Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

Chapter 6: Facilitating Change from the Inside in the Philippines • 165
reflected in the mandate given to the Bureau of Forestry—to protect forest
trees against upland communities.
The state government was forced to evaluate its policy and adopt a more
socially attuned approach to forestry in the 1970s. Gibbs et al. (1990) and
Poffenberger (1990) attribute this political shift to the growing communist
insurgency, the great flood in central Luzon in 1972, which highlighted the
consequences of forest degradation, and the satisfactory performance of
indigenous communities in managing ancestral lands leased back to them.
The government began to recognise the legitimacy of forest occupants in
the uplands and their potential roles in managing the forests (Gibbs et al.
1990; Poffenberger 1990).
The Philippine government started to develop its community forestry
programme in the 1970s. Early efforts, such as Family Approach to
Reforestation (1974), Forest Occupancy Management (1975), and
Communal Tree Farm (1978), failed to attract the participation and
support of the communities. These programmes 2 aimed to rehabilitate
open and cultivated areas, control upland farmers’ land-use practices
within the forest and restrict occupancy rather than enhance local control
over forest resources (Gibbs et al. 1990; Poffenberger 1990). In 1982,
the Integrated Social Forestry Programme 3 was created to consolidate
the three programmes; its renewable 25-year ‘certificate of stewardship’
contracts provided tenure security for forest occupants who created
farmers’ organisations. This tenure came with responsibilities, including
prescribed management techniques, such as soil conservation measures,
forest fire control and maintenance of forest growth in the tenured areas
(Sajise et al. 1999; Magno 2001).
Community forestry continued to evolve in the subsequent two decades.
Various programmes offering different land tenure options to local
communities were developed by DENR in an attempt to speed up the
transfer of management rights to local communities and engage them in
rehabilitating residual forests (Figure 6-1). The complexities created by
the existence of diverse programmes and tenure options prompted policy
makers to simplify and integrate them under one umbrella programme,
Community-Based Forest Management. In 1985 CBFM was proclaimed 4
as the national strategy to promote social justice, improve the well-being of
the local communities and ensure sustainable management of the country’s
forestland (DENR 1996; Sajise et al. 1999).