From gbarry@forests.org Sun Mar 11 15:15:53 2001
Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 17:54:49 -0600
From: Glen Barry 
Subject: FORESTS: Deforestation in Philippines

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
Deforestation in Philippines Preview of Things to Come
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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.
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03/05/01
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY
In the Philippines one can see the full consequences of poor land use
decisions and tropical deforestation.  The rate of deforestation is
amongst the highest in the world.  Over the past 50 years almost two
thirds of the country's forests have been lost, including nearly all
virgin forests.  The forest cover is now only 17 percent, far below
the estimated 60 percent required for ecological sustainability.
Flooding, reduced water quality, loss of soil fertility, reduced
development opportunities and widespread abject poverty can all be at
least partially attributed to ruinous care of the land.

There is no reason for any still forested tropical country to make
the same tropical land management mistakes.  For much of the 20th
century, the Philippines was Asia's greatest exporter of rainforest
timber.  Yet this wholesale liquidation of natural ecosystems clearly
failed to bring equitable and sustainable development.  The tragedy
is that Brazil, Papua New Guinea, Cameroon and other forest rich
countries continue to pursue the same failed development strategies.

It is imperative that loss of forests and other biological systems in
the Philippines, and other much ecologically reduced countries, be
stabilized as soon as possible.  Then comes the inevitable and
imperative age of ecological restoration, as remnant and fragmented
ecological systems are aided to expand and become reconnected.  If
human society is to continue and prosper, there are no alternatives
to maintaining and restoring the Earth's ecological systems.
g.b.

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Title:  Weak laws in Philippines exacerbates deforestation
Source:  Copyright c 2000 The Earth Times
Date:  February 23, 2001
Byline:  MICHAEL A. BENGWAYAN

AGUIO CITY, Philippines--The Philippine forests are rapidly
isappearing. By 2025, there may be no virgin forests, many forestry
experts predict. Non-believers scoff at this, saying it is an
exaggeration. But the figures cannot be wrong. The effects of
deforestation are not figments of imagination. The worsening poverty
caused by inadequate and ruined natural resources are real.

The rate of deforestation in the country is among the highest in the
world. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization, in 1934, 57 percent of the country or 42 million acres
were forested, 26 million acres of which was primary or virgin
forests. In a span of 50 years, almost two thirds of the forests was
lost to deforestation as indicated in a study by Frances Korten of
the Ford Foundation in 1990. It found out that the country's forest
was down to only 16 million acres, 1 million of which was virgin
forests.

But the worst deforestation happened during the period of 1990 to
1999 where 750,000 acres of virgin forest were lost. Last year,
Senator Loren Legarda, past chairperson of the Senate committee on
environment, bared in a senate committee report that only 1.75
million acres remain of the nation's virgin forests.

The loss is incredible, the rate of deforestation in that decade was
almost 75,000 acres a year. It also came at a time when logging ban
was imposed in some selected sites in the country.

As a result, flooding, soil erosion and degradation pegged at 100,000
tons of soil yearly, loss of species diversity and genetic material,
loss of human lives and properties and aesthetic and recreational
loss were at their worst.

Sen. Legarda puts much of the blame on governments that over the
years have passed laws favorable to logging concessions and
implemented forest protection poorly.

"Unchecked illegal logging remains the main culprit," the lady
senator said, adding that "government negligence has prompted the
devastation of forest. Today, much of the remaining forests are still
being invaded by commercial loggers," she said.

The country was Asia's greatest exporter of rainforest timber since
1920s and remained so until 1960. However, overzealous extraction,
disregard for future supply and poor logging practices, exacerbated
by illegal logging, have effectively destroyed the industry and
severely degraded much of the remaining forest.

"Philippine forestry laws passed since 1930 have failed to provide
adequate security provisions for virgin and secondary growth forests,
thus the forests had virtually no protection at all. For instance,
there is only one forest guard for every 7,500 acres," the former
broadcaster said.

But even then, many official policies and strategies from the very
start were faulty. Laws that required harvesting on a sustained yield
basis were lacking, the logging industry lacked supervision, little
attention has been paid to selective logging and timber extraction
methods allowed logs to be taken even from extremely steep and
fragile slopes.

