december-2011

Over a hundred people help out in
a forest-building activity; some are
from the local community while
others come in from the cities.
There is an underlying vision that
guides our efforts, and it’s the hope
that one day people will see forests
as something that’s as important as
the tallest buildings that become the
symbols of a nation, the engineering
marvels that connote all the prosperity
a country has achieved. We want
people to think of forests in the same
way, to build them to be as grand as
skyscrapers and to make them the
icons that would stand out above
anything else in the landscape. That
ought to put a sense of pride in every
builder of every forest.
Sowing the seeds
The fi rst time we built a forest, there
R EFORESTING THE CORDILLERA
There is an underlying vision that guides
our efforts, and it , s the hope that one day
people will see forests as something that , s
as important as the tallest buildings that
become the symbols of a nation
were 25 of us on a mountaintop with
500 seedlings. Today, every forestbuilding
activity counts at least a
hundred people, with some of them
arriving from the cities. Also on this
day, we will have planted our 50,000th
seedling and the foundations for eight
forests in remote villages across the
Cordillera mountains, covering some
of the most diffi cult terrain and most
remote locations.
For the local community, joining
{ 171 }
in the tree-planting effort is perhaps
the best investment they can make.
The advent of human-induced climate
change has made mountain villages
like this one in Tublay, Benguet, among
the country’s most vulnerable areas to
both drought and landslides. As a small
farming community, most of the village
people’s livelihoods have long been
rooted in the earth.
But the industries of other areas in
the world are changing the climate