By BENEDICTO Q. SÁNCHEZ, Broad Initiatives for Negros Development (BIND), The Philippines
When is enough, really enough? This question confounds natural resource managers when exploiting forest resources, timber or non-timber.
This is precisely the question that Bagong Silang-Marcelo Katilingban sang Sustenidong Mangunguma (BSMKSM) faced when in 2002 it listed the non-timber resources to be extracted from surrounding forests for its community-based enterprises under an NC-IUCN-assisted project. This people’s organisation holds the first Community-Based Forest Management Agreement (CBFMA) in Western Visayas.
The PO forged in 1996 a CBFMA with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. It has the support of their respective barangay and municipal councils, and was assisted by various NGOs and organised by BIND.The area covers 1,000.60 hectares and encompasses two barangays, Bagong Silang and Marcelo.
In 2002, BIND held a participatory rural assessment. Using the FAO’s market analysis and development framework, the participants selected, identified and ranked 32 non-timber species, which included grasses, bamboos, tree leaves, barks, ferns, orchids and rattan.
The process identified tree ferns, orchids, wild bamboo and rattan for utilisation and inventory. DENR clarified, however, that as an endangered and critical resource, the agency has banned tree fern harvesting. Then the market-savvy DENR representative pointed out that wild orchid species cannot compete with their domesticated and cultured cousins. After a heated discussion, the people’s organisation members agreed that domesticated bamboos can replace the wild running bamboos for handicrafts.
Eventually, the selection whittled the choice to rattan. Official policy requires that before utilisation, DENR has to grant a resource use permit based on a systematic sampling inventory using 5% sampling intensity.
Measuring sustainable harvesting thresholds
The first step for the inventory was to define in a community map the rattan harvest areas. The survey revealed poorly-delineated markers, which compelled the crew (composed of representatives from BIND, the PO and DENR) to use boulders, standing trees or rivers as natural witness monuments to determine the boundary lines. The rattan inventory area covered 240 hectares of secondary growth forests, with elevation varying from 800 masl to 1,100 masl.
Several international and national experts helped with the inventory designs. Dr. Mary Stockdale held an orientation and field workshop on participatory inventory. Her exercises guided the community in identifying resource species to be included in the inventory (including information on abundance, population structure and total available yield of the resource species), crafting the sampling design, organising the inventory teams, supplies and equipment and overall, training them on-the-job and on-site.
Dr. Aida Lapis of the Environmental Research and Development Bureau pushed for the strip cruise procedure to determine the extent, distribution and quantity of rattan resources in the area. At 240 hectares, the final design resulted in 12 sample points of 10×1,000 meters, each representing 1 hectare each, based on the required sampling intensity of 5%.
Measured were 15 species of the identified 17 clumped and single-stem rattans, divided into linghods (juveniles) and gulang (mature), as delineated by community-based rattan users. The linghods were defined as stems not more than 4 meters. Visual estimates of the single-stems and the clumps’ total length were used.
The inventory crews consisted of 32 persons, divided into 19 men and 8 women. Each team composed of 7 crewmembers: the team leader, compassperson, brusher, two chainpersons and two mensurators.
The activity divided the tasks between men and women. While the compass and brushing were done by men and women, a crew had a woman for the rear chain. Save for one male, the mensurators were men and women, the recorders and crew leaders female and male BIND staff. The over-all head of the inventory was BIND’s forester, María Theresa Brunia. A DENR forest ranger helped with the various tasks.
The crews averaged three strips daily, depending on the ruggedness of the terrain and the density of mature rattans. The 15 rattan specimens collected during the inventory were sent to ERDB for identification.
The inventory output came up with a stand-stock-table which served as the DENR’s basis for determining BSMKSM’s annual allowable cut.
More requirements and paperwork
Yet since rattan utilisation fell under the category of a major non-timber forest resource, the Environmental Management Bureau Region 6 asserted that BSMKSM should first get an Environmental Compliance Certificate under the rules of the Initial Environmental Examination for Community-Based Forest Resources Utilization of the Philippine Environmental Impact Statement System before utilisation.
None of the previous consultation workshops and technical working group raised concerns on impact assessments. The project was wrapping up its remaining activities, however, when the EMB pressed its concerns.
BSMKSM fulfilled the DENR inventory and ECC requirements. After more than a year of delay, BSMKSM in the presence of DENR and BIND began harvesting 87 poles of rattan on September 20 and 21, 2005 and started processing them into finished products like baskets and trays, to be exhibited at Gateway Cubao in November. In partnership with the NTFP Task Force, it could possibly be exported to Europe in 2006.
