PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the creation of a tripartite committee to study the possible implementation of a nationwide logging ban, Malacañang said Wednesday.
He cited the massive flooding in parts of Mindanao as a result of the denuded mountains and heavily silted rivers, presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella said in a statement.
“The President ordered that a tripartite convergence committee be formed and composed of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Department of Agriculture and the Department of Interior and Local Government to discuss a total log ban to protect our watersheds,” Abella said.
Duterte ordered Environment Secretary Regina Lopez to implement a logging ban during a meeting of the Climate Change Commission on Tuesday, Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol said.
“Aren’t we already in a total log ban? Stop all logging operations with no exemptions,” Piñol quoted Duterte as telling Lopez.
He also quoted Lopez during the meeting that the licenses to cut down trees were approved under the Integrated Forest Management Agreement and the Community-Based Forest Management contracts during the previous administration.
Lopez, in a text message, said Duterte wanted a total logging ban because he “deeply feels for the welfare of his people.”
“It’s the suffering that logging results in. He had gone to Sultan Kudarat and met with the lumad there and they have been super suffering,” Lopez said.
“The President’s commitment is to social justice and to eradicate corruption and he is going for it with determination. It should be rightly applauded.”
In the same meeting, Piñol brought up the implications of prohibiting farmers from cutting trees in their plantations. Farmers in Davao and Caraga, for instance, depend on the harvesting of trees for their livelihood.
Lopez said forest management practices in places like Finland allow people to use the trees but still preserve their forests.
A moratorium on logging in natural or residual forests throughout the country is now in place through Executive Order 23 signed by former President Benigno Aquino III in 2011.
The EO, however, does not provide for a total logging ban since it allowed logging companies with unexpired licenses to continue logging. It also allowed logging in plantation forests or forests planted by man.