Not just the usual stuff

To many, United Coconut Planters Bank (UCPB) is just another banking giant doing the usual stuff.

Little do many people know, however, that UCPB is into other endeavors.

For instance, UCPB is involved in the government’s reforestation program as a response to the government’s  call for private sector participation in environment protection.

Now, it is difficult to imagine that the lush forest covering 33.3 hectares of rolling hills in Barangay Boso-Boso, Antipolo, Rizal used to be a desolate patch of brown, scarred earth.

The UCPB-Coconut Industry Investment Fund (CIIF) Foundation, UCPB’s social development arm started the reforestation program in the area in the 1990s. The land was barren, parched and solitary.

It took UCPB’s Foundation 12 years to bring the place back to life. Today, with more than 42,000 trees of different species, it has the highest tree density in the entire watershed area.

Birds have returned to nest on the tree trunks and branches while deer and other wildlife have been sighted darting in and out of the foliage. Water flows once again on the stream.

The Foundation completed reforestation work on the area in May 2002. A brass marker set on a slab of wood now stands on the foot of the hills leading to the reforested area to commemorate this major accomplishment.

“It is an accomplishment for us that the reforestation of the area has been successful,” UCPB-CIIF Foundation president Edgardo Amistad told The Star in a recent interview.

Amistad said that under the program, the Foundation has shouldered the development and maintenance costs for the reforestation without any government grant or foreign funding assistance. Employees of UCPB and its subsidiaries and the affiliate companies in the CIIF Group have pitched in with personal donations, he added. The Foundation’s accomplishments did not go unnoticed. In 1995, only five years into its implementation, the program received a citation from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) for its contribution to environmental renewal.

In 2000, the program won the Asian Banking Awards for best environmental project by a financial institution in the region, and duplicated the feat four years later by garnering the top Asia Corporate Social Responsibility Award for Environmental Excellence at the 3rd Annual Asia Forum on CSR in Malaysia.

Late last year, the DENR declared the area a “Model Reforestation Site,” the first to be accorded the distinction.

Amistad said the Foundation is now looking at how it can turn its fully reforested area into a teaching site so that it can share its experience and learning with other civic-minded private businesses and non-government organizations that wish to lend a hand in the national reforestation effort.

To implement the reforestation program, the Foundation hired a full-time forester to plan and oversee its activity.

It set up a tree nursery on site to reduce the cost of transporting planting materials and at the same time to provide a ready source of replacement for trees that died. And during the summer months, it employed additional hands to guard against forest fire and illegal cutting.

The UCPB-CIIF Foundation also worked to get individual employees involved in the effort, organizing events such as adopt-a-tree activities which raised nearly half a million pesos in employee donations. It has annual tree-planting treks to the site, which drew the participation of over one hundred employees and their families at a time.

Under its agreement with the DENR, the Foundation will have stewardship over the reforested area up to 2012. It hopes to renew this for several more years to preserve the gains. “We can request for renewal in the contract,” Amistad said.

At the rate UCPB’s Foundation is going, there’s no stopping it from pursuing other initiatives such as an adopt-a-school program with the Department of Education.

In the meantime, the forest of Boso-Boso will continue to be a paradise in the hills of Antipolo.