About 70% of the country’s total land area consists of watersheds. A watershed is a land area that catches and drains water into particular catchments downstream. The ability of the watersheds to regulate the quantity and quality of water depends on its land cover. Forests have traditionally been associated with watershed protection since trees can regulate the flow and cleanse water that drains to the catchments. The forestlands (accounting for 53% of total land area or 15.88 M-ha) are mostly found in the watersheds. In the mid 1990s, however, the land area with natural forest cover was reduced to only 5.49 M-hectares (National Watershed Management Program, 1998). The rapid rate of deforestation over the last fifty years was attributed to rampant logging activities, both legal and illegal, which paved the way for forestlandconversion into agricultural lands and settlements. The practice of shifting cultivation also played an important part in the rapid denudation of the country’s forests. The situation was aggravated by the high population growth, tolerated and even encouraged, in a Christian-dominated country. This puts extreme pressure on the nation’s fixed land resources, a big part of which is under the control of a few, politically influential, families. It was estimated in 1988 that 18M people are already residing in the now fragile upland watersheds, which at the growth rate of more than 2% would have risen to 25 Million in year 2000 (Lim Suan and Rosario 1995).
Publication year
2003
Authors
Language
English
Keywords
environmental protection, forests, incentives, land use, logging residues, shifting cultivation
Geographic
Philippines
