Toyota holds Peñablanca reforestation anew

MANILA, Philippines - Climate Change. It is real. We’ve witnessed its destructive effects over and over again, with the latest major damage happening just last week. They said 2009’s Ondoy was an occurrence that was bound to take place only once in 150 years, and yet just a few days ago, what felt like a disaster as bad as Ondoy—if not worse—pounded our country once more. Point taken: We cannot fight nature. Hence, it is high time that we get our act together and do what we can to help reverse the ill effects and progression of the growing threat that is global warming.

It could not be more timely and relevant that Toyota Motor Philippines (TMP) continues to pursue its Philippine Peñablanca Sustainable Reforestation Project (PPSRP), which is now on its sixth year. The PPSRP is a US$3 million project funded by TMP, and implemented in partnership with environmental NGO Conservation International (CI) Philippines, the Peñablanca local government, and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

The PPSRP has a total project area of 2,500 hectares and aims to promote sustainable reforestation by teaching local residents how to plant and cultivate fruit-bearing trees.

“The concept is, we teach them how to do this so they won’t make firewood out of the trees,” explained Ronald Gaspar, Coordinating Manager of TMP Foundation, Inc. The project is allotting 725 hectares of land for the cultivation of indigenous fruit-bearing trees such as mangoes, citrus, jackfruit, cacao and even coffee. The remaining 1,775 hectares of land will be allotted for the hardwood area, where trees such as narra, tuai, molave, ipil, bignay, tindalo and calumpit will be planted.

Peñablanca was chosen as the ideal project site because it is located towards the end of the northern side of the Sierra Madre mountain range. Here, biodiversity is very high, and it is also in the general area where there has often been very evident flooding, largely due to deforestation. The site is located within the government’s official ‘Peñablanca Protected Landscape and Seascape’, and five barangays are covered in the area.

The author about to plant an indigenous tree seedling at the Peñablanca reforestation site

Since the PPSRP’s launch in 2007, volunteers from TMP annually fly to the project site to help plant trees. And beginning in 2010, Japanese volunteers from Toyota Motor Company (TMC) have also begun flying to the country every year to plant trees in Peñablanca. Team members from TMP’s affiliated companies, such as Toyota Makati, Inc., Toyota Bicutan-Parañaque, Toyota San Fernando, Toyota Autoparts Philippines, Inc., Lexus Manila, Inc., Toyota Financial Services Philippines, and members of the motoring media soon followed in this yearly habit.

This year, 1,200 tree seedlings were planted by our team of volunteers. That’s roughly 40 trees per person. And digging a hole to plant atop a mountain underneath the burning sun is not a piece of cake, mind you. All these seedlings were obviously planted with a lot of compassion and love!

In 2009, the PPSRP was awarded the Gold Level by the Climate Community and Biodiversity (CCB) Standards, acknowledging the project’s exceptional biodiversity benefits. The Gold Level is the highest recognition awarded by the body, stating that the project not only restores forests and biodiversity, but also reduces greenhouse gases, improves the livelihood of local communities and even helps protect endangered species.

Eduardo Angadol, Project Coordinator of CI Philippines, shares, “All this is replicable. That’s the reason we document it; so it can be replicated. We want to share the difficulties we overcame in this project, to help other places become more successful.” The project design document of the PPSRP is hence, downloadable at the CCB’s website.

2012 marks the closing year of the PPSRP, after which, the project activities will be turned over to the local community. Being sustainable in nature, the project should be able to run on its own starting 2013 using the circulating funds that are collected from the sale of fruits from the agro-forestry project. Local residents earn an average of P70,000 per year, and 10 percent of these proceeds are always put aside for the newly formed Reforestation Fund to ensure that the reforestation efforts are still continued.