The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
By Rose de la Cruz
Every administration talks about national greening, reforestation and environmental preservation and conservation– some of them in tandem with the business sector– but after each administration, the best results come only from those that use the local community in reforested area to care for the program.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources, under Secretary Maria Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga, who is more known for her constant travels abroad than visiting projects and programs here, tied up with taipans like MVP, RSA, Jeffrey Lim, Isidro Consunji, Sabin Aboitiz, and Federico Lopez who personally committed last March 21 to the “Forests for Life: 5M trees by 2028”– coinciding with the International Day of Forests 2025.
She explained that this is the latest demonstration of DENR and the taipans “commitment to climate resilience and sustainable forest management.” The taipans even committed to target 10 M indigenous trees across key provinces until 2028, the end of the Marcos administration.
With this project, it is hoped that carbon dioxide to be sequestered will increase from 3.5 MMT by 2038 to 6.5 MMT.
Despite such lofty dreams and the backing of billionaires, people are concerned that this program will not meet its targets considering the spotty track record of previous reforestation programs of the government.
Consider the National Greening Program of the Noynoy Aquino administration that promised the planting of 1.5 billion trees in 1.5 million hectares from 2011 to 2016. A 2019 audit of the Commission on Audit showed that the project did not meet its target despite the P47.22-billion allocated by DENR to implement it from 2011 to 2019.
Despite the joint goal of the Departments of Agriculture, Agrarian Reform and DENR to increase regreening of the dwindling forest cover by 1.5 million hectares, only 177,441 hectares were reforested, or just 12 percent of goal. COA said DENR forced itself to meet the target despite the inability of field officers to handle the load.n indepen A common hitch was the lack of proper survey, mapping and planning which could have ensured that the right species were planted in the right places to improve the seedlings’ survival.
“[Thus] instead of accelerating reforestation, fast-tracking only opened the program to waste.Forest cover yielded a marginal increase of 177,441 hectares after five years of implementation. It could not be expected that the forest cover would increase significantly because the seedlings are not surviving,” COA said.
Seedlings that managed to survive were mainly coffee, cacao, and other agroforestry species that do not even contribute to forest cover.
“With forest cover at 7,014,154 hectares or 41.50 percent of what it was in 1934, reforestation remains an urgent concern. However, this does not mean that the government has to hurry implementing the program. DENR must pace the implementation of the program according to available resources,” COA’s report six years ago said although its findings remain valid these days.
The DENR, it suggested, must shift its strategy from being merely “target-driven” to becoming “community-centered,” which means helping the peoples’ organizations take an active role in the program, from producing the seedlings to taking care of them until maturity. Forcing them to deliver when they are not yet ready would only lead to more waste, it pointed out.
The DENR was also urged to be more realistic about its targets and base them on the capacity of field offices and partner organizations and to also devise a monitoring tool for greater accountability among those entrusted to not just plant the seedlings but to also nurture them, said an Inquirer columnist.
Loyzaga must review the report in its entirety instead of looking at environmental projects and programs abroad, as the success of any reforestation program lies not in the trees nor the land, but in people’s participation in ensuring the program’s success.