CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY, Misamis Oriental—Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Ramon Paje has proposed to turn 8 million hectares of idle, denuded and unproductive lands into palm oil plantations and said the country was losing P800 billion of lost opportunities.
gestures to emphasize the loss of income from inability
of government to avail of idle lands during a press
conference in Cagayan de Oro City. Also in photo are
Mindanao Development Authority Sec. Luwalhati
Antonino (left) and Interior and Local Government
Secretary Manuel Roxas. LANCE BACONGUIS
He said Indonesia, which has six million hectares planted with palm and earning “$50 billion income each year, which is almost the same as our national budget.”
“If plans will push through, the country is set to earn initially P800 million annually. With that figure, it is enough to provide for our national budget,” he told a meeting of the Mindanao Barangay Stratreegic Forest Project (BSFP).
But Cooperative Development Authority Region 10 director Orlando Ravanera said the government should focus on food security and ecological integrity and not palm oil plantation.
He said turning denude lands into palm plantations was not pursuant to food security and ecological integrity that the BSFP was aiming for because “land should be used for food security and not for biofuel.”
“The rich countries are shifting from fossil fuel to renewable energy resources at our expense,” said Ravera, who is also chairman of the group SULOG, a coalition of organizations with environmental concerns.
He said Paje should file charges against logging companies that cut down trees but did not replant Mount Kitanglad and Mount Kalatungan in Bukidnon and portions of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Cagayan de Oro Bishop Melmar Labuntog of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines said if there are idle lands it should be planted with palm but used to produce food.
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