In 1565, when Spanish conquerors first arrived in the Philippines, it was estimated that 90 percent of the archipelago was forested. The population of less than one million lived primarily along the coasts and in river valley (
FN 6). The Spanish colonial government encouraged active trade and agricultural expansion from the mid-eighteenth century onward. During the 1800s, the central plain forests of Luzon were systematically cleared. As a result of the Spanish land law, Filipino customary systems of land tenure were weakened and superseded, often resulting in periodic resistance from local communities. As forest lands were converted to agriculture and community resistance was suppressed, the colonial government as well as Filipino elites would claim tenure for themselves, stripping the land of any communal associations or traditional rights held by indigenous peoples (FN 7).The Spanish established the first Bureau of Forestry in 1863 to oversee forest lands, all of which were legally claimed as public domain. A primary task of the new bureau was to ensure that only those forest lands suitable for agriculture were released to private interests. Certain historians believe that the bureau's policies accelerated privatization and forest clearance, noting that by 1870 the island of Cebu had already become severely deforested and eroded due to the expansion of sugar cane, rice, and corn cultivation and the rise of the timber industry (
FN 8).The concept of "modern" logging began in the Philippines in 1904, when the American Insular Lumber Company was granted a 30,000-hectare, 20-year renewable concession in northern Negros. Employing the latest steam locomotive and milling technology from the U.S. Pacific Northwest, the company began producing 30 cubic meters of dipterocarp lumber per hour, introducing timber to the world market under the misnomer "Philippine mahogany." Shortly thereafter, a number of other American timber companies launched operations in the Philippines.
In an attempt to initiate a sustainable logging regime, some operations limited felling to trees over 40 centimeters in diameter. However, research sponsored in 1914 by the Bureau of Forest Management on Mt. Makiling (south of Manila) concluded that these limits did little to ensure reproduction and therefore the regeneration and sustained existence of the forest. A 1914 study found that most of the wood volume was stored in the larger, dominant trees of dipterocarp forests. When these older giants were felled, "the saplings and smaller dipterocarps, which had grown up under the protection of the thick canopy, quickly died as the result of insolation [overheating] while the number of seed- lings was reduced disastrously, by a factor of eight." Subsequently, "inferior" species inherited the site after the dipterocarp forest had been "completely and permanently destroyed" (
FN 9). The researchers found that the expansive dipterocarp canopy was "so integral a part of the forest that its removal endangers the very existence of the forest." (FN 10)More recent ecological research indicates that the domination of "inferior" species may be only an early phase in the natural process of secondary forest succession. In many cases, however, extensive and ongoing ecological disturbances caused by improper logging techniques followed by migrant farming and fires result in logged-over secondary forests which are suppressed, held in abeyance at the pioneer phase of regeneration. In contrast, more carefully regulated cutting and extraction practices and protection from further disturbances such as fires and soil overexploitation can promote rapid regrowth through the phases of secondary succession and reestablish a healthy forest cover. Unfortunately, this has rarely been the case in the Philip- pines. Timber industry assessments reveal that proper selective logging has been utilized in less than 10 of the nearly 500 logging concessions, including Timber License Agreements (TLA) and short-term special permits issued by President Ferdinand Marcos during the peak of the logging period (
FN 11). Migrant populations who often follow logging roads into the area further increase pressures on the already disturbed ecosystem. By 1985, the indigenous upland population of 5.3 million had absorbed an additional 12.2 million migrants, 6.5 million of whom had settled on official forest lands. In addition, this upland migration phenomenon, which tends to follow logging, allows the timber industry to use migrant encroachment as a convenient excuse for avoiding its reforestation responsibilities. Then, once migrant farmers have expended hard labor to complete the clearing of logged-over lands for cultivation, the concessionaire can apply for permits to acquire the now "denuded" land for commercial plantations (FN 12).The Philippines experienced a phenomenal expansion of timber extraction from the end of World War II to the mid-1970s (
FN 13), from under one million cubic meters to over 15 million cubic meters annual cut in 1975 (See Figure 1) (FN 14). Between 1952 and 1977, the country lost 61 percent of its forests. Destruction was estimated to exceed reforestation efforts on an order of nine to one (FN 15). As a consequence, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) predicted that the Philippines would exhaust its commercially exploitable primary forest by 1990-a projection that appears to be nearly realized (FN 16).State concern over deforestation resulted in a brief logging ban in 1975, but little attempt was made to implement the policy, which was revoked three months later due to political pressures. Although estimates vary regarding the total volume legally and illegally extracted, during the peak of the logging boom in the mid-1970s the 230 TLA concessions operated with a national annual allowable cut of 15.5 million cubic meters. Even in the face of the rapid disappearance of the country's natural forests, timber production continued through the 1980s, stimulated by growing national and international markets and supportive government policies
