Consistent with the green image of greenhorn Prez Barack Obama, the United States embassy in Manila has recently sponsored a series of talks on the state of the Philippine environment. The lectures were given by Larry Heaney of Chicago’s Field Museum, Kent Carpenter of Old Dominion University and Jeff Reid of the Naval Research Center in Washington DC.

It is no secret that Mother America knows much about her now independent daughter. While she may have been frustrated that her daughter turned out quite different “from her own image”, she still has an interest or even a stake in her. It is in this context that the lectures are significant. In 1908-1909, the first systematic environmental surveys of the Philippines were made upon direct orders from President Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt requested the Congress to allocate money for “scientific exploration of the Philippine Islands”. Congress obliged and the task of doing so fell on the National Academy of Science. So we had the landmark Albatross expedition that remains the most extensive survey of Philippine seas to date. American botanists inventoried our plant diversity. The records of their works are in the Philippine Journal of Science. Unfortunately you will have to travel to the USA to get access to a complete set of the tomes. I haven’t found a library in the Philippines with a complete set. Blame the Japanese for setting on fire the libraries in 1945. :-(

Heaney placed his talk squarely on this important American effort. The American forest surveys in 1909 provided us the important baseline to assess the extent of forest loss 100 years later. Heaney’s prognosis is grim but there are some signs of hope. First of all is the Palanan wilderness which has remains almost as is when General Aguinaldo was captured by Funston in 1902. Second are our  mountain areas some of which  like Isarog are receiving protection. Heaney has worked on Philippine mammals for almost 40 years and described more than 20 new species. His effort has resulted in a scientific theory to explain biotic evolution in the Philippines.

Heaney’s most controversial statement in the lecture which floored the US diplomats in the Chuck Parsons ballroom is this

“Overseas migration of Filipino workers has saved the Philippine environment!”

Heaney believes that massive migration has reduced pressure on the environment.  The global economic recession may make things worse as Pinoy workers begin to return home to an increasingly crowded Philippines.

Kent Carpenter had the same idea in his talk at DLSU about the marine environment. The major threat to the marine environment is deforestation brought about by population growth coupled with poverty.

Overseas migration is not only a social and economic safety valve but an environmental one as well. We know that successive Philippine governments are propped up by remittances. The environmental dimension to the OFW phenomena is something I never realized.

Jeff Reid’s talk in Ateneo is about aerosols and climate change. The US Navy is funding research on improving satellite remote sensing in tropical regions. Reid is looking for Filipino collaborators and is willing to take on interested PhD students to his lab. Aerosols make it difficult to calibrate and validate satellite data.

Atmospheric aerosols are linked with rainfall deficits and shifts. Increasing aerosol levels in the upper atmosphere seems to be most noticeable in Southeast Asia. Reid presented an animated climate model from US naval satellite data and I suddenly realized why the navy is so keen about Southeast Asia.

THERE WAS A PERSISTENT BLOB OR CLOUD OF AEROSOLS FLOATING OVER THE SPRATLYS!

Of course Reid never mentioned the security implications of his research but it was patently obvious. If American satellites can’t validate what’s happening under that cloud, then we do have a national security problem.

We don’t know for sure why there is that persistent aerosol cloud. Reid said that in Brazil, there is a similar cloud but that disappears every January and comes back in July. Perhaps it’s because the Indonesians are setting their forests on fire or volcanoes like Pinatubo are still spewing gases. If you are a conspiracy theorist, you can say the Chinese used their hairspray! :-)

So the VFA issue came to my mind. There is a science component to the VFA more than the Nicole issue.

This is something we Pinoy scientists have to ponder upon.

At the end of his talk Reid showed the US navy sat pic of the Asian side of the globe at night. Everything is lit up. If there is a country on perpetual Earth Hour, it is none other but North Korea!

BTW one of our PhD students, Mon Romero  just passed his examinations for the PhD in environmental science last Friday. I was on the thesis examination panel as reader and I congratulate Mon for surviving the tough questioning of his panel which included the country’s top senior environmental scientists.

His dissertation is on crab fisheries and environment change. One of his disturbing conclusions is that crabs need a predictable summer season to complete their life cycle. They need calm seas in order to find suitable habitats to settle once they get out of the plankton.

With our weird summer weather (we still have “amihan” on Holy Week and its raining), the crabs are in for a hard time. If the seasons become very unpredictable in the future, expect the fishery to collapse, Dr Mon Romero says.

So please keep this in mind when you eat alimasag

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