Indigenous Peoples: Vanguards of World’s Biodiversity

International Day of Indigenous Peoples—August 9

Indigenous Peoples: Vanguards of World’s Biodiversity

By Dr. Michael A. Bengwayan

The United Nations has set August 9 as the International Day of Indigenous Peoples (IP) but to most IPs worldwide, it is just another day of facing complex threats to their survival as distinct peoples.

Not only are they confronted with dispossession of their lands and physical persecution, they are also faced with appropriation of natural resources and their collective knowledge of this, which they developed through the ages.

Their traditional knowledge of food crops, medicinal plants and survival are being taken by multinational companies and commercialized.

IP Knowledge on Agricultural Biodiversity

In the early 80s, agricultural scientists from UNFAO discovered that Azolla, an algae, could fix nitrogen from the atmosphere and help fertilize rice crops. Armed with this know-how, they traveled to Mountain Province of the Cordillera region of the Philippines intending to introduce the technology.

To their surprise, they found out that farmers in that province have, for hundreds of years, been integrating Azolla in their rice paddies because through ancient observation, realized their rice crops grew better when grown with Azolla.

Many beneficial farming practices exist today that have emerged from indigenous peoples—terrace farming, agroforestry, organic gardening principles to name a few.

Many food crops as well exist today because they owe their genetic continuity to indigenous peoples. The Convention of Biodiversity (CBD) says the systematic collection of indigenous peoples’ agricultural genetic diversity contributed considerable economic benefits to the world.

Genes from crops grown by indigenous peoples for only 15 crops contribute more than 50 million dollars annually in US alone.

About 60 per cent of the germplasm collected in genebanks of members of the International Agricultural Research Centers (IARCs) worldwide came from crops nurtured by indigenous peoples for centuries, CBD said.

These include thousands of varieties of rice, corn, wheat, potato, beans and root crops.

Intellectual Property Rights Regimes Threatening IPs’ Biodiversity

The toil of indigenous and tribal peoples in domesticating, breeding and conserving biodiversity over the centuries is being endangered by the demand of bioprospecting corporations to apply Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) regimes.

IPR regimes are rights to ideas and information which are used in new inventions or processes. These rights enable the holder to exclude other users from using or marketing such process or invention. In short, IPRs is therefore monopoly over commercial exploitation.

The existing IPR regimes today fail to recognize the rights of indigenous and tribal peoples to their own knowledge and innovation.

In my book Intellectual and Cultural Property Rights of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples of Asia.

I argued that multinationals from the industrial world exploit indigenous peoples biological wealth and then sell the patented products back to them at excessive prices.

The growth of biotechnology industries, combined with the loss of biodiversity worldwide, has focused the attention of governments, corporations, and others on access to and control of genetic resources—mainly because of the tremendous potential for generating commercial profits, I wrote.

The food crops, medicinal plants, other biogenetic resources as well as traditional knowledge on these, have become commodities, to be bought, sold and traded, I added.

Commodifying the World’s Most Consumed Crop- Rice

In 2008, I was speaker at International Rice Research Institute’s (IRRI) scientific congress, and brought to tour its high-tech underground gene bank that could withstand earthquakes, floods, bombs and fire for the purpose of protecting thousands of rice varieties of seeds and ensure that these be grown by future generations.

The seedbank, holds all the world’s rice, many of which are indigenous varieties that now have disappeared in farmers’ fields.

IRRI scientists briefed me, the seedbank intends to prevent monopoly commercial plant breeding in the hands of a few transnational companies that now control significant gene banks.

But such claim is misleading because today, the value of IRRI’s contribution to the rice production of developed countries runs to millions of US dollars every year, based on the production of US semi-dwarf rice crop developed on the basis of IRRI material, some traits of which came from rice, originally grown by indigenous peoples.

Thousands of indigenous rice varieties in Asia and Africa have been lost through the years as genetically-tinkered rice, many developed by IRRI and input-dependent, have replaced these.

As a rule, rice farmers save some of their crops to use as seed the following year. But with many IPR regimes controlling rice now, farmers would have to pay royalties on the rice seeds from patented seeds and even where farmers were the source of original stocks, they would not be allowed to use or market them under GATT rules.

As it is now, 70 percent of developing countries rice varieties are from IRRI. This means the rice seeds are not in farmers’ fields and control. As such, it also places farmers at the mercy of inorganic fertilizer and pesticide multinational companies because it is an established fact that IRRI varieties don’t grow and produce well without these expensive inputs.