(FN 17). Yet due to dwindling supplies, the 10-15 million cubic meter production of the 1970s dropped by 50 to 60 percent in the 1980s. By 1989, production had declined to 4.5 million cubic meters, and the government imposed a ban on timber exports to ensure that local needs were met. In 1993 only 33 TLAs remained, with allowable cuts drastically reduced to under one million cubic meters annually. Nonetheless, in order to protect the local timber industry, the government maintains its policies in support of logging. These include import duties of 10 percent on whole logs and up to 50 percent on plywood and the retention of artificially low forest extraction fees for concessionaires. Attractive profit margins realized by loggers and exporters continue to encourage exploitation of the last stands of old growth dipterocarp forest (FN 18).While logging operations were fueling the deforestation process through the 1960s and 1970s, government policies tended to blame indigenous communities and migrants and tried to control their kaingin (shifting cultivation) practices. Branded with the label kaingeros, these farmers enjoyed few if any land rights, especially if they belonged to indigenous cultural communities which have resided in the uplands for generations. Although the 1974 Forest Occupancy Management Program was introduced in an attempt to recognize upland communities, it never reached the vast majority.
Densely forested fifty years ago, the Gabaldon Valley has been primarily converted to agriculture; Santor watershed (in distance) and Dupiga watershed (foreground) have both been logged and cultivated, resulting in frequent flooding in the plains below.
A young Dumaga girl prepares fish and rice along the Dupinga River, while her parents collect rattan in the surrounding upland forests
The opening of swidden fields pushes further into the Dupinga watershed as forest cover recedes.
Burned stumps are the only evidence of the dense forests that once covered the foothills of the Dupinga watershed; the resulting barren soils are vulnerable to erosion
Changes began in 1979, when a system of contractual agreements for families (i.e., Family Approach to Reforestation, or FAR) and communities (i.e., Communal Tree Farming, or CTF) was established to offer greater usufruct security to those engaged in upland tree planting Programs (
FN 19). Throughout the 1980s, the policy perspectives on upland Communities shifted favorably. Rather than viewing uplanders as illegal encroachers as had been done in the 1960s and 1970s, upland programs were designed to better respond to issues of poverty and tenurial insecurity. But policies and programs to regularize the tenurial status of upland families met with political resistance and were implemented slowly. Community claims to upland forests, particularly those of indigenous tribal peoples, were thwarted as the power and influence of elites within the society remained predominant and commercial logging continued unabated.An interagency working group was established in 1981 to help develop a more integrated strategy for effective uplands management. The group attempted to support the new government programs that emphasized community participation in planning and implementation. In 1982, the government established a new division to initiate the Integrated Social Forestry Program, which promoted community-oriented upland initiatives and provided twenty-five-year stewardship certificates for both community groups and families (
FN 20). The program allowed upland communities to select individual household land stewardships or community-based tenure agreements and to respond to problems of access control to public forest lands by employing different agroforestry principles. Unfortunately, because most participants preferred individual agreements for their family farm plots, this minimized opportunities to bring larger tracts of critical upper watershed forests under local community management. As a result, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has issued only twenty-one leases of 500-1,000 hectares to qualifying upland resident community groups since the program's inception. With little experience in the operational processes of reaching joint management agreements with local communities, agencies working in the uplands have limited practical knowledge or skills regarding appropriate strategies for delineating ancestral lands and empowering community user groups.In the early 1990s, President Corazon Aquino included community forest management as a component of the new constitution (Article II, Section 23) in an effort to provide greater recognition of the rights of indigenous communities to upland forest utilization. Administrative Order No. 2, issued in 1992, describes procedures for DENR task forces to demarcate ancestral land claims, yet funds for implementing the policy have never been allocated. Whereas community forest management policies and programs in the Philippines are among the most enlightened in Asia, their field implementation has been thwarted and painfully slow.