House bill to require students to plant trees yearly

In a bid to address the problem of deforestation, a pending bill in the House of Representatives seeks to require students to plant trees yearly.

House Bill 5297 seeks to produce 214 million trees planted by 2.4 million college students, six million high school students and 13 million elementary students a year.

"Southeast Asia has diverse flora and fauna than Europe, but it is in danger of losing its biodiversity" according to Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez in his article.

He added that by 2010, Asia could have three-fourths less forest cover and 42 percent less biodiversity at the current rate of logging, forest fires and problematic land use.

Rodriguez pointed out that annually, Southeast Asia loses one percent of its forest cover, a figure four times higher than the world average.

"The region's continued biodiversity loss is due to the extensive deforestation and habitat loss, widespread conversion of land for agriculture, and urban and industrial development, and the continuing rapid population growth,"

"Such loss of biodiversity is making the climate change more complicated which poses a threat to the planet's marine and plant life,"

In my opinion it is a good way in reforestation, to ask students to plant trees all over the country to avoid those tragedy happens in some places here in the Philippines due to deforestation. We already know that every year there are a lot of storms coming to Philippines and if we start planting trees we don't have anything to worry when storms are coming to the country. And there will never be floods in Metro Manila that usually occur when there's a storm and parents won't be worried with their children going to school.