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ALBERTO “TOTO” MALVAR couldn’t help but marvel at the lush trees at Mt. Purro Nature Reserve in Antipolo’s Barangay Calawis. He is wearing the usual awe that’s come to define his 75-year-old face.
The Nature Reserve, named after the nearby Mt. Purro, occupies just 7,000 square meters of the 40-hectare property to which Malvar owns only the land rights. Sixteen casitas, sustainably made with mainly bamboo and anahaw, pepper the hilly terrain, as do the restaurant, a swimming pool, a pavilion, a couple of conference areas, and a charming outdoor playground that make up the eco-park. But it’s nature that’s really come to define the place.
Depending on the time of day, the towering trees blanket the landscape in various shades of green. Tendrils of birds of paradise blooms, gumamela flowers in various hues, and a host of other lovely flora, planted at the request of Malvar’s wife Baby, provide a nice touch of color.
But all this is just a preview of an even more luscious backyard.
A hiking trail leads to a larger area, where the bulk of Malvar’s reforestation efforts lie. Tall native trees stand with young fruit-bearing ones, and on occasion you’ll pass through patches of giant taro plants, bamboo stalks, and large anahaw trees that were imported from nearby Quezon. Sections of the trail are lined with herbs, picked to add to meals they serve their guests, and blotches of banana trees stand in recovery after harvest. Bird calls dot the calming sound of rustling of leaves over your head and the crunch of dead and dried ones underneath your feet.
It’s hard to believe all this was next to nothing nearly 30 years ago. “When we got here, there were only 10-20% trees,” Malvar said. “Kami na ‘yung nagtanim ng 80-90%.” He estimates there are now 51,000 trees in the 40-hectare property.
Of course, he didn’t do it on his own. With him were members of the Dumagat tribe and the larger community of Barangay Calawis that he’s come to take care of. In fact, in running the Nature Reserve, he leans on the Dumagats and the rest community. “The thrust is to help them,” Malvar said.
Since opening the eco-park, he’s also gotten guests to participate and contribute to his reforestation efforts. Tree planting is among the activities for which guests of the Nature Reserve can sign up. In 2022 alone, some 11,000 trees were planted in the property. His son, Ton, who manages the Nature Reserve, says the number could be closer to 15,000.
Alberto "Toto" Malvar
It sounds a little too good to be true, and a lot unbelievable. But the towering grown trees are hard to deny. The katutubos happily going about their work at the Nature Reserve are hard to deny. The pesky mosquito bites you get walking the trail, the pleasant chill that wakes you up in the morning, and the gentle sunlight streaming through the ceiling of leaves at this relatively young forest in the foothills of the Sierra Madre, are hard to deny.
Call it a fixation, an obsession, or a vocation, but for Malvar, it was just heeding his mother’s call.
In May 1960, Typhoon Lucille wreaked havoc in Manila when it brought with her torrential rains that triggered heavy flooding. Her strong gusts of wind toppled over trees, billboards, and telephone lines. No less than 230 people died.
“Magtanim ka sa Sierra Madre,” Malvar recalls his mother Eliza whispering in his ear. “Para wala nang mamamatay sa baha.”
Here’s how the Sierra Madre Mountain Range protects us from typhoons: the 540-kilomete wall of mountains running from north to south Luzon and spanning 1.4 million hectares of lands softens a typhoon’s winds, while its forests and watersheds, including the 26,126 hectares of the protected area of the Upper Marikina Watershed, absorb the rainfall.
As of 1999, the Sierra Madre comprised at least 40% of the remaining 22% forest cover of the Philippines, the Forest Foundation of the Philippines reports.
But between 2015-2022, an estimated 5,840 hectares is deforested in the Sierra Madre per year, said Arleigh J. Adorable, OIC-Assistant Secretary for Field Operations-Western Mindanao and Director of the Forest Management Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).
