Born On A Cusp

Worrisome news from Manila: The Banaue Rice Terraces — a 2,000-year-old engineering feat in Ifugao, northern Philippines, listed in UN’s World Heritage Sites — are in very serious peril.

The alarm bells are being sounded: The rice paddies are in ruins, drying up, and crumbling.

Not only do the young generations not know how to take care of the paddies, they hardly even have the interest to work the fields. The terraces are also drying up because of massive deforestation at the watersheds above the farms.

Officials are now desperately finding ways to marry the often-clashing aims of tourism and the conservation of cultural heritage.

(Photographs taken in Banaue by bornonacusp.)