However, Salvador Benedicto Mayor, Cynthia de la Cruz ordered the confiscation. She was one of the main accused persons in authority on the illegal logging hotspot in Negros Occidental. Bypassing her office during the harvests was the official reason for the confiscation. She also denied that her office received the necessary documents from DENR Region VI. Most likely under instruction from the town hall, BSMKSM member and Bagong Silang Barangay Captain Clemente Bacordo himself confiscated the rattan poles. A surprise move, since he attended the meeting discussing the harvest plan.
It wasn’t just Bacordo who flip-flopped, however. Reversing himself, then-DENR Sec. Michael Defensor stopped the rattan cutting upon the request of de la Cruz. OIC CENRO Joan Gerangaya forthwith informed BIND Executive Director Eva de la Merced to relay to BSMKSM to halt the harvests.
It is nearly two years since DENR granted BSMKSM the resource use permits. Yet, the harvested rattan still languishes somewhere in the Salvador Benedicto town hall, unused commercially and most likely, rotting.
The experience proves the observation that while nature provides the grist, it is the mill of social organisations, individual decision makers, and markets – not nature – that determines that ecological requirements of species and ecosystems are met. At the end of the day, sustainability greatly depends not so much on biology but on political, socioeconomic, and institutional factors.
Simplified resource assessments
Apart from policy, the recognition that many NTFP resource bases are in decline and that increasing pressures commercial demand for NTFPs indicate that traditional management practices are insufficient to sustain the resource base.
There is thus a demand for formal monitoring process to guide the allocation and management of their shrinking biological resources, seeking ways to accommodate the new market-based market needs of traditional forest users while “maintaining the integrity of the ecosystems that the protected areas were created to safeguard.”
This can be done by PO members if the monitoring process uses qualitative methods required by regulatory bodies like the DENR are not too demanding of their time and money, and that are based primarily on local knowledge.
We should note that tropical forests are characterized by a large number of tree species per unit area, occuring at densities at one or two trees per hectare. BIND’s 1996 forest resource inventory for the community forestry program in the NNFR bear this out. The activity counted 12 dipterocarp and 138 non-dipterocarp species spread over 85 sample plots of 534.55 hectares at a bewildering density of 625 trees per hectare with DBH of 20 cm and above.
The immense diversity, however, implies that resources would be difficult for harvesters to locate, require long trekking, produce a low yield per unit, area, and are extremely prone to overharvesting.
Yet existing policies recognize only “scientific, expert-driven” knowledge, as reflected in the demand for biometric rigor of quantitative inventories of DAO 29, Series of 1989 over vast areas and comply with the Initial Environmental Examination Checklist for Community-Based Forest Resources Utilization Projects.
To come up with the DENR required comprehensive forest management plans like the Community Resource Management Framework are anchored on such quantitative, scientific—and costly activities.
Take the BSMKSM rattan inventory. Of the 240 ha that was sampled at 5% sampling intensity (S.I), the cost approximately amounted to PhP160,000. The inventory team members from the community required roughly 200 person-days.
If 1,000 hectares were to be sampled at 5% S.I., this could cost, at the same rate per hectare, PhP670,000 and 830 person days. Clearly, the DENR requirement for 5% S.I. is particularly onerous, especially for larger CBFMA areas, and doesn’t make any economic sense. And ecologically, too, for that matter.
These stringent requirements provide a negative incentive for CBFMA holders to implement these requirements at all. Subsistence communities cannot afford to bankroll any of these activities, much less understand the process.
It comes not as a surprise that many CBFMA holders, not being trained in such methods and furthermore, not being able to underwrite the costs, are non-performers. If anything, this results in the rattan users in the province feeling that their only feasible option is to forego any of these requirements and harvest the resource, preferably in unsustainably higher volumes.
So, when asked, how much is enough, it’s not just how much should be harvested, it’s also how intense the sampling intensity, how much paperwork needs to be done, how much should be spent.
CONTACT: Broad Initiatives for Negros Development (BIND)
Dr. 1 and 2 Adela Arcade, Don Vicente Building, Locsin Street, 6100 Bacolod City, Negros Occidental, The Philippines
Tel: +63 34 4321510, Fax: +63 34 4338315
Email: bindbcd@wbi.ph