Metro Manila bears the brunt of the effects of Sierra Madre’s deforestation, with fatal floodings often accompanying typhoons. In 2021, the Philippine Center of Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) reported “the impacts of Tropical Storm “Sendong” (“Washi”) in December 2010 and Typhoon “Ondoy” (“Ketsana”) in September 2009 were linked to deforestation.”
Watersheds especially are an important factor because they are the well-defined landscape unit that collects and stores rainwater underground, according to Dr. Rex Cruz, professor emeritus at University of the Philippines Los Baños, who taught watershed management, land use planning, and climate change at the College of Forestry and Natural Resources.
“It‘s also referred to as a catchment basin, with a ream or a boundary called ridges — mountain ridges. So with the Upper Marikina Watershed, Sierra Madre yung ridge niya sa taas, and then it goes to the Marikina valley down to the Marikina River and then into Pasig River,” Cruz said.
But while watersheds store rainwater, Cruz says he “wouldn’t go that far to say it can prevent flooding.”
Watersheds have a capacity so when there’s too much rainfall, its “capacity is reached, no amount of rain can be absorbed by the soil.” The excess runoff will now have to flow overland and straight into the river, and may cause it to overflow, thereby causing things like flash floods to happen.
Still, Cruz says watersheds can help reduce the possibility of flooding in low-lying areas like Metro Manila, especially when the integrity of the watersheds and its forests is kept “kasi ‘pag sira ang watershed mo — when it cannot absorb rainwater because the soil is degraded — reduced na yung infiltration capacity.”
Cruz explains there are two ways watershed soil is destroyed. First is when it’s paved over and you build on it. “Another is when you clear vegetation — forest or otherwise.”
According to Cruz, vegetation cover protects soil from rainwater’s direct impact. “Pag tumama kasi ang ulan sa soil, it breaks the soil down,” he said.
“That’s why the forest is important, kasi perfect ang forest cover. Siya ang pinaka perfect covering for the soil because it’s very dense, it produces litter that protects the soil further before they decompose.”
The Philippines is hit by more tropical cyclones than anywhere in the world, according to the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA). Of an average of 20 tropical cyclones entering the Philippine area of responsibility a year, some eight or nine travel across the Philippines, bringing with them potential death and destruction.
Because climate change causes stronger and deadlier typhoons, rehabilitating watersheds and conserving remaining forests have never been as urgent as it is today.
“Isa sa mahalagang service or function ng watershed is water, or the water supply. [In terms of water]. ‘Pag sinabing climate change, what is actually happening is nagbabago ang rainfall patterns, nagbabago ang rainfall distribution, ang intensity, and so on,” said Dr. Rex Cruz, professor emeritus at University of the Philippines Los Baños.
When the amount of rainfall increases, it isn’t just the amount of water in the watershed that also increases. “Pati na rin ang risk of flooding, risk of landslide, and risk ng soil erosion — these will also increase. These processes depend on the rainfall in the area so it will also of course impact agriculture production in the watershed. It will have an impact on the health of the people in the watershed and so on.”
Conversely, the impact could also be felt by extreme weather events in the other direction. “Kung mababawasan ang ulan mo, mababawasan din ang tubig mo sa watershed,” Cruz said.
Watersheds are especially crucial for the country during the dry season. “We want the watershed to capture all the rain para unang una, we will have sufficient water especially tuwing dry season. Kailangan natin siya.”
He reminds that climate change is an aggravator. “It doesn’t altogether bring new problems. It just exacerbates existing problems.”
DEGRADED LAND — or land with reduced forest cover — is what Malvar discovered when he arrived at the Upper Marikina Watershed sometime in the early ‘90s. He had asked the DENR for a lease “for about 1,000 hectares” so he could plant some 500,000 trees and honor his mother’s wishes.
At that time, the Upper Marikina Watershed that covers Baras, Tanay, San Mateo, Rodriguez, and Antipolo in Rizal, wasn’t yet a protected landscape. Neither was the The Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act signed into law nor the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples established.
