On 28 September 2006, the Philippines was hit by a category 4 storm called bagyong Milenyo (which means ‘typhoon Millennium’ in the Tagalog language). While typhoons are not normally memorable in a country that plays host to about 20 of them each year, Milenyo was exceptional and people will remember it for decades. The eye of typhoon Millennium – which was given the international codename of Xangsane – approaching the Philippines The town of Los Baños, in the province of Laguna, 60 kilometres southeast of Manila, was in the direct path of this mid-season fiend. With sustained winds of 160 kph, gusting up to 240 kph, and rains pounding in every direction, Milenyo lashed out at the small town, triggering floods and landslides and knocking down hundreds of trees and electrical posts. In the space of a few hours, 190 people were killed. The death toll was concentrated in a fairly small area. About 60 of the deaths occurred in the Laguna area, with 20 in Los Baños alone. That’s one tenth of the entire country’s death toll. One community living on Mount Makiling, the quiet volcano that looms over the town, lost 14 members to the torrent of rocks and mud. Thousands of houses were also destroyed, mainly by floods. Los Baños is home to the Philippine national genebank, the National Plant Genetic Resources Laboratory (NPGRL). Housed at the Institute of Plant Breeding (IPB), the NPGRL is responsible for conserving the genetic diversity of most Philippine crops. (The main exception is rice, for the Philippine Rice Research Institute holds the country’s rice germplasm collection.) NPGRL’s collection was made up of more than 45,000 ‘accessions’ – which means, essentially, different varieties – from 500 different species of cereals, legumes, vegetables and other crops. This made the genebank a veritable treasure chest of different kinds of maize, mungbean, winged bean, tomato, okra and aubergine, not to mention yam, soybean, sorghum, cowpea and bottle gourd. Shelves of seeds at NPGRL The conservation system was set up to keep the genetic diversity of all these different crop varieties safe and viable for future use in plant breeding. Over half (more than 30,000 accessions) of the crop samples were kept in cold storage as seeds, frozen in time, while the rest were planted outdoors in semi-natural field conditions. The system’s end was laudable and important – but the means proved to be fatally flawed. In a single Thursday afternoon, the Philippine genebank was destroyed by typhoon Milenyo. How did this happen? A creek running through the grounds separating NGPRL from the IPB parking lot overflowed, sending powerful whirpools of mud into the buildings. The creek between NPGRL and the IPB parking lot Inside the genebank, the mudflow was over a metre high, leaving an oily black trace on the walls. Cesar Redera, NPGRL's genebank curator, standing next to the flood line left by the mud The surge was so strong that several of the ‘convirons’ — that is, giant steel vaults, where the seeds were held in cold storage — were lifted off the floor and hit the ceiling. The four convirons in the back The convirons were lifted all the way to the ceiling The inside of a conviron, after the mud was cleared out The mud and the flooding did enormous damage. The field collections were buried And with no electricity, because all the power lines were down, the frozen seeds were immediately in danger. It was total chaos. One member of staff was trapped inside during the whole typhoon. As soon as it ended, everyone else returned in a desperate race against time to sort through the material and salvage what they could. Genebank supplies were ruined It took a week to clear the mud out of the facilities The conservation system had been hit in its Achilles’ heel. In no time at all, seeds started to germinate from the heat and the moisture. Sorghum seeds, packed in foil for 'safe conservation', germinating and going mouldy The scientists had no option but send whatever seeds were still viable over to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) down the road. Undamaged seed packs were cleaned off with water and bleach, wiped dry and then rushed to IRRI IRRI’s million-dollar rice genebank was untouched by the storm. And the Institute was more than glad to help the NPGRL, especially as such actions make for good publicity. (The IRRI-saves-Philippine-genebank press release was making the rounds in Los Baños, even before the NPGRL floors were dry.) Some from the national system were concerned about what would happen to the materials sent to IRRI. Would IRRI get ownership of the Philippines’ seed collection? Who would be in control? Was there really no other choice? Their sensitivity had its roots in decades of controversy – at times, acrimony — surrounding IRRI’s presence in the Philippines. As an international research institute, set up in 1960 by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, IRRI has long enjoyed special immunities under Philippine law. It is not subject to civil or administrative controls, leaving it free to interpret the country’s labour and environmental laws as it wishes. Given that IRRI supports genetic engineering and the patenting of life forms, people were worried about what would happen to the national seed collection once it was handed over to the rich Institute for safe keeping. Their concerns were partly assuaged when IRRI agreed to a ‘black box’ arrangement for the seeds. Yes, the 'black box' can be pink and green trays ‘Black box’ means that the NPGRL material would be held in IRRI’s genebank, but the seeds would not fall under IRRI’s jurisdiction. Physically it would be there, but legally the Institute could claim no authority or rights over the material. To be absolutely sure, one of the main organisers of the rescue operation said that she would not share with IRRI the list of what the seed packets – anonymously labelled ‘NPGRL 8605′ and so on – actually contained. No data was shared with IRRI After a frantic week of rescue operations, 70% of the Philippine’s genebank collection was declared lost, with the overall damage tallied at a whopping 20 million pesos — almost half a million US dollars. The genebank had no insurance cover or contingency fund to help it recover. In times of crisis like this, the system is fully dependent on hand-outs. * * * So what can be learnt from this disaster? Many people are critical of the entire genebank system as a strategy for saving seeds, saying that the seeds’ real place was in the farmers’ fields. Milenyo proved their point. But there is another lesson too, because much of the damage to the genebank could have been averted. The reason why the damage was so bad was because of reductionist scientific thinking — the kind that brought us the Green Revolution and now genetically modified crops. The creek that overflowed used to be lined with thick plantings of the sturdy ‘Kiling’ bamboo, a variety indigenous to Mount Makiling, the towering volcano just kilometres away. One of the few remaining clumps of Kiling bamboo hugging the creek A few years ago, one of the administrators of IPB decided that the bamboo should be cut down so that people could see the buildings better, including NPGRL across the parking lot. Anti-ecological thinking at its best! If the bamboo had been left intact, the banks of the creek would have retained the floods, everyone commented bitterly after the typhoon. As it was, the naked creek could not hold the torrents, dead pigs and all that roared down from Mount Makiling, Before the cleanup... ...and after The result? A national crop collection lost. A very heavy price to pay for very stupid thinking. Sources and further reading: The story told in this essay is based on interviews with staff at NPGRL and IRRI on 6 and 13 October 2006. All but two of the photos were taken during those visits. Marlon Ramos Christine Avendaño, “Typhoon death toll soars”, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 30 September 2006. International Rice Research Institute, “Typhoon blasts rice research institute”, IRRI Press Release, Los Baños, 2 October 2006. “Priceless plant research materials destroyed by ‘Milenyo’”, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Manila, 9 October 2006. “Agri crops gene bank destroyed by typhoon Milenyo”, Malaya, 20 October 2006. “Rescuing banana germplasm”, INIBAP, no date, reports on a grant from the Crop Diversity Trust “to rehabilitate and secure germplasm” and “to repair damage and restore operations” of NPGRL’s field collections. “The action was prompted by the fact that the collection of banana, as well as those of sweet potato, taro, Vigna and pigeon pea held at IPB-NPGRL, are considered of global significance.” Bernice P. Varona, “CUs recover from Milenyo”, University of the Philippines Newsletter, October 2006. International Rice Research Institute, “IRRI genebank helps protect Philippine crops”, Sandiwa, Los Baños, November 2006, p. 3. (PDF file)