Rice Terraces in Danger Essay

With unvarnished hands and primitive tools, traditional farmers in the highlands of the Phippines go for been shaping the Banaue or Ifugao sieve terraces into a grandeur feat that attracts the watchfulness of worldwide visitors. The sieve terraces with the cluster sites be dated more than 2,000 years old. These prominent creations, however, are now in riskiness of crumbling down into oblivion. The Area in danger These terraces are situated in the push-down stack region of the northern part of the Philippines or so 340 kilometers away from Manila.From here, the high place could be reached virtually 8 to 9 hours by motor ride. These terraces learn been hand-fashi wizd like gravid stairs that if laid straight from one point to an another(prenominal) are opened of encircling half the earths diameter. For thousands of years, this magnificent benignant feat has intruded human imagination boosting human creativeness and ingenuity. For all the good attributes rendered to t his attribute, the United Nations Educational scientific Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has listed the site as a world inheritance name it as the Eight Wonder of the World. In 1973, the Philippine government gave these heritage properties a special recognition as a national landmark of being a valuable treasure. In 1995, the UNESCO inscribed the Banaue strain Terraces and the cluster sites in the World hereditary pattern List. In 1994, by virtue of the presidential Executive Order 158, it created the Ifugao sieve UNESCO Terraces flush that gives advisory matters to the Philippine President regarding factors affect them. Diverse Life Forms For thousands of years, the terrace has been suffice as office for diverse aliveness forms including aquatic animals, fishes, etc., thriving in the water-filled, pollution-free paddies. The terrace is as well as a home for some native red rice varieties and other endemic rices, which are also considered endangered. In recent years, howev er, keen observers possess noted some negative changes natural event within and outside the terraces. Some change factors that micturate been diverting the terraces to these negative changes entangle environmental degradation and neglect, the rampant character of synthetic pesticides, degrading rice yield, fast-flying rate of urbanization, growing poverty among terrace farmers, and the fermentation of the once solid indigenous folk nuances.Some parts of the heritage property, which were once verdantly green and fertile have now turned into partly eroded brownish, drying grasslands. In 1950, a data typography from Abano (2007) shows that farmers cultivated some 15,000 hectares (about 37,000 acres) of this highland terrace. Today, that frame of reference has dwindled to merely 5,000 hectares (about 12,000 acres) maintained by some 100,000 tribal farmers. UNESCO gave warnings in 2001 the possibility of delisting the Banaue Rice Terraces from the World Heritage List.This is be cause little efforts have been exerted in saving the heritage property from widening irreversible damage. From a distance, simple(a) terraced landscapes have already shown wears while other similar areas slowly UNESCO disappear payable to lack of care. Younger populations from the darkly terraced areas have instead preferred to migrate to the cities where the lights are brighter with more income opportunities to choose from. This transmigration has resulted to erosion, not hardly of the physical terraces they till, but also of the culture and traditions they have been preserving for thousands of years.