THE Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is gearing up to sustain the gains of the National Greening Program (NGP) with a six-year program funded by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Office (UN-FAO).
Through the National Forest and Landscape Restoration Program (NFLRP), the DENR hopes to expand the country’s forest covers while fighting hunger and poverty across the country during the program’s implementation from 2017 to 2022.
Director Ricardo Calderon of the DENR’s Forest Management Bureau said the program is being finalized but the proposal was already approved by the FAO. “We are now just waiting for inception meeting,” he said.
He said the program will build on the gains and use the facilities and expertise developed during NGP implementation.
As the Aquino administration’s flagship reforestation program, the six-year NGP aims to plant 1.5 billion trees in 1.5 million hectares of open, degraded and denuded forest.
Environment Secretary Ramon J.P. Paje claimed that the successful implementation of the NGP from 2011 to 2014 alone was able to help the country “reverse the tide of environmental degradation” through the rehabilitation of over 1.3 million hectares, only about 200,000 hectares shy of achieving its over-all target as of December 2014.”
With the new program setting in, Calderon expressed elation that efforts to expand the country’s forest cover will be sustained beyond 2016.
A $300,000 (P12-million) budget has been allocated by the UN-FAO for the program’s design alone.
“The program will be designed from September to December this year and pilot-tested in the whole of 2016,” Calderon said.
There will be at least one pilot site in Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao, the country’s three major islands.
“As we phase out NGP, the NFL-RP sets in. The program is to continue our rehabilitation effort,” said Calderon, also the national coordinator of the NGP which will be on its last and final year of implementation next year.
The program, Calderon said, will have a multistakeholder consultation component or process, wherein all stakeholders will be asked to provide inputs “to have a well-consulted program ready for the next administration.”
“It [the program] is aligned with Zero Deforestation and New York Challenge to reduce deforestation by 50 percent in 2020 and zero deforestation by 2030,” he added. Calderon said that the development of the program is simultaneous with the ones being developed in Peru and Lao People’s Democratic Republic.