The Southeast Asia Sustainable Forest Management Network

The objective of the Southeast Asia Sustainable Forest Management Network is to study degraded natural forests where community management may be a viable strategy in establishing access controls and thereby stabilizing forest use. The Network is comprised of a small, select coalition of Asian colleagues, many of whom have collaborated together for years, both with each other and with Network facilitators. The solidarity of the Network members is based on a common commitment and well-defined focus on exploring alternative management strategies for Asia's disturbed natural forest lands. The Network's strategy has been to move away from conventional, academic research toward more applied, interdisciplinary studies which have both practical and policy relevance. Through case diagnostic studies, the work attempts to capture the voices and needs of forest communities and to communicate their indigenous knowledge and perspectives on the human-forest relationship. To that end, the national teams in Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines are developing long-term working relationships with community members to learn more about their forest management issues, resource-use systems, and problem-solving strategies. The emphasis of the Network's research includes the ecology of natural regeneration, the economics of non-timber forest product systems, and the community organizations and institutional arrangements which support participatory management. The lessons stemming from the research aim to inform field implementation procedures, reorient training, and guide policy reform.

Center for Southeast Asia Studies
University of California
2223 Fulton, #617
Berkeley, California 94720
Tel: 510-642-3609
FAX: 510-643-7062

©1993

Front cover photo: Last bastion of primary forest in the Dupinga watershed.

UPLAND PHILIPPINE COMMUNITIES:

Guardians of the Final Forest Frontiers

Southeast Asia
Sustainable Forest management Network

Peter Walpole, S.J.
Environmental Research Division (ERD)
Manila Observatory

Gilbert Braganza, ERD
John Burtkenley Ong, ERD
Gary James Tengco, ERD
Ernesto Wijanco, ERD

Edited by:

Mark Poffenberger
and
Betsy McGean

Research Network Report
Number 4, August 1993

Center for Southeast Asia Studies
International and Area Studies
University of California, Berkeley

CONTENTS

PREFACE

This report provides a preliminary discussion of selected research findings from the Philippine members of the Southeast Asia Sustainable Forest Management Network. The Filipino team at the Environmental Research Division (ERD) of the Manila Observatory has been involved in diagnostic studies of the two research sites for several years. In the future, the ERD staff hopes to continue to work with these upland communities to assist them in stabilizing their natural resources and developing integrated watershed management plans. The Philippines team appreciates its continuing support from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. The team members would also like to acknowledge the cooperation they have received from the Department of Energy and Natural Resources. Finally, the authors would like to express their gratitude to the residents of Gabaldon, Malinao, St. Peter, Zamboangita, and Bendum for their hospitality and friendship. It is their dedication and commitment to protect their homelands against more powerful outside interests that has inspired the team to work with them and support their efforts at stabilizing the upper watersheds.

The Southeast Asia Sustainable Forest Management Network Secretariat, based at the Center for Southeast Asia Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, would also like to acknowledge its cast of supporters and contributors. We are most grateful to John O'Toole at the Rockefeller Foundation for his continued interest in the subject of community forest management and his commitment to support Network activities over the past two years. We would like to specifically thank Molly Kux and Toby Pierce of USAID for their intellectual guidance to the Network, as well as Janis Alcorn, Stephen Kelleher, and Richard Richina of the USAID-supported World Wildlife Fund's Biodiversity Support Program, for providing ideas and financial assistance for the production and publication of this study. At the University of California, Berkeley, we owe thanks for the excellent work of cartographer Jane Sturzinger, artist Anne Higgins, editors Bojana Ristich and Stephen Pitcher, and the competent administrators in the grants office. The facilitators of the Network are indebted to Robert Reed, Eric Crystal, and Cynthia Josayma at the Center for Southeast Asia Studies for their consistent cooperation and overall institutional support. Finally, the Secretariat would like to extend its heartfelt thanks to all the member scientists of the Southeast Asia Network, whom we greatly value as friends and colleagues, for their hospitality during our field visits and for their commitment to this important research.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Documentation of deforestation and, its impacts upon two of the Philippines' largest and most strategic watersheds, the Dupinga of Central Luzon and the Pulangi of Mindanao, provides lessons for the future management of the nation's remaining forests. These watersheds support some of the country's last primary rainforests, while also serving major agricultural and population centers in the lowland plains. Poorly regulated logging by multinational corporations and Filipino elites have rapidly denuded upland environments between the 1950s and 1980s, and a debilitating economic crisis in the lowlands has forced a steady stream of poor migrants into the uplands to seek their subsistence from a dwindling natural resource base. Indigenous tribal communities, overwhelmed by this onslaught, have typically fled deeper into the upper reaches of the forests in a struggle to hold on to their traditional land-use practices and ways of life. The Dupinga and the Upper Pulangi watersheds truly represent the final forest frontiers in the Philippines, and their ecological survival is critically important for tribal communities, upland migrants, and downstream rural and urban dwellers alike.

Concerned and disadvantaged upland communities have already taken action in an attempt to halt logging and control downstream flooding problems. They have barricaded logging roads and confronted armed gangs hired by timber companies in an attempt to stop the destruction of their forest environment. The challenge facing the community is to resolve conflicts among different resource user groups and to reach a consensus regarding management objectives, operating rules and regulations, and the institutional structure through which access controls and use rights will be implemented. Strong community leadership, combined with facilitation from neutral third parties based in non-governmental organizations (NGOs), is already helping to join together tribal communities with migrant settlers to negotiate common goals and develop sustainable management strategies. However, the government will need to demonstrate strong political will in supporting community initiatives to stabilize valuable watersheds. This will require the unequivocal termination of remaining mining and logging leases, even if held by the rich and powerful. While the Philippines has drafted some of the most progressive community-oriented resource management policies in Asia, they will have little impact on the larger issues of upland resource degradation unless the government can move quickly and decisively to channel its policies to empower poor tribal and upland migrant groups. The following case study research documents the severity of the problems, while also giving notice that local communities are already experimenting with strategies to respond to them. These communities undoubtedly hold the key to the solution of access controls and participatory management. Yet they desperately need strong, supportive leadership and action from a government committed to enabling their role as guardians of the forest.