Although it was obvious by the early seventies that forest resources
was dwindling rapidly, practices that sustained yield were not
heeded. Legislation to phase out raw log exports, in the belief that
this lucrative trade was the main cause of overcutting, was first
introduced in 1973. However, the ban was never implemented and a
modified scheme served to concentrate ownership of timber licenses in
the hands of a few Marcos supporters, with little commitment to
reducing raw log exports.

Despite a subsequent ban on the export of raw logs since 1986 and the
not-so successful community-based forest management there is still a
continuing bias towards log production. Even after 1991 when logging
was banned in sensitive areas such as virgin forests, in residual
forests with a slope of 50 percent or greater and in watershed areas,
compliance with the mandatory conditions and prevention of illegal
logging is made difficult by insufficient resources.

 From 1972 to 1988, Legarda revealed that the logging industry amassed
$42.85 billion in revenues at the rate of $2.65 billion a year. But
it also laid to waste some 8.57 million hectares of forests. Over the
same period, loggers destroyed 9.6 million acres of virgin forests,
raking in $19.4 billion in income.

Former Department of Agrarian Reform Secretary Horacio "Boy" Morales
warned that the country's forest cover is now only 17 percent, far
below the 60 percent required for ideal ecological balance. He
further predicted that if the trend continues, there will be no
forests by 2020 and that the Philippine hardwoods which used to
dominate the forests will be gone.

"Decades of forest destruction by wanton and indiscriminate logging
have made the country prone to landslides," Morales said."this has
led to the degradation of watersheds which are basically the lifeline
of food production and water supply. because of environmental
degradation, the Philippines has become one of the most disaster-
prone countries in the world where tremendous rise in threats to
life, resources and property is always widespread."

Such a situation is difficult to put back into order, Legarda also
warned.

"Deforestation is the major reason behind flooding, acute water
shortages, rapid soil erosion, siltation and mudslides which have
proved costly not only to the environment and properties but also in
human lives,"she said.

"Reversing the tremendous forest depletion is a gigantic, if not, an
impossible task, considering that the rate of deforestation far
outstrips the rate of reforestation," she added.

Social forestry, where forest productivity rests on local community
participation, is showing signs of progress in the country. But the
strategy is not enough. More so because land ownership and forest
management are issues which cannot be separate from each other. The
Legal Resources Center (LRC) says that for the government to have an
effective forest management program, some of the existing government
environmental policies need to be overhauled.

True enough. Many environmental government policies look at
conservation without consideration of the rights of the people who
live where conservation or environmental programs are. While the
Philippine Strategy for Sustainable Development calls for local
participation in forestry programs, the truth is, "indigenous
peoples' participation is marginal, solicited only for the purpose of
lending projects cultural credibility," Marvic Leonen of LRC says.

Mount Pulag National Park in Benguet is an ideal example. Many times
used as a reason to avail of international funding of environmental
programs, majority of the people are never involved in a "real
sense". The Kalanguyas, tired of the exploitative approaches of so-
called environmental program implementors, bluntly told the
government "it has no need of the Department of Environment and
Natural Resources in the area."

Forestry projects in the Philippines has devoured millions of dollars
in loans and grants. But there is little to see. In 1990, the
government borrowed $325 million from the Asian Development Bank
(ADB) for a national reforestation plan. It went to the dogs. The
Upland NGO Assistance Committee (UNAC), an umbrella organization of
125 upland NGOS working directly with upland communities concluded
that the program was a failure. Politicians meddled in the program,
government foresters became contractors, trees species planted were
for commercial use, and the reforestation targets were not reached in
many parts of the country.

Dr. Korten of Ford Foundation argued that the program was ill-
conceived and managed and relied on insufficient data. She argued
that "the function of the multilateral banks is to make hard-currency
loans for projects that can generate foreign exchange for repayment.
Thus, they are ill-suited to solving environmental problems. ADB's
provision of massive environmental loans to the Philippines
accelerated the very damage it intended to reverse."

The continuing loss of forests in the Philippines is a result of
combined administrative mismanagement, corruption and social
inequity. The value of forests, both as a resource base and as an
environmental control, remains undervalued in the face of over-riding
economic need.

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