Weak Laws and Poor
Implementation Exacerbates Deforestation in the Philippines
By Michael A. Bengwayan
The
Philippine forests are rapidly disappearing as fast as the country’s population
is growing.
A Senate
committee on environment bared that only
1.75 million acres remain of the nation's virgin forests.
Many experts
fear there may be no virgin forests before 2050. 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 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.
The worst
deforestation happened during the period of 1990 to 1999 where 750,000 acres of
virgin forest were lost.
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.
Much of the
blame is on governments that over the
years have passed laws favorable to logging concessions and implemented forest
protection poorly.
Unchecked logging remains the main culprit. Government negligence has prompted the devastation of forests. Today, much of
the remaining forests are still being invaded by commercial loggers.
The country
was Asia's greatest exporter of rain forest 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.
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
over cutting, 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, 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.
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.
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.
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, the LRC said.
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 implementers,
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.
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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