“You could say, wala pang organization,” Malvar’s son Ton said. “It really was just a passion project of my dad.”
Enlisting the help of the IPs, and “the people in the community led by the Dumagats,” Malvar and his group embarked on years-long reforestation work in the Upper Marikina Watershed. “I produced my own seedlings, pero sumunod lang ako sa DENR. At that time, they were promoting invasive trees, exotic trees,” Malvar said.
“Yung parang manager ko duon si Inok, si Rolando Domateo, who is now the chairman of all the Antipolo Dumagats. Siya yung namahala sa pagtatanim,” he added.
He estimates it took them about five to six years of hard reforestation work, which resulted in an official DENR count of 700,000 trees planted. Surprised at the higher tree count, Malvar looks back to what Ka Imo, a Dumagat elder, told him.
“Sabi niya, ‘Kailangan niyo lang magtanim sa itaas na lugar tapos Diyos na bahala. Darating ang hangin, darating yung ibon, sila na magkakalat ng mga tanim. During those times, hindi naman ako naniniwala kay Ka Imo. Paano mo gagawin ‘yan? Ngayon, naniniwala na ko.”
But his high spirits were quickly dashed when he saw his efforts were lost. “Pinuputol nila [yung puno]. Nakikita mo, sako-sakong uling.”
Ton even suspects the people who cut down the trees were people his father had hired for his reforestation effort. “Kasi pag hinire niya para magtanim, ‘pag makitang may kalbo, he will have to hire again,” he said.
Heartbroken, the elder Malvar filed charges agains he loggers, but he quickly realized this wasn’t going to solve the problem of deforestation in the area. “Nakita ko, kung pamilya ng pinakulong ko, walang kinakain. ‘Yung pinakulong ko wala ring kinakain. Sabi ko, ang solution talaga dito, trabaho. If you want to take care of the forest, you have to take care of the people,” he said. It was an a-ha moment for Malvar.
He didn’t really intend to buy land rights in Barangay Calawis. “What happened was, nagpuputol sila ng puno. Nilapitan ko, nakiusap, ‘Huwag n’yo naman putulin yang puno.’ They weren’t necessarily Dumagats — mga nakatira lang doon. Nakiusap ako sa kanila. Eh wala daw silang kakainin. So sabi ko, ‘Kung bibilhin ko yan, hindi niyo na puputulin?’ Hindi na daw. Pero kung talagang gutom, wala kang magagawa eh.”
He started with one hectare, and then two, just “buying the rights of the lands to protect the trees, yung mga nakatanim. Kung, naputol na nila, magtatanim na ulit ako.”
In the beginning, people had a hard time believing he only wanted to plant trees. “Actually, ang pinaka-bad connotation about them, mga land grabber,” Mark Roslin, a Dumagat who works at the Nature Reserve, told GMA News Online. “Ganun naman dati ang connotation dito. ‘Pag may pumasok na mayayaman, ‘Bibilhin nila lupa n’yo. Land grabber ‘yan. Kunwari kakaibiganin.’”
“Hindi nila maintindihan,” Malvar said. “Sabi nila, meron bang taong tumutulong nang walang kapalit? Hindi lang mga Dumagat ‘yung natakot, pati ‘yung ibang immigrants, ‘yung mga dayo ng Calawis.”
But the supposed land grabber turned out to be an odd man who only wanted to plant trees. As he lived among them, Malvar also fixed the water system in the area, introduced his doctor son TJ to do medical missions for the community, all while not building a door nor a fence to his abode. He slowly earned their trust.
Soon, he set up a makeshift clinic with a botika to boot so the community’s access to medical help could be a little bit more permanent. The Malvars also put up a scholarship to help the education of the Dumagats. And his slow buying of land rights to small plots of land eventually resulted in Mt. Purro Nature Reserve.
