(First in a series)

BAGUIO CITY?In less than three months, Baguio will celebrate its 100 years as a chartered city, swamped by the corrosive elements of urban decay and the ravages of environmental degradation.

In the countdown to the Sept. 1 festivities, elders are engrossed in planning the revival of the grandeur of Baguio beyond 2009, a city once described as the Philippine ?paradise city of the pines.?

Two weeks ago, I revisited Baguio for four days after 10 years to find out for myself what is left of its heritage, over which there has been so much lamentation that it has become a ?paradise lost.?

As the lamentation goes, lowland tourists don?t find Baguio as cold as it used to be; its downtown streets (especially Session Road) are congested with vehicle and human traffic as bad as in Manila; its heritage buildings, relics of the city?s American colonial rule, have been torn down; its pine tree cover is less dense than it was some decades ago; its streets overflow with mounds of garbage in plastic bags uncollected for weeks; and in recent years, its face has been altered by the invasion of Korean business establishments (restaurants, shops, offices) and the ubiquitous presence of Korean nationals in the streets, places of entertainment, parks and in leased dwellings or buildings.

The lost heritage of Baguio is not to be found in these manifestations of urban development and squalor. It is to be found in the old public buildings that proclaim the city?s glorious past.

There are still many things going for Baguio, aside from the old colonial relics and its healthful climate. It is a natural garden city and the only city in the Philippines planned as a natural park by American architect Daniel Burnham, whose legacy is the Burnham Park at its heart, defining its architectural design.

The heritage of Baguio is preserved in such edifices and public monuments as what remains at Camp John Hay, Camp Allen, Teacher?s Camp, the Baguio Central School, the new City Hall standing on the site of the old City Hall, one of the first colonial buildings built by the American governor generals when they proclaimed Baguio the summer capital of the Philippines.

The usual tourist spots remain?the Mines View Park, Mirador Hill and the Dominican Hill. But to appreciate the cultural legacy of Baguio to the nation, one has to go deeper into the history of these relics that deserve more than cursory inspection.

Built out of wilderness

Baguio was the first city in the Philippines to be built from a wilderness and only six years after it was granted a charter, it already held a carnival and industrial fair.

According to the newspaper Baguio Midland Courier, Baguio is different from any other city in the Philippines.

It is the administrative and political center of the Cordillera Administrative Region, a trade gateway, a university town that is the center of higher education in northern Luzon, and the center of the mining industry in the area.

Baguio is a special economic zone and the base of nine foreign firms, including Texas Instruments Philippines Inc., a leading producer of semi-industrial parts and accessories in the world market.

In planning for the Baguio centenary, one of the objectives of the Baguio Centennial Commission is to draw a draft of the revival of Baguio after 2009.

In March, the commission asked Grade 4 pupils of Elpidio Quirino Elementary School in Barangay Irisan to draw what they like and dislike about Baguio.

Commissioner Joseph Ablanza, retired city architect, used this method so he can gauge how the new generation envisions the city in the next 100 years.

Wrapping up the centennial conference at the University of the Philippines Baguio in March, American anthropologist Gerald Finin, an authority on Cordillera history at the East-West Center in Hawaii, said he sympathized with ?the lament of Old Baguio,? which was highlighted at UP in academic explorations about the city?s decay, its depleted water resources and its uncontrolled population boom.

Problems with success

Finin said that what scholars now faced in Baguio were ?problems associated with success,? and they might have to credit the city for turning into a bustling multinational and multiethnic metropolis in only 100 years.

Finin was impressed by the ?range of economic activity and the rich array of [global] skills and ideals [of an international community drawn to Baguio from 1900 to 2009,] which contributed to its vivacity.?

Ablanza said the children?s drawings provided a graphic sense of the changes they perceive are occurring in their environment.

Most of the children from each school drew blue skies and trees to indicate their preference for a healthy Baguio. ?I was inspired by the blue skies,? he said.

To express his dislike, a pupil drew images of Camp John Hay, which is the closest forested area to the school.

In the drawing, the pupil wrote: ?People cut trees in the area ? they want to build buildings, stores and restaurants, and much more so that they will have more money.?

Baguio dumps its trash in a commercial landfill in Capas, Tarlac, more than 100 kilometers away, to get rid of a daily waste output of 100 tons. The city spent P20 million in three months for garbage disposal.

Neighboring communities have refused to take Baguio?s trash, claiming that it pollutes watershed areas and drinking water sources.

Depleted forest cover

The warming of Baguio?s cold temperature has often been blamed on the depletion of its forest cover.

According to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), the Cordillera?s forest area may have shrunk by 36 percent in the last few years.

Only 665,796 hectares of the region?s 1.8 million hectares (ha) have remained. More than 950 ha have been lost from 2005 to 2008 alone, or an average of 318,08 ha a year.

If this trend is not arrested, the loss of watersheds would make doubly difficult enhancing the region as a carbon sink, according to Paquito Moreno, Environmental Management Bureau director for the region.

A ?carbon sink? is like a garbage bin that serves as receptacle for carbon dioxide, Moreno said.

Tree planting or reforestation remains to be the best measure to push the region as a ?carbon sink,? the DENR said.

The department?s data show that from 2000 to 2007, 1,284 ha of forests had been reforested, or a recovery rate of 5.42 ha a day, compared to the 381.08 ha lost yearly or 1.04 ha lost a day. (To be continued)