RAFAEL S. DIONISIO
I grew up in Metro Manila and attended Ateneo, graduating with the idea that becoming rich and successful in my career was my only goal.
Boy, was I wrong!
As I started my entrepreneurial journey, I was introduced to an NGO that showed me that the purpose of business was to address the poverty of people and the poverty of the environment.
As a volunteer for the NGO, I worked with farmers and the urban poor. It impressed me that these people could be more productive but did not know how to harness and access idle land all over the country.
When I set up MAD Travel, I aimed to promote Tourism in the communities, hoping to provide them with good income opportunities through community-based tourism.
I traveled around the country and saw burning mountains, barren fields, and an increasing amount of plastic trash where I would swim or surf.
I initially avoided these places as they were terrible for the tourism industry, but I eventually realized that these experiences would become unavoidable.
In 2015, while in a surfing hostel in Zambales, I searched for a trek or hike for my guests to do while on break from the ocean. I was introduced to the Aetas under the care of the local government and asked Iking, the chieftain, to take me to where he was born so I could check out the trek.
Setting out at 8 a.m., what I saw blew my mind! I had never seen a valley so beautiful and fragile! Water flowed down the valley’s center, creating a thin layer over the volcanic ash we walked through.
We walked for 4 hours in the heat. There was no tree on site. Why were there no trees? Did the Mt. Pinatubo eruption destroy all of them? I later found out that there were logging concessions in the area as early as 1900. This was followed by a lot of mining just before Mt. Pinatubo buried everything under 50 feet of ash.
As I walked through, I wondered how this experience might be much better with trees. We met the Yangil community that day and had a wonderful time, except we almost had a heat stroke.
A month later, while the ‘valley’ experience was fresh, I encountered another NGO and farm that changed my life. This was the Hineleban Foundation and the Tumenegan Farm.
Based in Bukidnon, the group had been working with local tribes and restored thousands of hectares of forestland with them. A sustainability plan has been executed by setting up a coffee plantation around the forest edges, as coffee needs shade and regular rain to flourish.
Remembering the valley in Zambales and now exploring this forest in Bukidnon, I saw meaning in their stories intertwined.
I was so moved by the beauty I beheld in Bukidnon that I was hopeful they had formed from a very logged-out area, similar to Zambales.
I was so moved that I asked the foundation’s founder to train me to replicate this miracle in Luzon. He agreed but requested that I bring the Zambales community to Bukidnon so they would understand and be empowered to care for their ancestral land.
Six months later, I flew back with tribal elders and chieftains and learned Restoration science together. A month later, our tribes and tricks program was born. MAD Travel started doing immersive restoration tours, where people participate in community culture, eat delicious food, and plant as many trees as they want.
In the past, we could plant 67,000 trees but lost 22,000 of them later to the wildfires of 2023 and 2024.
In response to the wildfires, the team studied geography with a military mindset, looking for the most defensible positions where firewood has difficulty thriving. We also upscaled our knowledge of soil restoration with the help of biochar, where we use highly flammable dry grass and wood, which retard soil conditioners, keeping moisture ground-locked.
Many Filipinos do not connect the environment and economy. Around the world, the environment is considered an advocacy and is widely accepted here. I believe that the environment is our economy and that our education has not successfully connected the dots so that people can see this.
Hectares of coral reefs can produce a thousand kilograms of seafood a year, and yet we throw waste in abandon: oil, human feces, plastics, trash. Everyone wants good-tasting, healthy, cheap seafood, but somehow, no one wants ‘to take care of the goose that lays the golden egg.’
People turn 450 kilos of seafood into a monoculture, fishponds, or resorts. Resorts immediately destroy the ecological function of mangroves, while fishponds will destroy mangroves systematically over time. The mangroves also block 90 percent of all storm surges.
People want safety, yet they destroy its provision.
Nobody enjoys floods, but we continue to cut down trees for construction but don’t plant new trees. Large forest trees that we cut down hold 2000 liters of water underground, which is 2 million liters per hectare.
Across years of doing educational tours and development work, I have concluded that ‘people do not take care of what they do not understand.’
Whatever is in the mind of people is what becomes of the world as we are its dominant species.
So, to start restoring, we must begin understanding how the environment nourishes us and how we are responsible for nurturing the environment.
Practically, we can begin to experience nature and interact with it so that we fall in love with it. We can start studying and learning how to be proper stewards. We can start acting on our passion and knowledge.
Remember: There is no wealth in a dead planet. But we can create paradise on Earth with the proper knowledge and action.
Restoring, after all, is about BRINGING BACK creation to its original glory….
‘Since the beginning, creation witnessed the majesty and presence of God.’ (Romans 1:20)
…. and affirming that we are not the owners of creation, but instead that we are stewards that are part of the environmental system – and not separate from it.
“Because all creatures are connected, each must be cherished with love and respect, for all of us as living creatures depend on one another” (Laudato Si: #42).