Moro communities eye abundant water hyacinths as income source

COTABATO CITY, Philippines  --- There are huge deposits of “green gold” in the 220,000-hectare Liguasan delta that can be “mined” to provide Moro communities livelihood and economic empowerment while they wait for a final peace pact between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

By “green gold,” experts mean the vast carpets of water hyacinths spread on about three-fourths of the delta, Asia’s largest, located at the tri-boundary of Central Mindanao’s adjoining Maguindanao, North Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat provinces.

The stalks and leaves of a water hyacinth (Eichhornia Crassipes) are durable materials for bags, mats and, home decors that can be exported abroad.

Water hyacinths, according to researchers from the Department of Science and Technology, can also be ground finely, mixed with a durable binding compound, and baked into wall boards and panel sheets for construction and industrial purposes.

Harnessing the potentials of the water hyacinths at the Liguasan marsh, however, may need the cooperation of local and foreign benefactors and the imprimatur of the peace panels of the government and the MILF.

There are estimated 10,000 MILF guerrillas and their families living along the marsh.

A senior staff of the Maguindanao provincial office, Lea Sagan, who is overseeing all community projects in the province of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process, said water hyacinths growing abundantly on the marsh can also be used as “bio-fuel” to generate energy needed to run local industries.

Presently, a community-level water hyacinth industry employing more than a hundred widows of MILF rebels and out-of-school adolescents thrives in Maguindanao's Gen. S. K. Pendatun town.

The project beneficiaries are now producing assorted products from dried stalks of aquatic plants.

The project is a joint initiative of OPAPP’s Masagana at Mapayapang Pamayanan (PAMANA) program, Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman, and Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu.

Sagan said the project can be expanded with the help of benefactors and cooperation  among local government units in Maguindanao, North Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat.

Officials of the ARMM’s Department of Trade and Industry said there are markets for water hyacinth products in Metro Manila, in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States.

Sagan said LGUs, the Maguindanao provincial government, OPAPP, DTI, DOST, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, the GPH and MILF panels should pursue projects to highlight the potentials and market viability of water hyacinths growing wildly on the marsh.

“We can (tap) the potentials and market value of this plant...,” Sagan said.

Thousands of villagers in more than 20 barangays in the city and in the nearby Kabuntalan, Northern Kabuntalan, Pigkawayan, and Midsayap towns were dislocated when vast carpets of water hyacinths blocked in 2008 and 2010 a downstream channel of the Rio Grande de Mindanao.

The Rio Grande then overflowed, inundating dozens of villages along its banks, forcing settlers to evacuate to higher grounds.

It took hundreds of soldiers, MILF guerrillas, and local villagers to remove the water hyacinths blocking the river using backhoes and farm tools.

Retired Gen. Loreto Rirao, director of the ARMM’s Regional Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, is convinced that putting up industries to process water hyacinths thriving wildly on the Liguasan Marsh could help prevent flooding in Central Mindanao.

Field technicians of the ARMM’s agriculture department said water hyacinths at the marsh have become “invasive plant species” in the past two decades due to the convergence in the area of several rivers that bring down waters polluted with nitrogen-rich commercial fertilizers washed down by rains from corn farms in surrounding hinterlands.  - John Unson