DEFORESTATION, a nagging problem in many countries including the Philippines, has been for years a headache for many governments.
Imagine one football field of forest gone every second, if we must believe forest experts. That’s 5,350 square meters.
Since 2016, 28 million hectares of forest have been cut down every year on average, according to guardians of the world’s forests.
From 2001 to 2018, a forest area larger than India was lost worldwide (3,610,000 square kilometers). The loss is equivalent to a 9 percent reduction in global tree cover since 2000.
The main drivers for the loss of forests are production of timber and the clearing of land for cattle, soy, and palm oil production, and other globally traded commodities, according to Frances Seymour of the World Resources Institute.
Due to massive deforestation, about 50 to 100 species of animals are being lost each day. This leads to the extinction of animals and plants on a massive scale. The animals not only lose their habitat and protective cover, but they are also pushed to extinction.
We are glad the Philippine government has implemented various programs and policies to promote reforestation, sustainable forest management, and biodiversity conservation. One such program is the National Greening Program, which aims to plant 1.5 billion trees across 1.5 million hectares of land by 2028.
As in other Southeast Asian countries, deforestation in the Philippines is a major environmental issue. Over the course of the 20th century, the forest cover of the country dropped from 70 percent down to 20 percent.
Over the decade since 2010, the net loss in forests globally was 4.7 million hectares per year. The Rome-headquartered UN Food and Agriculture Organization, has estimated that 10 million hectares of forest were cut down each year.
Deforestation in the Philippines, among severely deforested nations, has several negative effects on the environment. It leads to water contamination as the lack of tree roots causes soil to wash off into water supply systems and deprives the soil of essential nutrients needed for new vegetation to grow.
Estimates place forest cover in the Philippines in the year 1900 at 21 million hectares, covering 70 percent of the total land area.
Between 2000 and 2005, the rate of forest change decreased by 20.2 percent to 1.98 percent per annum. In total, between 1990 and 2005, the Philippines lost 32.3 percent of its forest cover, or around 3,412,000 hectares, according to official figures..
Direct causes of deforestation are agricultural expansion, wood extraction (e.g., logging or wood harvest for domestic fuel or charcoal), and infrastructure expansion such as road building and urbanization. Rarely is there a single direct cause for deforestation.
We are happy the government has added to its National Greening Program laws and policies to protect its forests, like Forest Management Bureau’s Community-Based Forest Management Program, which aims to involve local communities in forest management and conservation efforts.
The program successfully reduced deforestation rates in some areas and promoted sustainable forest management practices.