President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. led a bamboo and tree planting activity as he celebrated his 65th birthday on Tuesday.

During the ceremony at the Old San Mateo Sanitary Landfill in Rizal Province, Marcos said the initiative will greatly help in raising awareness about environmental welfare and protection.

"Indeed, this initiative will contribute to the DENR’s (Department of Environment and Natural Resources) National Greening Program, the country’s most ambitious reforestation program yet. With the goal of reducing poverty, ensuring food security, environmental stability, conserving biodiversity, and mitigating climate change, and adapting to climate change, more than two million hectares of reforestation sites were established from 2011 to 2021," he said.

Marcos said "an additional 46,265 hectares are expected to be developed in 2022" while the "DENR targets 11,631 hectares of Enhanced National Greening Program Sites in 2023".

"The seedlings that we will plant today will be significant in realizing this goal. This program will generate jobs, will generate opportunities, and will generate livelihood for our countrymen," he said.

"More than the economic benefit of this activity, we are essentially and primarily investing in ensuring that our planet remains a safe space. Never mind for us, but we are only custodians of this earth. But more so that we can say to the children, the Filipinos that follow us, that we have taken good care of them, which they will inherit," he added.

Marcos stressed the importance of trees and plants to human existence.

"They take in the air we breathe out so we may give ? so they might give air that we breathe in. I thus wish that as we appreciate the impact of this endeavor, we also see it for the symbolic gesture that it is. It is a reminder for us to see past our personal interests and have the future in sight," he said.

"It is a reminder for us to move beyond the obstacles that we face and act always with love and compassion for our fellow Filipinos," he added. Robina Asido/DMS