Growing Energy for Rural Development

Inquirer Northern Luzon
Growing fuel for rural dev’t

By Maurice Malanes
Philippine Daily Inquirer, Inquirer Northern Luzon
First Posted 01:54:00 08/19/2009

Filed Under: Alternative energy, Environmental Issues, Forest and forest management

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet, Philippines—When environmental scientist Michael Bengwayan and his staff succeeded where government scientists had failed in propagating an upland petroleum-rich tree, he had in mind forsaken rural communities.

“Rural communities must learn to propagate this indigenous tree, extract its fuel and use it to spur their own development,” he says.

Bengwayan, executive director of the Pine Tree, a nongovernment ecological education, training, research and information center in La Trinidad, Benguet, was referring to the “petroleum nut” or resin cheesewood (Pittosporum resinferum).

The plant, which is native to the Cordillera and other upland areas in the Philippines and a few other countries such as China, has an octane rating of 54, compared to jatropha’s 41 to 43. Fossil fuel has an octane rating of 91.

Octane rating is a measure of the ability of a liquid motor fuel, such as gasoline, to prevent pre-ignition or knocking. Fuels with higher octane rating are less likely to cause knocking.

Fuel for countryside

Bengwayan and his technicians discovered how to extract oil from the petroleum nut fruit, which, they said, could be used for cooking, lighting and running simple machines and gadgets, such as water pumps and grinders.

For cooking, petroleum nut oil is not only more efficient and cheaper than firewood or charcoal. Three to five trees can yield about 15 liters of oil per harvest, and since harvest is twice a year, these amount to 30 liters, which a family can use for cooking for three to four months, says Bengwayan.

Fifteen to 20 trees can already supply a family’s year-round cooking fuel needs.

Three parts of petroleum nut oil, however, have to be blended with one part of kerosene if used for cooking.

Once it becomes popularized as cooking fuel, petroleum nut oil can free upland people from cutting trees for firewood or charcoal. This can help save and enable critical forests and watersheds to regenerate, Bengwayan says.

For lighting, two parts of petroleum nut oil can be mixed with one part of kerosene to fuel a Petromax lamp. But petroleum nut oil need not be blended with anything if used for a simple oil lamp.

As water pump fuel, petroleum nut oil can enable upland residents to draw water from lower elevations for irrigation or household use.

The possibilities that petroleum nut oil can do to propel rural industries are endless, says Bengwayan. Upland folk can use the tree oil for blacksmithing, food processing, milling grains, threshing rice and grinding reeds, grasses and weeds for compost, among other things.

With its higher octane, petroleum nut oil can also be tapped as alternative fuel for vehicles.

But Bengwayan is keen on propagating the plant for simple industries in neglected rural communities than promoting it as alternative fuel for vehicles, which only a few rural residents can afford.

This, he says, is in consonance with his organization’s mission of fighting poverty and environmental decay through scientific research and innovations.

Community control

But rural communities must secure and take control over this highly priced tree, which, Bengwayan says, is a rare species also under threat from biopirates.

For this to happen, they must learn the basics of propagating and planting the tree through seed-banking, extracting the oil and finally documenting these, he says.

“Documenting the tree’s traditional and new uses is the communities’ means of protection against outsiders who may attempt to patent its properties and uses,” he says.

Under patent rules, applicants can only seek patents for those that are new. So outsiders cannot patent uses or properties which communities have already discovered and documented.

Bengwayan says the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) can help communities protect their endemic resources through documentation before “biopirates” come in.

The Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act and Article 8(j) of the United Nations Convention of Biological Diversity protect traditional knowledge against those who seek to steal the resources of indigenous communities and its accompanying traditional uses.

As a rare species, petroleum nut is best propagated through seeds.

The Forest Research Institute of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources has succeeded in propagating petroleum nut through cutting, using tissue culture.

But Bengwayan discourages this because taking the branches of the few remaining petroleum nut trees in the forests for tissue-culture will all the more lead to their extinction.

He says the best way is to propagate the oil tree through seeds and bring back the seedlings to the forests.

Propagating the seeds, however, is challenging and it requires patience. Bengwayan and his technicians almost gave up in their experiment of propagating oil tree through seeds in 2005.

But just as when they almost lost their patience, the petroleum nut seeds they sowed began to germinate after almost three months. “We found out the seed of this tree had a long dormancy (temporary cessation of growth or metabolism),” he says.

They lost no time in propagating petroleum nut seeds starting 2006, securing these in nurseries.

They have since propagated more than 30,000 seedlings, which they have scheduled to give to some 23 farmers in the upland towns of Kibungan and Kapangan in Benguet. These will be planted during the rainy season.