Phillipines national greening program – Making the impossible happen
By Elizabeth Kahurani (Nairobi) Phillipines has embarked on a national greening programme whose target is to reforest an area covering 1.5million ha with 1.5 billion trees by 2016.
To achieve this, an average of 250,000 ha will need to be planted with 250 million seedlings annually, a fete that may seem impossible under normal circumstances. According to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), the usual government’s overall performance in reforestation is at an average of 30,000 hectares annually, and at this rate it would take 280 years to reforest eight million hectares.
But things are not business as usual in this oriental country that is believed to have once had 90% of the total land area covered with lush forests, and only 20% of that is left now.
According to Dr. Leila America, ASB global steering group representative from the Phillipines Forestry and Environment Research Division, the government is determined and committed to the initiative and has put in place rigorous measures to ensure that targets are met. “All the ministries are actively involved and are required to set aside a budget for the programme,” she explains, adding that there have also been public-private partnerships formed for resource mobilization and implementation.
The main strategy will be to bring together three key national agencies -the DENR, the Department of Agriculture (DA), and the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) to ensure that government resources and skills are streamlined and focused on the project. Communities will also be involved, as well as students and government employees who are encouraged to individually plant at least ten (10) seedlings annually on forestlands, mangrove and protected areas, ancestral domains, civil and military reservations, urban areas under the greening plans, inactive and abandoned mine sites, and on other suitable lands.
Since the project started this year, experts from the main acting national agencies have been deployed to provide seedlings and needed technical assistance, while activities to educate communities and create awareness are ongoing. As an incentive, the communities are given access to profits from the agroforestry plantations and are prioritized in a conditional cash transfer programme. In addition, other incentive programs are currently under consideration.
Monitoring and evaluation systems are in place, whereby success of the greening programme will not just be measured by the number of trees standing in the Philippines by 2016 but also how the efforts will reflect on other aspects of development including food and water security, poverty reduction, economic empowerment, climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation.
According to Leila, the passion and enthusiasm for the project is shared by the government and citizens alike, and has become a national unifying factor. With such goodwill spread across the country, even the impossible can become possible for where there is a will –and especially high level government commitment, -there is a way.
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