CHALLENGE

The Philippines is committed to a comprehensive reform agenda for climate adaptation and resilience, with a strong focus on increasing forest cover. The Government’s flagship National Greening Program (NGP) aims to reforest 1.5 million hectares of land between 2011 and 2016. With PROFOR support, the Philippines and the World Bank are undertaking a study to better understand the roles that forests ecosystem services play in poverty reduction and enhancing climate resilience. Preliminary results demonstrate the importance of forests in providing benefits for subsistence and cash incomes, and in regulating water flows in the dry season, flood waters in the wet season, and erosion and sediment control.

In the second phase of the NGP, the Government of the Philippines is interested in building on these study results by integrating poverty reduction and climate resilience objectives into forest land use (FLU) planning processes. However, this is a new focus area within the Philippines’ forest planning process. Government staff and other stakeholders need greater capacity to integrate climate resilience and ecosystem services objectives into FLU plans. This activity aims to strengthen that capacity.

APPROACH

In order to enhance the capacity of stakeholders, this activity will include:

• Holding a workshop to solicit recommendations from stakeholders on how the results from the previous study can be used to improve the FLU process. This will also be an opportunity to better understand stakeholders’ needs and expectations with respect to forest management.
• Developing a background paper on the value-added of integrating ecosystem services approaches in forest and land use planning.
• Conducting a desktop review of the FLU process and assess those under implementation.
• Reviewing international practices on integrating poverty and climate resilience concerns into forest development planning, to draw out lessons and best practices.
• Holding a consultation workshop government partners, development partners that have been involved in forest development in the Philippines, and civil society.
• Organizing training workshops on how to incorporate poverty and climate resilience considerations into the FLU planning process.
• Organizing learning workshops within the pilot municipalities.
• Disseminating results.

RESULTS

This activity is ongoing. Findings will be shared on this page when they become available.