In Camarines Sur, people power means more trees

PILI, Camarines Sur—With over five million trees planted since its launching last year, the provincial government of Camarines Sur, through its year-old El Verde Movement, celebrated on Saturday the anniversary of the first People Power Revolution with 500,000 new trees planted.

Gov. Luis Raymund Villafuerte said the tree-planting activity on the 26th anniversary of the Edsa uprising was the province’s way of commemorating “people power.”

“In the same way that the Filipino people gathered together in 1986 to restore democracy in our country, the people of Camarines Sur have banded together to work for the restoration of the ecological balance of our province and enhance the environment in a manner that is both sustainable and economically productive,” he said.

Villafuerte said through the El Verde Movement, a total of 5.3 million trees had been planted so far in the two cities and 35 towns in the province.

He added over 10,000 participating families in the province benefited from the program’s various livelihood components.

He said El Verde combined biodiversity conservation, economic development and climate adaptation strategy to help reverse the rate of deforestation in the province.

Villafuerte said the movement, which aims to plant 12 million trees this year, has scheduled another massive-scale tree- planting activity, involving a million mangroves, on Mar. 8, International Women’s Day, which bid for a Guinness World Record.

On Feb. 23, 2011, Camarines Sur simultaneously planted a total of 64,096 trees in one hour, a number that broke India’s previous record of 50,033 trees.

The record was officially declared by Seyda Subasi Gemici, adjudicator of the Guinness Book of World Records, on the day the record number of trees was planted.