According to Ton, the Nature Reserve provides an alternative livelihood for them. His mom taught the kitchen staff how to cook and market, others how to housekeep. The locals make for the best guides as they know the lay of the land. “So instead of them cutting trees or doing kaingin farming, tourism na lang.”
Mt. Purro Nature Reserve stands inside Antipolo’s Barangay Calawis, where about 116 of Antipolo’s 760 Dumagat families reside. They are proud to say 100% of their employees are from the barangay itself, with some 20% of them from the Dumagat tribe.
But according to Mark, who was also a scholar of the Malvars, they didn’t just provide employment opportunities for Dumagats like him.
“Dati, kinakahiya ko [ang paggiging Dumagat]. Ayaw ko talaga. Sabihin na natin, nakakahiya. Na-bully din kasi ako sa pagiging Dumagat. Pero nung nag-work ako dito sa Nature Reserve, parang nabago ‘yung vision ko kasi tinutulungan nila ang mga Dumagat,” he said.
In 2022, he fully embraced being a Dumagat. “Registered na ‘ko. Leader na rin ako ngayon ng mga Dumagat,” Mark said proudly.
He admits “nature was not really my passion. Pero once nakausap ko si Sir Toto, nabago [vision ko] sa buhay. You need to love nature.”
It was exactly the gospel Malvar was trying to preach. “Siyempre kasama ang climate change,” he considers, when asked if the climate crisis is among his raison d’etre. “But the end all of our efforts is to restore the beauty of the forest.”
Forests play a huge role in mitigating the climate crisis and in adapting to it. They are carbon sinks, meaning forests absorb and store CO2 from the atmosphere, a critical must-do to keep Planet Earth from warming beyond livability. The Paris Agreement of 2015 set a 1.5C warming limit. In its 6th synthesis report released in March, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said Planet Earth has already warmed 1.1C.
In a 2021 report, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) said each year since 2000, “forests are estimated to have removed an average of 2 billion metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere.”
According to a 2022 report from the Food and Agriculture division (FAO) of the United Nations, the world’s forests spanning some four billion hectares contain 662 billion tonnes of carbon, “more than half of all the carbon found in soil and vegetation.”
The young forest in the 40-hectare area in Barangay Calawis can “absorb at least 600,000 kg of carbon a year,” Ton said, explaining they did an informal calculation when they were at a 40,000-tree count. They are going with the conservative estimate of 168,000 kg a year “because the trees were only 10-20 years old.”
It’s one of the challenges that the Malvars are facing. “Kami lang yung nag-calculate, using tools we gathered online. We don’t have any 3rd party assessor for this just yet and it is in fact our wish to have a guide from the government on how to review ecotourism sites or other projects. To guide projects [like ours] on what should be done in order to be nature-positive.”
But their supposed modest contribution to fighting climate change fits perfectly in the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) definition of a nature-based solution (NbS).
According to the IUCN, NbS are “actions that protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural and modified ecosystems that address societal challenges effectively and adaptively, while simultaneously benefitting people and nature.”
“NbS must be implemented with full consent of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in a way that respects their cultural and ecological rights,” it continued.
In restoring a degraded patch of land at the protected area, Malvar has leaned on the Dumagats and the bigger community of Barangay Calawis. He continues to do so in running the Nature Reserve, providing alternative livelihood to them.
Last year, the Malvars went beyond the 40-hectare area and started distributing seedling to Dumagats in other Baragays in Antipolo. “We distributed 25,000 seedlings to seven communities for backyard farming,” Ton said of the new strategy they were trying out. “We gave them to the people living in the forest, focused on katutubos. Itanim nila kung saan sila nakatira para mas madali i-maintain. Syempre, aalagaan nila yan kasi nasa bahay nila,” Ton said.
They gave seedlings of fruit-bearing trees with the idea that the katutubos eventually sell the fruits for livelihood and income. “Guyabano, calamansi, duhat, santol, dalandan, coffee. They can eat it, they can make money from it. These are considered native, conducive to Philippine soil,” Ton said.
