"ALL PUBLIC and private schools nationwide are directed to plant trees and make sure they’re taken care of, as the department takes concrete steps to mitigate the effects of global warming."
Thus ordered Education Secretary Jesli Lapus in his DepEd Order No. 33 which also prohibits the cutting of trees on school grounds.
"It requires us to take solid, concerted action to arrest the continuing decline of our environment," furthered Lapus, underscoring that global warming required more than lip service.
Toward that end, Lapus laid down concrete actions, such as:
• the conduct of "extensive tree-planting , tree-growing and tree-caring activities in campuses and contiguous communities throughout the school year;
• the conversion of empty lots in campuses to mini-forests and plant nurseries; and
• the conduct of fora, symposia and other undertakings in both school and communities to create wider public awareness of the state of the environment.
"I also urge school-based organizations such as the supreme student government , supreme pupil government, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Youth for Environment to lead the tree-planting and tree-caring activities as part of their civic duty," Lapus said.
Lapus encouraged the planting of trees endemic to the Philippines such as the hardwood varieties of narra, molave, lauan, acacia, kamagong, and Philippine teak, as well as fruit-bearing trees like mango, kaimito, avocado, langka and chiko.
The Department of the Interior and Local Government should take after the DepEd and give the order to the local government units to go into their own "tree-planting, tree-growing and tree-caring activities" year-round.
It would help too if every LGU maintained its own plant nursery.
And then there is the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources to really go into thorough environmental impact assessment before issuing those permit-to-cut-trees to just about every request from builders.
The DENR should start this by staying the hand, nay, the bulldozers of the Department of Public Works and Highways from destroying those remaining mature acacia trees along MacArthur Highway.
What good lesson could be imparted to the youth if even as DepEd orders them to plant trees and care for them, there is the DPWH cutting them?
SO WE wrote in our Punto! editorial of June 24-25, 2008.
So instead of staying the hand and the bulldozers of the DPWH from destroying the trees along MacArthur Highway, it was the DENR itself that signed the permit, that issued the license to massacre them!
And the DPWH did its killing job with the zeal, nay, the manic obsession of a mass murderer.
Indeed, what lesson would be impacted to the youth ordered by DepEd to plant trees and care for them, to behold the DENR unleashing the DPWH to wreak havoc on the trees?
The DENR and the DPWH may as well be telling the youth: You plant them. We kill them.
One more instance of miseducating our young there. So what has DepEd to say on this?
