Deforestation In The Philippines

As in other Southeast Asian countries, deforestation in the Philippines is a major environmental issue. Over the course of the 20th century, the forest cover of the country dropped from 70 percent down to 20 percent. A 2010 land cover mapping by the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority (NAMRIA) revealed that the total forest cover of the Philippines is or 23% of the country's total area of . Rapid population growth, unregulated logging concessions especially during Ferdinand Marcos' regime, illegal logging and mining, and destructive typhoons have been cited as major reasons for deforestation in the country.

Deforestation affects biodiversity in the Philippines and has long-term negative impacts on the country's food production. Deforestation in the country has also been associated with floods, soil erosion, deaths, and damage to property.

To combat deforestation, the Philippine government has made efforts to preserve and restore forests through reforestation projects such as the National Greening Program. Legislation to protect existing forests have also been proposed and enacted, while non-governmental organizations, Indigenous communities, and the private sector conduct tree-planting activities in various parts of the country.

History

Colonial era deforestation

Data on forestry before 1946 has been sparse, reportedly due to an 1897 fire and World War II that destroyed Spanish and American records respectively. Around 90% of the Philippines, which had a population of less than a million, was forested in the 16th century during the early years of Spanish colonization. By the early era of the American colonization in 1903, this figure declined to 70% as the country's population grew to 7.6 million. After the Japanese occupation and World War II in 1950, forest cover in the country further declined to 50%, with the country's population increasing to 20 million.

Forest clearing was notable in the Visayas, particularly in the islands of Negros, Bohol and Cebu, where much of the forest cover had already been lost. Agricultural expansion continued throughout the 20th century.

Indigenous peoples, such as the such as the Yapayao and Isneg peoples who used to live in the Ilocos Region, were slowly pushed into living in the sparsely populated but resource-rich mountains, which would expose them to conflicts with developers in later eras, particularly during Martial Law under Ferdinand Marcos.

Deforestation during the martial law era

The 1960s and 1970s saw a boom in the logging industry, with the industry reaching its peak during the era of 10th president Ferdinand Marcos.

Under Marcos, logging took on an increasingly central role in the Philippine economy. Following the declaration of martial law in 1972, Marcos handed out concessions to large tracts of land to his senior military officials, cronies, and relatives. The government encouraged log exportation to Japan resulting from soaring wood demand during Japan's period of rapid economic growth, and pressure to pay foreign debt. Forests resources were exploited by set-up companies and reforestation was rarely undertaken. Japanese log traders purchased massive quantities of cheap logs from unsustainable sources, accelerating deforestation. Log production increased from in 1960 to an average of between 1968 and 1975, peaking at over in 1975, before declining to about in 1987. The 1970s and 1980s saw an average of 2.5% of Philippine forests disappearing every year, which was thrice the worldwide deforestation rate.

Deforestation after 1986

Deforestation remained very high during the Corazon Aquino and Fidel V. Ramos administrations despite tree planting efforts due to corruption and inefficiency in the government agencies involved.

According to Global Forest Watch, from 2001 to 2020, most of the loss of forest cover in the Philippines took place in Palawan. Other provinces that have lost significant forest cover are Agusan del Sur, Zamboanga del Norte, Davao Oriental, and Quezon Province.

Causes

Government policies

According to scholar Jessica Mathews, short-sighted policies by the Filipino government have contributed to the high rate of deforestation:

The government regularly granted logging concessions of less than ten years. Since it takes 30–35 years for a second-growth forest to mature, loggers had no incentive to replant. Compounding the error, flat royalties encouraged the loggers to remove only the most valuable species. A horrendous 40 percent of the harvestable lumber never left the forests but, having been damaged in the logging, rotted or was burned in place. The unsurprising result of these and related policies is that out of 17 million hectares of closed forests that flourished early in the century only 1.2 million remain today.

Attribution of deforestation to population pressure or agricultural expansion was found not to be backed by existing evidence in a 1992 study. Subsequent research has shown that intensification of existing farmers and improved off-farm income reduced forest pressure. However, in some parts of the country forest encroachment still happens due to high demand for vegetables.

Mining and logging

Mining and logging

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