The Reforestation Value Chain for the Philippines - Smallholder Tree Growing for Rural Development and Environmental Services - page 185

simply blaming loggers and shifting cultivators. As Kummer (1992) and Van
den Top (1998) have shown, deforestation in the Philippines is tied up to the
larger issues of corruption, poverty, high population density, and migration to
upland areas.

9.2.2 Reforestation Efforts

Reforestation work in the Philippine started during the first decade of the 20th cen-
tury. A recent review of reforestation in the Philippines showed that reforestation
rate significantly lagged behind deforestation rate (Carandang et al. 2004). From
1960 to 2002, the annual average area planted is about 41,000 ha per year (Fig. 9.3)
which is less than 50 percent of the annual deforestation rate for the same period.
More importantly, the actual success rate of the reforestation effort could be less
than 30 percent in many cases. Official statistics report the area planted for the year
but do not track what portion still exists. This is validated by the fact that available
maps do not show where the reforested areas are.
The cost of reforestation is not cheap. Just between 1988 and 1992 the Asian
Development Bank (ADB), the World Bank, and the Japanese government lent
US$731 million for forestry projects in the Philippines (Korten 1995). With such a
low rate of success, much of these funds have been wasted. In the future, reforesta-
tion of the country's 8.4 million hectares of denuded forests could cost the govern-
ment some PHP 361 billion (US$6.6 billion).

100000

90000

80000

Government
Sector

70000

60000

50000

Non-
Government
Sector

40000

30000

20000

10000

0

Year

Fig. 9.3 Annual area planted by the government and non-government sectors in the Philippines
from 1960 to 2002 (Carandang et al. 2004)