- Everything around you is alive.
We live in a world where the palette
is overwhelmingly gray on blue.
If you're lucky, you get a sporadic smudge of green.
Here you can see the world breathe.
Highways are replaced by streams, cars by canoes.
Your eyes think that you're surrounded by land,
but it's a trick.
Underneath the growth, more water,
a quiet resistance.
You follow one path today, and by tomorrow it's gone.
There is no place in the Philippines
that carries more mystery than the Agusan Marsh.
Some people see these wetlands merely as ecosystems
and important biodiverse areas.
Others see them as big bags of cash,
land to be turned into highly efficient farms,
but a few people see them as a home.
And this is their story.
The Agusan Marsh Wildlife Sanctuary stretches across
40,000 plus hectares of wetlands,
roughly the size of Manila.
It's one of the biggest in Southeast Asia
and one of the most vital in the Philippines.
A Ramsar Site, globally recognized but barely talked about.
It's all interconnected by lakes, rivers, marshes and ponds.
It acts like a giant sponge during typhoon season,
absorbing flood waters for the entire Agusan River Basin.
Without it, who knows what would happen
to neighbor towns like Butuan?
It's home to rare birds, floating villages,
and indigenous communities who've learned to live
with the rise and fall of the water.
But it's under threat.
Pollution and climate change are slowly choking it.
- Life cannot simply exist without the Agusan Marsh.
The marsh protects everything here.
When you talk of the Agusan Marsh,
you got to take into account the bigger picture
of the Agusan River Basin.
Technically, that's the third largest river system
in the Philippines, encompassing Regions XI and XIII—
that's Davao and Caraga.
What you have here in our town, your catch basin.
And come to think of it, everything revolves
around this catch basin.
They say that life begins here.
There can never ever be an Agusan del Sur
without the Agusan Marsh.
- What's that, Datu?
- Walking stick.
Datu Artemio was selected as one of the leaders
due to his Lumad lineage.
The Lumad are some of the first wave of people
to settle in the Philippines, specifically around Mindanao.
Their ancestral land is often highly sought-after,
making them one of the most vulnerable
ethnic groups in the country.
They are also one of the few groups that have held on
to their pre-colonial culture.
As in most areas in the Philippines,
where there is a strong indigenous ancestry,
most people with roles to play in the community also happen
to have official government positions.
Datu was previously an LGU official and now his son
is barangay captain.
They both lead the people in Caimpugan and its peatland,
one of the many parts of the Agusan Marsh Wildlife Sanctuary.
The relationship between indigenous religions
and the Catholic Church is complex,
marked by both historical tensions and reconciliation.
Indigenous religions, often rooted in animism
and oral traditions, are distinct from the church's
codified beliefs and practices.
Just like when we were colonized, one culture doesn't
usually completely erase the other,
parts of it are indigenized.
So you'll find people praying to the Catholic God
alongside other entities.
Where people live with the land, these are still
a common practice.
Most of the people here are Catholic,
but their own Lumad culture is still very strong,
as it should be.
These rituals are carried out to ensure safe passage
and acceptance into the community.
- What we have here within the Augustan Marsh Wildlife Santuary
is the Caimpugan peatland.
The peatland, it covers just 3% of the Earth's surface.
But according to the ICUN, they believe that peatland
conserves 30% of the world's carbon,
and that is twice as much carbon sequestered
as compared to all the rainforests combined.
The conservation of wetlands is crucial because it mitigates
the impacts of climate change.
If it is damaged, it releases tons of CO2
far greater than anything in order to uplift
and protect our wetlands.