The government is making available as much as one million hectares of forest areas for private sector development by next year, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) said on Wednesday.
The forest areas are on top of government-owned water assets also open for private sector development seen replicating the initial success of such programs as the Bulacan bulk water project responsibly undertaken by San Miguel Corp.
DENR undersecretary Carlos Primo David bared these plans at the Pilipinas Conference 2023 hosted by the Stratbase ADR Institute involving 292 water assets and one million hectares of land classified as forest areas. Private sector investments in mineral areas will similarly be opened at the same time, according to David who did not elaborate.
He said the unsolicited private sector investments for water will replicate the approach used in securing the Bulacan bulk water project.
David said proponents will be selected not by how much they benefit the government but by how cheaply they provide water services to local government unit beneficiaries.
According to David, the government looks to dispose of some 3,000 water rights that are non-performing for cancellation and use at some point forward.
“Water from protected areas and watershed reservations to be developed for water supply, that’s a whole new list of potential projects we should engage the private sector in if we want to improve and move to the next level,” David said.
DENR Secretary Maria Antonia Yulo Loyzaga said the agency will announce by early next year more details to the proposed one million hectares of forest land open for private investments.
“These are in open production forest where timber production, bamboo, abaca, coffee and other forest products can be cultivated. Investment terms, however, will require proponents to reforest a portion of their areas which are eligible for carbon credit purposes and help increase our permanently protected forest cover,” Loyzaga said.
“Similar announcements will also be made for areas within closed forests exclusively for carbon credit purposes and low impact activities such as eco-tourism,” Loyzaga added.
The DENR said the Philippines has 15 million hectares of land classified as forest land but that only around 23 percent is covered by forests from as high of 70 percent forest cover.
“We have managed to increase this the last few years but has not been that significant. We have almost lost all our timber production with the wood industry now resorting to importing 70 percent of our wood requirements from neighboring countries and beyond,” Loyzaga said.
According to her, the same can be said of the country’s other forest products, particularly abaca and bamboo.
She said the goal is to establish a national government-led platform for carbon credits facilitating the trade of such commodities through a government-to-government approach.
“We are working with the United Nations Development Program, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Department of Finance since (the DOF) is the principal body that will establish pricing. The DENR’s job is to establish the physical basis to do that and the basis will be fed into the pricing process. We are looking at the middle of next year for the platform,” Loyzaga said.
Carbon credits are tradable certificates for the privilege to emit an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
