They come with permits. They come with promises of progress, of clean energy, of connectivity. They come with tarpaulins to drape over the stumps so we do not have to look at what they have done.
But underneath the tarpaulin, the wound is still there: raw wood, severed roots, the ghost of a canopy that once cooled the skin of a poor man walking to work in the punishing heat of a Philippine summer.
Across this archipelago, we are witnessing a massacre of trees. And where trees fall, people bleed. Sometimes slowly; measured in heat deaths and failed harvests, in flooded homes and poisoned lungs. Sometimes suddenly, and the bodies are human.
In the name of sustainable development
Manila residents woke one morning recently to a spectacle of stumps. Along Quirino Avenue, where decades-old trees once arched over the sidewalk like a cathedral nave, chainsaw teams had gone to work.
