Development master plan eyed for Ifugao Rice Terraces

BAGUIO CITY – Renowned architect and urban planner Felino Palafox Jr. has pitched a bold, reengineered urban plan to preserve the Ifugao Rice Terraces via the Comprehensive Urban, Environmental, Infrastructure, and Economic Development Master Plan for Banaue and the Rice Terraces Municipalities of Ifugao.

Once believed to be 2,000-years old, the rice terraces in the Ifugao towns of Kiangan, Hungduan, Mayoyao and capital Banaue were collectively inscribed as World Heritage Sites in 1995 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

These living monuments still grow indigenous heirloom rice like tinowan on every terrace step that serves as rice paddies or “payao.”

But these world wonders were also placed on UNESCO’s endangered list because of massive erosions and decades of disrepair that plague some of the terraces.

A Malacañang social media post said that Palafox’s plans for the rice terraces was discussed at a Thursday meeting (August 13) at the Palace with President Ferdinan d R. Marcos Jr.

According to a copy of Palafox’s pitch outline which the Inquirer acquired on Friday (August 14), the plan is rooted on the assumption that “the terraces are deteriorating because the people maintaining them can no longer sustain their livelihoods.”

The outline cites the monthly income of an Ifugao terrace farmer which his firm, Palafox Associates, pegs at “just P50,000annually (P4,200 per month), which is insufficient to sustain livelihoods (due to what was described as) unviable farming and abandoned terraces.”

“We cannot wait,” the proposal says because “25 to 35 percent” of the terraces are damaged and “up to one-third of the rice terraces have already been abandoned or irreversibly damaged.”

The group also asserted that Ifugao is dealing with “an ongoing population decline and farmers leaving the region due to low income levels, threatening the ancestral workforce required to maintain the landscape.”

The Palafox pitch also says “increasingly severe climate change impacts and devastating typhoons (have resulted in) massive structural damage to the ancient stone and clay terrace walls.

Palafox’ outline says P668 million is the “ongoing funding required to sustain regular farming and terrace maintenance, and P552 million needs to be raised as “direct assistance to farming families to preserve their traditional livelihoods,” under the current operational arrangements.

The status quo will require P148 million in “capital injection for immediate restoration of damaged terrace walls,” strictly as “one time repair.”

Palafox said the government needs a paradigm shift in resolving these Ifugao problems by undertaking a master plan that addresses not just repairs, but the terraces’ ties to its economy, its people and the engineering required for its preservation.

The Inquirer could not independently confirm the data outlined in Palafox’s proposal as of posting time.

But collapsed terraces have been in the spotlight since 2012, drawing residents to form the Save the Rice Terraces Movement in order to advocate for policies governing terraces protection, document their rich history, and launch fund drives to finance a collective effort to gradually undertake repairs.

But the terraces also thrive today because modern Ifugao generations have maintained a rice ritual culture.

Multiple scholars and researches point out that rituals have long controlled the labor requirements from the communities, dictate to the community when planting and harvesting takes place and what needs to be done to preserve the intricate water management system developed by Ifugao ancestors who carved out the terraces.

Ifugao utilized indigenous engineering techniques that kept the terraces irrigated by water discharged from a forest lot at the mountain top called “muyong.”

An archaeological project led by US-based Dr Stephen Acabado had found evidence that the terraces may have been carved out about 400 years ago, possibly to cope with the pressure of invasion as the Spanish colonial government began to push towards the Cordillera region.

Last year, the Cordillera Regional Development Council discussed proposals to form a Cordillera Rice Terraces Commission to oversee the preservation of the Ifugao terraces which the Philippines has committed to sustain as part of its World Heritage status, said Jose Dado, chief of the policy, formulation and planning division of the Department of Economy, Planning and Development in the Cordillera.

Terrace conservation used to governed by the Ifugao Terraces Commission created by the late President Fidel V. Ramos but it was abolished by then-President Joseph Estrada. /gsg