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Showing posts with the label erosion

Opening of public lands for agri-developments

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For many decades, vast tracts of forest lands are damaged across the Philippines. These are either the handiwork of nature like soil erosions, landslides, tremors or they're simply man-made due to humans' greed for immediate cash if only to survive. By all means, those who are within the proximity of the forests are free to do whatever they thought was best for them to survive or earn fast cash.  Notably, the most common practice that upland dwellers do is the cutting of firewood, slash-and-burn farming to plant crops even if these activities run counter to established forestry regulations that forbid them from doing these activities without permission from the authorities. Without a land of their own, they have to do it anyway. While some armed groups would simply engage themselves in illegal logging activities for profits. Forestry reports said that they even encroach on other's logging concessions to cut trees for sale to interested buyers. When I was working with the Mi...

Environmental degradation breeds disasters

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Environmental degradation is a significant factor that reduces the capacity of societies to deal with disaster risk in many countries around the world. This is the key message of the World Risk Report 2012, presented today in Brussels, Belgium by the German Alliance for Development Works (Alliance), United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) and The Nature Conservancy. The report examines the risks of and solutions for natural disasters. The record for the decade 2002 to 2011 is alarming: 4,130 disasters, more than a million deaths and an economic loss of at least 1.195 trillion dollars. The report's WorldRiskIndex, developed by UNU-EHS in cooperation with the Alliance, determines the risk of becoming the victim of a disaster as a result of natural hazards for 173 countries. The Pacific Island states of Vanuatu and Tonga have the highest disaster risk. Malta and Qatar face the lowest risk. Australia ranks 117th and is therefore in the lowes...