CORDILLERA ECOLOGICAL CENTER

 

The Cordillera Ecological Centre, is an Echoing Green Foundation, New York City. USA winning project. The MISSION of CEC is “To Plant Gasoline Trees to Help Offset Carbon Dioxide Emission, particularly Pittosporum resineferum Petroleum tree, and nitrogen-fixing trees (NFTs) to fight poverty and environmental decay through social change.”

To do this, it raises and trains rural communities to plant petroleum trees and NFTs as it provides appropriate information that enables common people to implement and concretize culturally acceptable, ecologically sustainable, gender sensitive, and economically viable activities that promote equitable use, management, conservation and development of natural resources. CEC focuses on reducing CO2 emission, agroecology or nature farming, reducing soil erosion and conservation and indigenous knowledge because the three are interrelated and interdependent.
WHY IS CEC RELEVANT? Climate change is upon us and global warming is worsening basically due to increasing GHG like CO2, methane and sulphur dioxide. CEC believes that education and information are tools for knowledge and can empower marginalized and disenfranchised people to directly reduce the problem and be directly dependent on local natural resources to address the climate change issues. It adheres that empowerment is essential but is not the only means to achieve meaningful reforms. It also believes that, for a development agenda to be successful, especially a conservation or agricultural program, the rights and privileges of indigenous peoples should be recognized and protected without pre-conditions under recognized international, national, local and most important, traditional laws and statutes. As most local people are affected by climate change, biodiversity conservation and agriculturally-related programs, CEC opines that indigenous knowledge and traditional resource rights are important factors that should be considered because both immensely contribute to the formation of conventional and scientific know-how and environmental justice.
WHAT IT DOES? By providing proper education, skills and training, CEC helps in CARBON DIOXIDE SEQUESTRATION, , lessen soil erosion, O2 REPLENISHMENT, bridge the poverty gap and helps ensure biodiversity conservation and food security. CEC provides skills training and technical assistance, livelihood development, technological and educational support. To achieve its MISSION, CEC has two goals: educate as well as implement skills enhancement on appropriate conservation and use of Pittosporum resineferum tree and NFTs, agroecology and sustainable farming. It also promotes culturally acceptable tree technologies that help local peoples develop, manage, use, benefit from and conserve natural resources better, and; educate, inform, stimulate policy-advocacy and arouse public interest and debate among leaders, scientists, researchers, students, development workers and policy-makers.
Michael A.Bengwayan, the founder won a Fellowship on Social Entrepreneurship by the Echoing Green Foundation (EGF) of New York City and remains the only Filipino EGF Fellow so far. He received his post-doctoral education on Social Entrepreneurship at Rutgers University in New Jersey, USA. He continued as a Fellow of Reinhard Mohn in Non-Profit Media in Berlin, Germany . He finished his doctorate degree in environmental science as a European Commission Fellow at University College Dublin, Ireland, his Masters degree on development studies, as a , Ford Foundation Fellow and Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) Fellow at Kalmar University in Sweden.