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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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