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Philippines Forestry
Logging was a profitable business at the end of the 1980s.
Actual forested land was estimated to be about 6.5 million
hectares--more than 21.5 percent of Philippine territory--and
much of that was in higher elevations and on steep slopes. The
government facilitated the exploitation of the country's forest
resources for the first three decades after independence by
allocating the bulk of unclassified land as public forest land
eligible to be licensed for logging, and by implementing policies
of low forest charges and export taxes. Logs were a major
foreign-exchange earner. By 1977, 8.3 million hectares of forest
area were licensed for logging. In the late 1970s, the government
became aware of the dangers of deforestation and began to impose
restrictions. The amount of forested land and the volume of
forest exports declined. By 1988, 120 licensed loggers, operating
on a total area of 4.74 million hectares, cut an estimated 4.2
millon cubic meters of logs and exported 644 million board feet.
The contribution of logs and lumber to total Philippine exports
declined from 25 percent in 1969 to 2 percent in 1988.
In addition to the officially sanctioned logging industry,
there has been considerable illegal logging. The full extent of
this activity was difficult to determine, but the discrepancy
between Philippine and Japanese statistics on log exports from
the Philippines to Japan provided one source of information. From
1955 through 1986, log imports from the Philippines, according to
Japanese statistics, averaged about 50 percent more than log
exports to Japan according to Philippines statistics. In 1987 and
1988, the discrepancy was considerably reduced, perhaps an
indication of the Aquino government's stricter enforcement
policy.
Another cause of deforestation was swidden agriculture,
called kaingin in the Philippines. The method involves
burning a portion of forest area to produce a fertilizing effect,
planting a series of crops for two or three years, and then,
after the soil has become depleted of nutrients, moving on to
another location to allow the burned out area to rejuvenate.
Often referred to as slash-and-burn agriculture, swidden as
practiced by upland Filipino groups was ecologically sound as
long as land was relatively plentiful. But since the 1960s,
increased use of land for logging and migration of landless
peasants from lowland areas has caused a scarcity of land.
Burned-over areas were not allowed to lay fallow for a sufficient
period, and the new migrants often had no knowledge of sound
swidden practice. As a result, new growth was not allowed to
mature before being burned over again; extensive erosion
occurred, and once-forested areas were transformed into
grasslands.
The widespread deforestation caused massive ecological
destruction. Beginning in the early 1980s, the government
instituted reforestation programs to stem the destruction. In
1981 Marcos made the granting of timber concessions conditional
on the concessionaire's reforesting. After his ouster, however,
the new secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural
Resources reported that 90 percent of the 170 logging companies
with concessions had failed to implement reforestation
activities. The Aquino administration also launched a
reforestation program to replant 100,000 hectares per year, but
it too met with limited success. In 1988, two years into the
program, the government reforested 32,000 hectares and awarded
reforestation contracts for another 4,500 hectares. Other
initiatives included a program to employ upland dwellers in
reforestation, limiting the extent of timber concessions, and
controlling exports of forest products. Nongovernment,
environmental organizations also became involved in forest
preservation efforts. One official noted that with more than 5
million hectares of forests already denuded, and with a
deforestation rate of 119,000 hectares per year, the country
would be facing a timber famine within a decade. Second-growth
forests were too young to cut, so timber requirements for the
near term would have to be met from the remaining old-forest
stands, leaving inadequate reserves for the medium term.
Data as of June 1991
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