Pharmaceutical Biodiversity

According to the Rural Advancement Fund International (RAFI), eighty percent of the world’s population is dependent on traditional medicine and medicinal plants for their health security.

The conservation of many of these pharmaceutical biodiversity lies in the hands of indigenous peoples, RAFI said.

Two thirds of the world’s plant species—35,000 of which have medicinal values, have in one time or another, used by indigenous peoples in developing countries, RAFI added.

But it lamented so many of these plants, communal properties, now are controlled by the pharmaceutical industry that earn millions of dollars annually through drug development, much of the raw materials of which are exported by Third World countries to developed nations.

The US National Cancer Institute alone collected 23,000 plant samples from 7,000 plant species in Southeast Asia from 1980 to 1995.

Already, about 7,000 medical compounds that make up the Western pharmacopeia came from plants associate with indigenous peoples using these as medicine, RAFI said.

Indigenous Peoples Struggle Against Biopiracy

The extraction of biodiversity resources to supply resources for the biotechnology industry is alarming many indigenous peoples.

Indigenous peoples’ organizations say this threatens indigenous peoples access to and control of their collective property and their collective knowledge of the traditional uses of exotic and endemic plants which they have been using as food and medicine for centuries.

On the global level, international NGOs such as RAFI, GRAIN and the Third World Network have been joining local NGOs to raise awareness of the biopiracy problem.

They are keeping watch over patent applications in various patent and trademark offices worldwide.

In 1995, they with 200 organizations worldwide from 35 countries petitioned the US Trademark Office to revoke a patent given to W.R.Grace Company to use a pesticidal extract from neem, an endemic tree of India. The petitioners said the company was usurping age-old biological processes of India’s indigenous peoples.

On February 1995 Asian indigenous peoples organizations protested to the European Union and UN against all forms of genetic manipulation and destruction and criticized Western efforts to “negate the complexity of any life form by isolating and reducing it to its minute parts….and thereby alter its relationship to the natural order”

Indigenous peoples representatives also figured prominently in negotiating for the adoption of a Biosafety Protocol in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Adopted in 2000, the Biosafety Protocol “regulates the transbounsboundary transfer of genetically modified organism across national borders”

The struggle by indigenous peoples to protect their biodiversity resources remains relevant. On the other hand, some are too focused on the international arena that they do not feel the impact to what is happening on the ground.

It is time to rethink this position.

Oxygen Loss, Our Worst Environmental Nightmare Unfolding But…

Oxygen Loss,  Our Worst Environmental Nightmare Unfolding But….

By Dr. Michael A. Bengwayan

An  environmental crisis is slowly unfolding globally but the human race is hardly aware of it.  If some are, they are not doing  anything  to arrest the trend because they hardly understand why. By the time the whole world realize it, the crisis may have reached nightmarish proportions. We are losing our oxygen.