According to Modesto Sta. Ana, a 72-year-old Dumagat Chieftain in Barangay San Jose who was able to receive some 20 seedlings of coffee, said farming is really a way of life for them. “Pinagmulatan naming mga katutubo, mga Dumagat, ang magtanim. ‘Pag hindi kami magtatanim, wala kaming kakainin,” he said.
Often bringing their harvest down to the city center of Antipolo to sell, Sta. Ana said the local government of Antipolo also recently gave the katutubo a space in the plaza to sell their harvest. “Walang market noon, basta tingi-tingi. Ngayon, binigyan kami ni Mayor ng space para makapagtinda ang tribo sa Antipolo, sa may plaza. Ginagamit po namin, relyebo po kami, palit-palit,” he said.
He’s looking forward to being able to sell some of the coffee beans from the seedlings he received in five years’ time. “‘Pag namunga siya, hindi na [ako] bibili ng kape. Meron nang ha-harvest-in. Kailangan ma-harvest ‘yun. Kailangan alagaan pati [para] makarami,” he said.
Still, it’s been repeatedly said that we cannot plant our way out of the climate crisis. While restoring forests can help sequester carbon from the atmosphere, the IUCN says NbS is still not a substitute for the more difficult job of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
IN DECEMBER 2022, Malvar gathered some 45 members of IPs from Rizal, Bulacan, and Quezon along with representatives from the Antipolo local government, officials from the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, and Teddy Baguiat, who is President of the Global Consortium for Indigenous Peoples’ and Community Conserved Areas and Territories to plan out Toto Malvar’s new reforestation project.
On Arbor Day in June 2023, he plans to reforest 100 hectares in Balon, which is in the same area of Mt. Purro, in Barangay Calawis in Antipolo. “We want to plant 75,000 trees there,” Malvar said with a twinkle in his voice. He reasoned they cannot plant in the 40-hectare property anymore. “Punong puno na siya,” he said. “Siguro 2,000 trees na lang ang pwede itanim.”
Besides, he wants to correct a few mistakes from his first reforestation project at the Upper Marikina Watershed. “Marami akong mali nung una like ‘yung choice of plant, kasi 2002 lang nagsalita ang DENR. Before that, ang dami kong natamin na mahogany kasi yun din ang sinabi ng DENR. Pero mali pala. So we have to replace those. But we have to get the permission of DENR.”
Still, his reforestation efforts can and have helped the country recover its total forest cover. The Forest Management Bureau’s Adorable said, “Though there are decreases in forest cover from 2010, 2020, there are still significant conversions from other land cover to forests.”
“The total forest cover in the country has a net increase of 386,652 heaters or 5.65% from 6,839,832 hectares in 2010 to 7,226,392 hectares in 2020,” he said.
“The government and its partners were able to plant 2,220,546 hectares of land in the country with a total of 1,858,090,357 seedings from 2011 to 2022,” he added.
From 2011 to 2021, Adorable said 4,752 National Greening Programing (NGP) and Enhanced National Greening Program (ENGP) sites were established in the Sierra Madre alone, totaling 108,554.54 hectares in land area.
In his new initiative, Malvar will still involve the IPs, but this time, he also plans to call on the Department of the interior and Local Government “para the barangay will become active.” He’s set his eyes on the UP Institute of Biology as well “to provide the science” and he’s also considering involving the Department of Education “para yung kabataan kasama rin.”
“Can you imagine there are more than 10 schools in the barangay, in the Antipolo protected area but the children don't even know that they're inside a protected area. Dapat may special project, na andun ka sa loob ng watershed,” Malvar gushed with ideas.
But before that, he wants to empower the Dumagats to really own their heritage. He wants them to realize the absolute grace and power of the Sierra Madre, and for them to grasp the fact that is their ancestral land and ultimately for them to treasure it.
