By Blanche Rivera
Last updated 01:39pm (Mla time) 05/04/2006
Source : Philippine Daily Inquirer
(Source)

SO MANY people ask a lot of questions and still end up without answers. One man, a Filipino-American, asked one question and found the path to life.

All Bienvenido Eusebio, 70, wanted to know three years ago was, “Are we being good stewards of God’s creation?”

That one question brought him back home to the Philippines after 10 years in Indonesia and 30 years in the United States to launch the Lasallian Institute for the Environment (LIFE).

LIFE, an institute with only five staff members, is now all set to plant a million trees that could spell the difference for the country’s rapidly disappearing forests.

Eusebio, LIFE’s volunteer executive director, offered up a certificate bearing LIFE’s pledge during a Mass said by Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales to launch the Earth Day celebration at the former Smokey Mountain dump in Manila’s Tondo district.

De La Salle Philippines, through LIFE, has committed to plant a million trees by 2011, the educational institution’s centennial anniversary in the country. The planting season starts in June.

“This can’t happen overnight … but we think this is possible if everyone plants,” said Eusebio, citing La Salle’s more than 100,000 alumni and 50,000 students.

200,000 trees a year

LIFE is aiming for 200,000 trees a year.

A backyard, a subdivision, a park, a private resort, a mountain, denuded forest land - any open space not prone to logging or commercial use of timber - are sites being considered by LIFE.

The group is also seeking communities that are sincerely interested in saving their natural resources, Eusebio said.

La Salle intends to transfer responsibility over the project to the communities after three years.

“We need more than a million trees. For our part, we just want to be able to look back and say we planted a million and we did it for Mother Earth,” Eusebio said.

The man carries the burden of doing something for the planet right in his homeland.

US environment agency

“I worked for a polluter for 10 years,” said Eusebio, recalling his stint in the chemical industry in the United States after receiving his master’s degree in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He then spent the next 30 years with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), heading a team of scientists developing pollution control devices with the National Air Pollution Administration, the EPA’s predecessor.

When the EPA was created, Eusebio was assigned to its regional office and spent most of his years in Washington D.C., developing regulations and federal environmental programs for the states.

Soon he flew to Indonesia to do various environmental projects, including saving Lake Tondano, and other consultancy jobs. He however found himself looking to do more.

“I’ve earned many dollars doing reports that get stuck in the shelf because you don’t have the people who will do it,” Eusebio said.

Pilot project in Lumban

Returning to the Philippines upon the prodding of La Salle Br. Armin Luistro FSC, the man found the people he needed in the barangays (villages) of Lumban town in Laguna province.

Lumban’s 16 barangays are the pilot project sites for LIFE’s adopted watershed. Building on its brick-by-brick concept of environmental preservation, LIFE chose one of the 24 sub-basins - the Lumban-Pagsanjan sub-basin.

LIFE has trained the barangay leaders of Lumban to profile their barangays. With a compass, a line meter and sometimes a global positioning system (GPS) device, the officials, housewives and fishermen surveyed their areas for the barangay profile map.

The maps will be used for the natural resource management plan and help the barangay leaders identify and address the causes of frequent problems in the community.

The profile maps show the fish pens, hand pumps, houses, plantations, rice fields, piggeries, churches and other landmarks in the barangay.

“This is the thrust of LIFE: To bring education to the barangays, to people who may never have entered a classroom but who know life all too well,” Eusebio said.

“The satisfaction is in seeing people who know nothing of what you do, holding them by the hand and seeing them become experts,” he said.