Community based forest management in the Philippines
Community-based forest management (CBFM) constitutes “a powerful paradigm that evolved out of the failure of state forest governance to ensure the sustainability of forest resources and the equitable distribution of access to and benefits from them”. In 1995, the Philippine government adopted CBFM as a national scheme to promote sustainable forest governance, in recognition of the negative impacts occurring as a result of widespread forest loss across the country. The scheme stresses the importance of involving communities in sustaining the forest through projects such as timber harvesting, agro-forestry and livestock raising. CBFM therefore advocates an increasingly ‘bottom up’ – as opposed to the historically ‘top down’ and centralised - approach to sustainable forest governance involving a variety of stakeholders. By 2005, 5503 projects had been established across the country. For this reason the Philippines has been considered a pioneer within Asia for the successful implementation of CBFM as a nationwide tool of forest governance. CBFM has resulted in varying levels of success across the country, primarily due to unstable policies, poor policy implementation and a lack of funding and assistance by the local and national governments. Successful projects tend to a result of strong government backing, strong community will to