent such a tragedy in the future.

Believe us, when a calamity of that magnitude happens, our town

resources will be drained out and our town may take tens of years to recover and
be on its feet again. We do not want to go that route.

There appears to be two underlying circumstances that are contributing

to the issue at hand:

1) The Rizalina watershed is declared as a protected area only by

presidential proclamations, executive orders, and presidential decrees.
These proclamations, orders, and decrees do not have the force of laws,
so that in the process of issuing logging permits specific to the Rizalina
watershed, no due consideration on the Rizalina watershed as a
protected area is done and the watershed is relegated to the status of
just like any other unprotected forest in the country; and
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2) Because of the above, there has been no synergy between the local
government unit (LGU) of the Municipality of Rizal and the Department
of Environmental and Natural Resources (DENR) in the logging
permitting process of DENR, so that logging permits specific to the
Rizalina watershed are issued by DENR without the Rizal-LGU being
informed that logging operations are to take place at the Rizalina
watershed which is supposed to be a protected area.
To address the issue above, and in the interest of the 4,441 residents who
live at the vicinity of the watershed, we respectfully request you and your good
office to please work closely with the congressman of our congressional district,
the Honorable Roberto Uy Jr., and request him to sponsor a bill and pass it into
a law in our Philippine Congress that stipulates the following two items below:
1) Codify into a national law the different pertinent and relevant
provisions of the presidential proclamations, executive orders, and
presidential decrees that declare our Rizalina watershed as a protected
area, so that those provisions would have the force of a law and they
would be held binding, mandatory and compulsory in the permitting
process; and
2) Include and incorporate into the bill our proposed provisions that are
enumerated on the attachment of this letter.
Our proposed provisions of the bill do not in any way intend to take the
permitting authority away from DENR. The function of issuing logging permits
still rests with DENR. Our proposed bill only hopes that in the process of issuing
logging permits specific to the Rizalina watershed, our Rizal townspeople would
have the opportunity to provide DENR with reasoned opinion on every logging
permit application filed by the loggers for DENR approval.
Our proposed provisions of the bill, first and foremost, respect the rights
of the landowners at the Rizalina watershed to harvest, reap, and make money
from the trees of their lands. Our bill only hopes that in the process of
permitting, the government will strike a balance between the rights of the
landowners over their property and the safety of the lives of the residents who
live at the vicinity of the watershed area.
We pray and hope that you and our congressman could successfully write
into a national law the provisions we presented and so our townspeople who live
at the vicinity of our Rizalina watershed could sleep at their homes every middle
of the night without fear of any landslide flooding over their roofs.
Best regards and more power to you.
Very respectfully yours,

Nick Vicera
Administrator
____________________________________________________________________________
The Overseas Rizalians is an online chat group composed of Rizalians living overseas and
abroad. Its members live in different continents of the world - Asia, Australia, Europe, Middle East
and North America. Its membership also includes Rizalians who live in the high seas as sailors.