Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Historically, the most important driving forces in the conversion of primary
forests to secondary forests were logging activities by big companies (Kummer
1992). The main tenure instrument for commercial logging was the Timber
License Agreement (TLA). At the height of the logging activities in the 1970s,
there were 471 TLA holders in the Philippines controlling an aggregated area
of more than 10 M ha, a staggering one third of the total land area of the coun-
try. At that time, a few companies (and families) controlled much of the coun-
try's natural resources. Since the mid 1980s the number of TLAs has steadily
declined and by 1997 there were only 26 TLAs covering an area of 1.31 M ha
(FMB 1998).
While logging operations themselves were supposed to be sustainable through
the application of the Philippine Selective Logging System, in many cases com-
mercial logging sets into motion a process that eventually leads to deforestation and
severe degradation of forest lands (Kummer 1992). That is, logging roads facilitate
establishment of communities inside the forest area leading to other activities such
as shifting cultivation and further cutting (often illegal). For example, Liu et al.
(1993) have shown using GIS analysis the strong correlation between the develop-
ment of road networks in the Philippines and the formation of highly degraded sec-
ondary forests and ultimately to the destruction of these forests resulting to denuded
grassland areas. While the area of secondary forests remains more or less the same
from 1971 to the present, the area of primary forests declined steeply from more
then 4.5 M ha to less than 1 M ha (Fig. 9.2). The difference between the two is the
area deforested during the same period or roughly 140,000 ha per year of
deforestation.
The ultimate driving forces of secondary forest formation (from primary
forests) and their eventual destruction (deforestation) are more complex than
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1971 1972 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1984 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997
Fig. 9.2
Change in area of primary (triangle) and secondary (square) forests in the Philippines
(Lasco et al. 2001)
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