Saving the world, ONE SEED at a time

MANILA, Philippines - It is six o’clock in the evening. One breath after another, I can feel  second-hand smoke filling my lungs. I feel trapped. A cacophony of moving vehicles and street vendors wrap around me as I make my way to school with a bag full of clothes and a mind full of questions.

Changing the world does not begin with mass action. It begins with a single step.

It was only a few days ago when I asked the head of the Office for Student Services if I could join the first Energy Development Corporation (EDC)-BINHI Youth Conference in Antipolo. A friend of mine was supposed to go, but she didn’t want to miss her classes. Honestly, I didn’t want to miss any of mine either, but the desire to grab this opportunity won out. Being in university filled with competitive students, this might be the only chance I’d get to represent my school.

They say that you regret the things you didn’t do rather than the things that you do and I don’t like the idea of being bothered with “what ifs.” In the end, three delegates were chosen, but only two were able to go. Luckily, the other person was my best friend and thesis partner, Marielle.

We rode a van to Antipolo with delegates from Iloilo and Davao. The moment I hopped on that van, I was greeted by excited faces and friendly smiles. I found it amusing how our minds were ten steps ahead of us. We were looking forward to meeting new friends and gaining new experiences. We were also relieved to leave behind school work for a while. The semester had just started, and this was our last hurrah before donning our grade-conscious identities once again.

We arrived at the Eugenio Lopez Center at 10 p.m. We missed the welcome dinner for the delegates but we received the warmest of welcomes from the people from EDC, in addition to chilly wisps brought about by the northeast monsoon, the spectacle of minute lights overlooking the metropolis, the decor, the facilities...

We giddily walked to our rooms and chatted as if we knew everyone from a long time ago. Our identities were unbound by our schools and our place of origin. It was as if the universe was conspiring to make us forget our normal lives for a while and live in the moment, surrounded by spectacular views and even more spectacular people.

A beloved character from a popular TV show once said, “Magic comes with a price.” Our euphoria was short-lived when the event’s organizer said that there would be a competition for a project proposal concerning the environment and our indigenous species applicable to our respective schools.

I felt pressured from that moment on. Each school had two to three delegates and EDC invited 21 schools to the conference. That, plus my crude dislike for public speaking and the fact that I wasn’t really much of an outstanding student, blended into a concoction of fear, enough to make me feel that at any moment, I might just fall.

That may sound like an exaggeration beyond exaggeration, but you have to understand that I come from a culture that demands honor and excellence. As my upperclassman puts it, we are from a school that doesn’t have hell days, hell weeks, hell months, even hell years – our school is just plain hell. I didn’t want to fail my school. I didn’t want to fail Marielle. I didn’t want to fail myself. In short, I just didn’t want to fail. Then and there, I knew what I wanted, I just didn’t have any idea how I would get it.

The next day was filled with talks and workshops about leadership skills, biodiversity, climate change and other pressing environmental issues from distinguished speakers. Former National Youth Commission chairman Bam Aquino talked about youth leadership.  National Climate Change commissioner Nadarev Saño and UP professor Perry Ong discussed climate change and biodiversity, respectively. Rodolfo “Dups” de los Reyes, a management consultant, gave us tips on public speaking. Environmental experts from EDC elaborated on the company’s BINHI program and their other initiatives on biodiversity conservation.

What struck me most on that day was the talk about exotic species. As a biology major, I was very familiar with this topic. Hearing and knowing that the population of our indigenous and endemic plant species are significantly declining because they are being overtaken by introduced exotic species like Switenia sp. (Mahogany) is heart-breaking, especially for the people who are striving to conserve our country’s biodiversity.

Another heartbreaking thought is that a majority of Filipinos are unfamiliar with our endemic species. Once, our family went to a lake in a remote area in Laguna. My father is a photographer and he wanted to take some shots in the area. Near the lake was a waterfall, and on that waterfall’s rock crevices were bundles of endemic begonias. I told my father that those plants were endangered and asked him to take a picture. He did so, but in an indifferent manner.

My father represents the majority of our population who are oblivious to the fact that the Philippines is home, not only to about 100 million Filipinos, but also to 70 percent of the world’s flora and fauna. Think about that for a moment. Biologists from all over the world are genuinely interested in our species to the point where the only book enumerating all of the flowering plant species in the Philippines was written by Elmer Merrill, an American.

These thoughts were playing in my head when I realized the purpose of our conference.

My friends, the second step in conserving our country’s biodiversity is loving it. But how could you love something without knowing it exists? Even if we know that it exists, what would make us love it?

Therefore, people of the Philippines, the first step towards this ultimate goal is education, and this was the reason why we were summoned to Antipolo, all expenses paid, despite the high demand of resources to make this conference happen. It was like planting a seed in the hope that it would mature and produce more seeds. We were the seeds and our project proposals, should they be pursued, are the grown plants, and the effect the project has on other people are the new seeds.

Knowing that eased the pressure a bit. Knowing that assured me of my purpose. I knew what I wanted and suddenly, I knew how I would get it.

Marielle and I worked hard on our project proposal. We didn’t want to regret anything. We scrambled, we talked, we stumbled across some problems but in the end, it paid off. We got into the Top 5 Project Proposals.

Entitled “Back to Basics: Heal the Body and the Mind,” this project will establish a botanical garden comprised of labeled indigenous medicinal trees and shrubs. It will be a project of the UP Manila Department of Biology in partnership with the National Institute of Health along with taxonomists, doctors who are practicing alternative medicine, and EDC-BINHI under their “Tree for Life” module. This project will be completed within five months. Upon establishment, it will increase the awareness of local medicinal plants while promoting proper waste management and the use of alternative medicine.

We didn’t win but we were proud. We came a long way from being average grade-conscious students. That was a feat I never knew was possible until I abandoned my worldly fears and gladly took that first step as we clicked the first slide of our project proposal, uttered the first syllable of our presentation to an audience, and typed in the first word of this article.

Here’s hoping that you, my readers, are my viable seeds in an effort to save our endemic species, that you would accept one of the greatest challenges of our generation, that you would take that first step as well. The first step to recovery, the first step to our salvation and hopefully, the first step to change the world.

The author is a BS Biology student at UP Manila.