The earth’s oxygen level in the earth's atmosphere, especially over oceans and shorelines, has fallen by over a third compared to thousands of years ago. Worse, in polluted cities, especially those in China, India,  East Asia, California in the US and some European nations, the oxygen decline has reached about 50 percent. Deadly Air, Oxygen Bars and Cafes   The earth’s atmosphere  is building up with dangerous greenhouse gasses (GHGs) like CO2, methane, sulphur and nitrous oxides due to burning of fossil fuels and widespread deforestation.  These are trapped below the already damaged ozone layer. The deadly GHGs are replacing oxygen molecules  as the Boyle’s law of physics dictate.   The replacement of oxygen molecules  is lowering the  21 percent land oxygen level in many parts of the globe.  This means  clean oxygen usually inhaled  by humans are now a deadly mixture of greenhouse gasses and oxygen. Deng Xiao Li, a factory worker in  the coastal city of Shanghai, personifies how the oxygen is thinning in the polluted city of 25 million. He works  from graveyard shift till two at noon, coughing every 15 minutes. Before heading home, he drops by an oxygen café,  inhaling fresh air from an oxygen tank for  an hour which he pays for 15 US dollars.  These oxygen bars now exist in Japan, India, US, Canada and  some European countries. It will not be long now when oxygen, once free becomes commodified globally. Three recent documents point out evidences oxygen is fast thinning and that alarm bells should be rang. One, a study by Dr. Denise Breitburg, Principal Investigator and Senior Scientist of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center with 21 other scientists  from prestigious institutions  where they concluded in January this year, that the oxygen level of the earth’s oceans and coastal waters are fast declining.  “The amount of water in the open ocean with zero oxygen has gone up more than fourfold. In coastal water bodies, including estuaries and seas, low-oxygen sites have increased more than 10-fold since 1950”, they said. Loss of Oxygen Increasing Marine Life Mortality Brietburg and her colleagues said “Oxygen is fundamental to life in the oceans,” meaning that the loss of oxygen  mean death of many marine life,   with serious adverse effects to the  food chain,  and eventually, to humans’ food security.  “The decline in ocean oxygen ranks among the most serious effects of human activities on the Earth’s environment,” the scientists said. They form the group  GONE (Global Ocean Oxygen Network), a new working group created in 2016 by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission.  Low oxygen supply is seen as the major cause of corals’ death, as well as the diminishing population of crabs, shrimps, squids, several shell fishes, some fish species and even seahorses.  Dead Zones, Fish Cemeteries In the oceans, there are now so-called “dead zones”, areas where there is low level of dissolved oxygen, so low many animals suffocate and die.  Marine denizens avoid these zones,  and they become more vulnerable to predators or fishing as their natural habitat shrinks. The oxygen decline stunt growth of marine creatures, hinder reproduction and lead to disease or even death.  Low oxygen also can trigger the release of dangerous chemicals such as nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas up to several times more powerful than carbon dioxide, and toxic hydrogen sulfide. While some animals can thrive in dead zones, overall biodiversity falls, the scientists added. The marine biologists’ grim assessment comes after another scientific study released last year by the Georgia  Institute of Technology's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (Georgia Tech) bared that the amount of dissolved oxygen contained in the  ocean water - an important measure of ocean health - has been declining for more than 20 years.  Associate Prof. Taka  Ito of Georgia Tech, along with researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the University of Washington-Seattle, and Hokkaido University in Japan revealed oxygen levels  in the oceans are impacting negatively on marine organisms and their habitats worldwide causing more frequent "hypoxic events" that killed or displaced populations of fish, crabs and many other organisms. Ito and his associates said "The trend of oxygen falling is about two to three times faster than what we predicted from the decrease of solubility associated with the ocean warming."  "This is most likely due to the changes in ocean circulation and mixing associated with the heating of the near-surface waters and melting of polar ice, “ they explained. Thinning Oxygen Level on Land The  oxygen level on land is threatened as well, The  atmospheric oxygen level on land is 21 percent compared to about 35 per cent during the prehistoric times. Australian scientist Ian Plimer of Adelaide University and Professor Jon Harrison of the University of Arizona accept that oxygen levels in the atmosphere in prehistoric times averaged 35 percent compared to only 21 percent today.  The levels are even lower in densely populated, polluted city centers and industrial complexes, perhaps only 15 percent or lower, both concluded.  In an upcoming book The Oxygen Crisis, author Roddy Newman claims the  change in the makeup of the air we breathe has potentially serious implications for our health, it could ultimately threaten the survival of human life on earth. In Central California, especially at Monterey, scientific researchers Alice S. Ren, Fei Chai, and Hujie Xue bared declining dissolved oxygen levels for the past 16 years. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), University of California at San Diego confirm this.   Death in Eight Minutes Without Oxygen  On the average, the US National Institute for Health (NIH) estimates humans normally breathe air that is 20 to 21 percent oxygen by volume under normal atmospheric pressure conditions.  If this level is decreased even slightly by one to two per cent, it causes ill effects to the human body. As a result, people will not be able to work normally especially in doing strenuous work. In oxygen environments of 15 percent to 19 percent, movement and coordination are affected. With oxygen depletion down to only 10 percent to 12 percent, respiration increases, lips turn blue and judgment is impaired. Fainting and unconsciousness begin to occur at 8 percent to 10 percent oxygen. Death occurs in 8 minutes at 6 percent to 8 percent oxygen, NIH stressed. We Are the Enemy Oxygen is supplied by trees and plants as well as phytoplanktons in the oceans  through the process of photosynthesis. One mature tree, at least ten years old of any species releases about 45 pounds of oxygen to the atmosphere every year while sequestering at the same time 45 pounds of CO2. Three to four trees supply the oxygen needs of one human being annually. But forests worldwide are being cut at a rate of 14 hectares per minute, a cut rate so fast  that ridicules all combined reforestation efforts.  Ten thousand years ago, the  forest cover on earth was at least twice what it is today, which means that forests now are emitting only half the amount of oxygen compared to years before. In Indonesia, West Papua, Burma, Congo Basin in Africa  and the Amazon of South America, deforestation is twice the said cut rate with many tree species entering the endangered and extinct list of  trees by the conservation watchdog International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The seas’ phytoplankton concentration on the other hand is diminishing,  down to 30 per cent lower today compared to fifty years ago due to pollution of seawater. The culprit behind forests and phytoplanktons’ destruction are humans’ un-reined greed and appetite for economic wealth. At the rate that these resources are being destroyed, the time will come when oxygen will barely support human existence. Then humans  will find out they cannot breathe their money. -------- ABOUT THE  AUTHOR V Michael Bengwayan is a Filipino environmental activist best known for his advocacy of using the Petroleum nut (Pittosporum resiniferum) as an alternative bio-fuel in the Philippines,[1] and his involvement with advocacies to save trees from being cut, notably the Save 182 Movement which petitioned to stop the earth-balling 182 trees at Luneta Hill, Baguio City, by mall developer SM, and the campaign to stop the cutting of 1,200 trees along the Manila North Road, in the towns of Binalonan and Pozorrubio, Pangasinan.[2] Bengwayan is the director of the Cordillera Ecological Center,[3] and is also the proprietor of The Habitat, a five hectare farm in Tublay, Benguet which partly serves as an ecotourism site, an ecological reserve containing indigenous trees of Philippine Cordillera, and a demonstration farm for the intercropping of Arabica coffee, pineapple, pine trees, and petroleum nut.[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bengwayan Michael Bengwayan is fighting environmental decay and poverty in the Cordillera region of the Philippines by creating local solutions to solve some of the world's environmental problems. He is introducing nitrogen fixing trees to enrich soil fertility, provide livestock forage, and enhance soil and water conservation. He discovered and is teaching people about making biofuel from petroleum nut for cooking (as a replacement for LPG), lighting, heating, and drying as well as running small gasoline engines. He is promoting rainwater harvesting for household and farm use, and he is training farmers, women, and youth on environmental enterprises and organic gardening. Michael holds postgraduate degrees in environmental science, rural development, and development studies and is a past Fellow of the Ford Foundation, European Union, Reinhard Mohn, and the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) in the US, Ireland, Sweden and Belgium. https://www.echoinggreen.org/fellows/michael-bengwayan   .

