At the recent launch of Philippine Native Trees 404: Rooted and Rising, Federico ‘Piki’ Lopez spoke about forests the way some people speak about inheritance.
Not ownership. Responsibility.
He recalled how his father, Oscar M. Lopez, and the late botanist Leonard Co helped shape his understanding of restoration-not simply as planting trees, but as rebuilding relationships between species, communities and the landscapes that sustain them.
It was not the usual language of Philippine business. There were no slogans about disruption or domination. No chest-thumping about market conquest. The conversation revolved around watersheds, biodiversity, native species and stewardship. The forests were never separate from the business story. Long before sustainability became fashionable corporate vocabulary, the Lopez energy group under Piki Lopez had already begun moving in that direction.
Energy Development Corporation’s BINHI program, launched in 2008, was among the more ambitious private-sector biodiversity initiatives in the country. It was not simply a tree-planting campaign designed for annual reports and ceremonial photographs. BINHI focused on identifying, propagating and reintroducing threatened Philippine native tree species into degraded forests and watersheds.
The philosophy behind it was deceptively simple: reforestation should not mean covering land with whatever grows fastest. It should mean restoring ecological systems using species that actually belong there.
In an age of shortcuts, that is a remarkably patient idea.
Native trees grow slowly. Some take decades to mature. They are not optimized for quarterly results or ribbon-cutting ceremonies. Yet they anchor watersheds, sustain biodiversity and strengthen ecosystems in ways imported monocultures often cannot. A country constantly battered by floods, heat, drought and stronger storms eventually learns that forests are not scenery. They are infrastructure. BINHI treated them that way.
Over the years, the initiative expanded into partnerships with schools, scientists, local governments, environmental groups and indigenous communities. Arboreta and restoration sites were established across the country, helping preserve species that in many areas had nearly vanished from public consciousness altogether.
The environmental thinking did not stop with forests. In 2016, long before decarbonization became standard corporate language, First Gen announced it would no longer invest in new coal-fired power plants. At the time, coal remained the easier commercial path. Much of the region still viewed it as indispensable to economic growth and energy security. Renewable energy was often discussed more as aspiration than inevitability.
The Lopez group moved anyway.
Instead of expanding deeper into coal, it focused on geothermal, hydro, solar, wind and natural gas as a transition fuel. Years later, the decision appears less like branding and more like anticipation. Many of the conversations dominating global business today-energy transition, carbon reduction, climate resilience, regenerative systems-were already shaping the group’s direction years earlier. There is something unusual about business leaders who think in ecological timelines.
Most corporations are trained to think in quarters. Elections think in terms. Markets think in cycles. Forests think in generations.
That may explain why the native trees matter symbolically in understanding Piki Lopez’s leadership style. A person obsessed only with immediate returns rarely spends years discussing biodiversity, watersheds and restoration. Those are concerns that require patience, continuity and a willingness to invest in outcomes one may not fully live to see completed.
The modern economy often rewards speed, extraction and expansion. Ecological thinking asks different questions. What remains after growth? What survives after profit? What kind of systems are being left behind for the next generation to inherit?
The answers are not always found in balance sheets.
Sometimes they are found in forests quietly returning to life.
That is perhaps the strongest thread connecting the environmental initiatives associated with Piki Lopez-from BINHI to decarbonization to watershed restoration. The emphasis was never simply on producing energy. It was on asking what kind of future that energy system was helping create.
In the end, native trees offer their own lesson about stewardship.
You plant them knowing somebody else may someday sit beneath their shade.