Success Stories Brighten Asia’s Bleak Forestry Picture

Success Stories Brighten Asia’s Bleak  Forestry Picture

By Dr. Michael A. Bengwayan

Although the record of reforestation is dismal in the Asia Pacific region is dismal, several success stories in the Philippines,  South Korea, India and China have kindled new hope among environmentalists and tree growers.

The reason is not hard to find. Many of the projects feature innovative approaches that may find wide use in the world, particularly in developing nations.

In reforestation, South Korea has emerged a model. In just twenty years from 1980 to 2000, the Korean countryside has been transformed to thick forests.

Since 1970, South Korea was a barren, denuded country plagued by soil erosion Its hillsides were eroded, and the land lost  most of its water retention capacity. But as of 1977, some  643,000 hectares—roughly half the size of area planted to rice nationwide—had been planted to fast growing trees. The area reforested doubled by 1989.

How? The government created the Korea Forest Service in 1967 and after legal and institutional preparations, the KFS initiated the 10-year forest rehabilitation plan starting in 1973. The first national forest plan, which was launched in 1973, aimed to restore denuded forest, so the government encouraged the public to plant fast-growing trees, declaring a nationwide tree planting period from March 21-April 20 every year. This sparked massive and intensive tree planting.

The success is due primarily due to the organization of federally-linked village forestry associations and the direct participation of villagers in reforestation efforts.

Through the association composed of representatives of each of its households, each participating village plants, tends, and harvests the woodlots without pay.

Harvested  wood is distributed among households and the proceeds from any marketable surplus are used to support other community development projects. The program’s primary aim was to bring back the forests to stabilize land and water supply, and the secondary aim, to provide enough firewood to satisfy the fuel needs of all rural communities. 

The economic gains were obvious to the villagers: the switch back to local wood supplies means that they can now pocket the 15 percent of their income that they were forced to spend on local coal when firewood became scarce.

The community forestry success story in Gujarat, Western India also bears telling. The state forestry began to observe that existing forest reserves, however skillfully managed, could not satisfy the local firewood needs. In 1970, Gujarat launched a village woodlot forestation program, planting trees in roadside strips, irrigation canal banks, and other state-owned lands. The idea in each case was to let nearby community take responsibility for managing the woodlots.

The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) evaluated the program and noted:”The roadside and canal bank plantations did not involve public participation to a degree that social forestry could be achieved but nevertheless, a marked critical psychological turning point was achieved when, seeing thousands of strands of trees arise on what have been desolate grounds, some two million  people trooped to the state government begging to be involved in the tree planting program.”

In just nine years from 1979-1989, some 17,000 kilometers of Gujarat’s roadway and canals combined were lined  with approximately 20 million trees, yearly, four to five million trees were added.

Eventually, this forestry model became a people's program. Under this, the state embarked upon an ambitious mission of organising and motivating more people to take up tree plantation on  other lands like Panchayat lands, wastelands, , farmlands school and college compounds and other government lands.

The results of the program were encouraging, and were appreciated internationally. After the success of the initial efforts, the State was encouraged to formulate a project extending to all the districts. In the last 10 years or so, the project has been funded by the state and consequently Gujarat has switched from being a food deficit to a food surplus state today. As a pioneer in the social forestry sector, the success of Gujarat has been globally acclaimed.

China’s experience may be the most mind-boggling. Through mobilization of massive human labor, its reforestation rate has been increasing from five percent in 1960 to 12.5 percent in 1980. Reforestation and afforestation of wastelands, including deserts are ongoing not only to increase forestland but  to prevent desertification, reduce flooding , erosion and siltation and increase lumber supply and fuelwood in the rural areas.

In 1978, China introduced the Natural Forest Conservation Program, a logging ban to help protect against erosion and rapid runoff. It  followed this with two national programs. One was the Grain to Green program, which is basically to reconvert agricultural fields in steep slopes into forests. And the other is the natural forest conservation program which is, in a sense, a logging ban to prevent deforestation and also to increase the aerial forests.

China is regreening  the vast Kubuqi desert   located in Hangjin Qi, within the Ordos City prefecture in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China,  through a Great Green Wall program, designed to reverse decades of desertification.  It  is quickly turning back the spread of desert by planting fast-growing trees, such as aspen, that would rapidly establish deep webs of soil-stabilizing roots and form a shady canopy.

China spends more than 100 billion US dollars for its reforestation programs.

In the Philippines, where through the past years forest depletion was brought about by  overexploitation, and mismanaged forest policies, noble reforestation efforts are being spearheaded by private foundations and non-government organizations (NGOs).

One effort by the Aboitiz Foundation in Mindanao reforested 2,000 hectares with two million trees in partnership with the indigenous peoples Matigsalog Lumads in the rebel-infested badlands of Marilog, in Davao del Sur where the Lumads are provided agroforestry skills for livelihood in exchange  for planting denuded forest lands.

North of the Philippines in the island of Luzon, the Cordillera Ecological Center raises  and plants thousands of trees yearly, mostly pine trees, and spearheads forestation effort with hundreds of volunteers with volunteer groups like A Tree A Day (ATAD).

Another is the Haribon-led Road to 2020 ROAD  (Rainforestation Organizations and Advocates), which started in 2005,  an environmental movement to restore Philippine rainforests using native tree species such narra, apitong, lauan and many others and to sustain provision of ecological goods and services by year 2020 through an informed and engaged people. It provides an opportunity for everyone to come together and help bring back our natural forests.

The Philippine government has exerted efforts in bringing back forests in its fast balding hinterlands. But nationally-led forestation programs like the  1990 Asian Development Bank (ADB)- funded National Contract Reforestation Program and the  2002-National Greening Program (NGP) were  stained with corruption and failure.

This is a far cry from earlier forestation efforts by the Philippine government like the Program for Ecosystem Management that met success  from 1970 to 1978.

Today, the rate of deforestation in the Philippines still outpaces the rate of forestation and there exists a backlog of some five million hectares of open and understocked forestland in the country.

But one thing is certain in the experiences of the four countries. Local peoples, private institutions, companies, schools are joining the fray in tree planting.

This trend in forestation is made more urgent by international calls to reduce carbon footprint as no one can underemphasize the value of forests as source of oxygen,  carbon dioxide sink and main factor in global cooling rather than just a natural resource for lumber or firewood.

The forest is man’s  primeval source of almost everything, the benefits equally crucial but often intangible, such that  not many know that the only way to keep it with mankind starts with a simple treeplanting.