Thinning Asian Forests Resulting to Fuelwood Shortage for Home Cooking

Thinning Asian Forests Resulting to Fuelwood Shortage for Home Cooking

By Dr. Michael A. Bengwayan

 Fifty years ago, earth was annually losing forests the size of England. Today, the world loses 14 hectares of tropical forest every minute mostly due to agriculture to support growing populations and fuel wood for cooking fires. 

 Yes, fuel wood is now a culprit in deforestation.

In Africa, Asia, South America, continents where large populations rely heavily on fuel wood for cooking, women and children who bear the burden of looking for fuel wood, are walking longer hours just to search or cut trees for firewood.

Fuel wood is the next energy crisis.

Almost two billion rural people in developing countries do not have enough wood to cook their meals. Their number will grow to 2.5 billion by 2025.

Fuelwood supply and demand courses through headloads, camel trains, donkey and bullock carts, bicycles and shoulder loads. Ultimately, fuelwood ends up in cooking fires.

So says Earthscan, a London-based information think-tank on environment issues citing a UN Sustainable Report ‘Understanding Fuel wood’ by Phil Barry Munslow and Phil Okeefe.

“The fuelwood problem has been isolated as an ‘energy crisis’ issue. Interventions to date have concentrated on narrowly defined technical options for supply enhancement or demand constraint. But there has been a failure to understand the fuelwood problem correctly “, it said.

“And unless developing nations adopt a serious and no-nonsense approach to save its forests and woodlands, fuelwood will be the most serious energy crisis for the next 50 years”, it warned.

Rising Fuelwood Demand

UNFAO figures show that from 2000 to 2004, Southeast Asian countries have been using more wood for cooking with Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines as the top users, followed by Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.

Forest loss is acute in these countries, the second of the world's great biodiversity hot spots. According to 2005 report conducted by the FAO, Vietnam has the second highest rate of deforestation of primary forests in the world. More than 90% of the old-growth rainforests of the Philippines have been cut. Other Southeast Asian countries where major deforestation is ongoing are Cambodia, Indonesia and Laos. 

