Relationships in sustaining community water

As an indigenous community, the Pulangiyēn respect the water source as it gives life and sustain local needs. Water is obtained from the source which is the regenerating forest. Having good relations with the environment for the water, the community ensures that the water returned to the environment is not polluting or contaminating downstream.

1. Landscape and ecosystem

The dominant ecosystem in Bendum is what is called pre-montane wet, tropical forest at higher elevations becoming mossy forest. It is pre-montane because it is a continuation of lowland forest but is not yet high on the mountains. Montane forest starts at around a thousand meters up. Our community is on the slopes of the Pantaron Mountain Range. Bendum is at 730 meters above sea level (masl) and the mountain nearby, Agkumabay, is 820masl. The high ridges of the Pantaron Range to the east are 1,100 to 1,400masl.

The trees here are a little shorter than in the lowland where the canopy reaches 35 to 40 meters and there are Philippine hardwood trees not found here such as tugas or molave (Vitex parviflora) and kamagong or mabolo (Diospyros blancoi).

The higher elevation forest above 900masl is a complex of trees that is called mossy forest. The indigenous see two levels of mossy forest, lagiit and saldab. At the top of the ridge, around 1,000 to 1,200masl, the forest canopy is around 10 meters high. There is some natural reselection of species for this elevation. The mossy forest plays a critical role in water generation by raking the clouds and adds 10% to the annual rainfall – as what the scientific estimates show. This is a significant increase in the infiltration and slow movement of the ground water that prevents many rivers drying up during the dry season.

2. Local water cycle

To explain the water cycle, the drawing illustrates the location of Sitio Bendum and the water source nearby. In the image, the community is shown living in the upland area, and flooding is not experienced because the streams have a significant slope. There is a good source of water through one of the six streams of the Kiasu River. Some of these were cut off from the natural flow when logging roads were built, but there is usually good drainage.

Datu Menaling, the local leader, chose to settle in this area as there is sustainable access to water and because the land is good for traditional agriculture and there are many non-timber forest resources. The community chose to live along the gentle sloping area and not at the bottom of the slope, as can be seen in the drawing. All of this expresses sound community-environment relations.

3. Land use history

In the 1970s and ‘80s, logging companies cut all the forest in the pre-montane area and many of the workers were left. They cleared the remnant forest to grow rice and maize. Slowly the indigenous and the migrants worked together to keep certain areas for clean water.

In the last 20 years, the community, and especially the APC school, organized planting programs for the land above the water system to improve water infiltration. This is now why the community has clean water all year round. Kiasu, where the springs start, flow in very gentle sloping areas and the water is sustained throughout the year.

Because of its mountain slopes, Bendum does not suffer from flooding, though the Pangamu River is a flash-flood system because of its steep catchment and weathered rock bed that sometimes overflows. No one lives along this river or at the bottom of steep sloping lands.

The forest cover on the slopes around Bendum is invaluable in terms of reducing the fast flow, the debris flow, and the soil erosion. The forest cover can contain a massive amount of water. If people continued to burn up the slope, the rains would have leached out the nutrients in the soil and erode the soil itself.

In the larger picture of the valley, there are three lake bottoms: Zamboanguita, Cabanglasan, and San Fernando. The Pulangi flows through deep canyons that are cut through the deposition of the lake bottom thousands of years ago (see the Namnam banks at Barangay Saint Peter). Only when the Pulangi flows out onto the central area of Bukidnon at Valencia does flooding over the banks occur and people are at risk.

4. Spring box

The youth understand the responsibility to care and keep the water clean from the spring downstream. They also understand the critical role of the land above the spring, the water catchment area that provides the water that seeps down to the water table (impermeable clay or rock) and then flows out as a spring. This area is now maintained as regenerating forest, which is the source of the water.

Panalawahig is the ritual each year when the life of the river is celebrated and the life it shares with the community.

5. Distribution

Traditionally, water is taken from the salubsub (spring) and distributed to lower areas near the houses by using saluyong (split bamboo) so that the water is clean and good to drink. However, this can be easily contaminated by animals, like the flick of a buffalo tail. The cleanest water comes out of the soil as a spring where the soil acts as filter. All the bacteria and everything else is filtered out of the water and this is what naturally pure spring water is for the community and the common good. Soil is only “dirty” when it is mixed with the water and the area becomes muddy and the water contaminated.

Today, a spring box is used to cap the water source, the spring, and the used pipes put underground to bring the water by gravity to the village. This keeps the water clean during tinggulabung, the dry season, and lundung, the rainy season, and is distributed as level 2-3 in the community.

During the last El Niño the community had a sustained water source. Thus, the community ensures that the area around the tub or tap is kept clean as well as the containers used to collect the water. Motorbikes and chemical spray tanks are not washed in the drainage area around the community tubs.

6. Drainage and biopore

It is a must in the commitment to maintain good drainage to regularly clean the drainage in the homes and open water sources. No plastics are to be thrown into the drainage beside the tubs. There are drains that flow into the biopore allowing the water to go back to the soil and be filtered before re-entering the water table and streams. There are still difficulties in coordinating with short-term job order work where brushed vegetation is left in the graded drainage channels along the road. When the heavy rains collect all the cut material, the drains are blocked, and the water flows out on the road and erode the gullies.

Community activity in managing this forest is of great importance, especially in ensuring that poles or trees are not cut. The youth in the school do a lot to care for the trees and the community at times organizes to do repairs and cleaning. It is not a program of plant any tree. Indigenous trees need to be planted and that form a community and integrate with the soil-water-biodiversity nexus needed in this part of the country. This is very important, and it should be followed downstream over time. This needs further development in the discussion with local government and others so that the interest goes beyond simply pine trees, rubber, coffee, and the economic development of the area as a short-term resource. The long-term sustainability of community life and wellbeing must be considered.

7. Community water management and maintenance

Village water management is crucial. Government has slowly learned through the sad experience of losing major infrastructure that the canals are as important as the road itself. Over 70% of erosion in the uplands occurs through the road network that logging formed, and the ploughed fields now drain if there is no vegetation buffer and canal. Erosion must be reduced wherever possible and infiltration increased.

As a community, it is agreed that the water source and water system are maintained clean and sustainable by:

1. Keeping the animals away from the water source
2. Agreeing there is no farming and spraying glyphosate near the water source or near the tubs for water distribution in community
3. No gathering of round logs near and above the water source
4. Turning off the taps when it is not used to allow adequate pressure in the pipes to reach all the people
5. Building an apron around the community tubs to consolidate the water into the drain and biopore and prevent the area becoming muddy and contaminating the water, and
6. Keeping the drains clean by removing plastic and vegetation.

What one little village is doing is creating an immense service downstream but is wasted because it is mixed with dirty water. This becomes an example of how to clean up the catchment area and keep the water flowing. It does not matter how much infrastructure can be afforded to build with cement and how much chemical filtering of the water is done. It is much better to invest in the landscape and in people.

8. Further options

To our local government, it is proposed that they pay the indigenous communities, long-term wise on a sustainable level and not simply project-based, to be the forest guardians. A reasonable report format needs to be worked out by which the locals are the Bantay Gubat and assist in the regeneration of forest lands with the proper species and contribute a collection of pillar species for reforestation down the road. The protection of the water source and critical forest line of the Ancestral Domain is key in sustaining the water catchment of over a thousand hectares of forest and protecting its biodiversity. This could be done in every sitio of the east and west slopes of the Pulangi and sustain the coming generations and our society in care for our common home.