Their combined fuelwood use is responsible in the deforestation of 72 % of forests in the said five-year span.

In South Asia, top fuelwood users are Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal and Pakistan accounting to77% to 79% of total forest removals in the region, in that five year stretch.

By region, South Asia, Southeast Asia and China are the top fuelwood consumers.

Culprits

It would seem unfair to blame housewives particularly those who toil the land, because generally, women farmers are known links to biological continuity. To dispel such notion, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO) made a study and noted that until 1980, firewood demand was a minor cause of deforestation. Women and children were collecting and using mostly branches and twigs while leaving trees standing.

But after that decade due to rapid population growth in the rural areas, trees, big and young, started to be cut purely for fuelwood.

Often, young trees are the first to be cut, including those in reforested reservations and sanctuaries, UNFAO reported. And when the small trees are consumed, fuelwood gatherers de-branch bigger trees causing many to die. Eventually, when the big trees dry and die, they are cut, UNFAO concluded.

The deplorable predicament worsens deforestation, and further aggravated by farmers clearing lands for livestock and crops.

To this day, forests are fair game as forest fragments crumble to almost daily cutting and gathering for fuelwood daily.

While not quite deforesting the globe, these problems are undermining the well-being of hundreds of millions of people in at least two continents, Asia and Africa.

Fuelwood consumption exerts pressure on the resource base if it is increasing at a rate higher than the growth of trees.

Inefficient Stoves Compounding the Problem

Most rural folks in poorer Third World countries cook over open fires. The most common is the “three-stone fire” the fire set between three stones bricks or whatever to support the cooking pot.

But this open fire system is wasteful an inefficient. As more wood is burned and wasted, more fuel wood is gathered, more trees cut, more forests ravaged.

To employ measures to improve fuel efficiency, there is a need to sustain a campaign for more efficient rural stoves.

Traditional stoves used inside rural homes have to be replaced by more energy-efficient stoves that don’t soot homes and cause upper respiratory ailments to family members.

 Using Alternative Resources and Solutions

UNFAO’s Fuelwood Program says 43 percent of the Philippine rural population depend on fuelwood for energy but is seldom using other forms of biomass like plant matter and animal wastes.

Until recently, most biomass consumers lived in rural areas. As populations have grown, and the number of trees has decreased, searching for fuelwood has indeed become a demanding task.

In the Cordillera region of the Philippines, the Cordillera Ecological Center (CEC) has developed an alternative fuel for cooking from the oil of a native tree Pittosporum resineferum.

CEC developed this as the region’s fuelwood supply for rural homes in all six provinces has become so scarce. It is becoming scarcer every day. Creeping deforestation  has left many towns with less than 30 percent forest cover.

“The rate of deforestation is much faster than reforestation efforts.  In many places, there is no reforestation to speak of”, Dobbels Wallang CEC’s environment specialist said.

To many farmers, collecting firewood was a two hour task fifty years ago. Today, it is almost an entire day expedition, every day.

“There are less and less dead trees and branches to cut”, Wallang added. “You are lucky if you can bring home a body-load after a day’s hunt,” he added.

Answering with Woodlots

Because of the seriousness of the problem, The Cordillera Ecological Center  (CEC) in the Philippines, is going around the rural areas training farmers on tree-raising and tree planting by turning vacant spaces into woodlots.

The project calls for growing fast-growing nitrogen-fixing and multi-use tree species that yield branches fast and cut for firewood. These include Pinus kesiya, Alnus japonica, Flemingia macrophylla and Calliandra calothyrsus.

More than a hundred woodlots have been established in at least six towns and serve as a woodlot, continuously supplying fuel needs of rural homes

CEC raises yearly thousands of trees and these are distributed to farmers groups, schools and civic organizations that help in reforestation efforts through community-based approaches. 

In the Cordillera region, indigenous forestry practices are being popularized to answer the shortage of fuel wood such as muyungs or pinugos, lakons or batangan, tayans and lapats.

 These are traditionally inherited woodlot properties and are privately owned that serve as primary sources of fuelwood, construction materials, food and medicines.

They are storehouses of flora, containing from 100 to 264 tree and plant species, mainly indigenous, and endemic in the region, 90 percent of which are useful.

Bengwayan has a masters degree and PhD in Development Studies and Environmental Resource Management from University College Dublin, Ireland, as a European Union fellow. He is currently a fellow of Echoing Green Foundation in New York.