Abstract
Illegal logging is a threat to biodiversity and rural livelihoods in the Northern Sierra Madre Natural Park, the largest protected area in the Philippines. Every year between 20,000 and 35,000 cu. m wood is extracted from the park. The forestry service and municipal governments tolerate illegal logging in the protected area; government officials argue that banning an important livelihood activity of households along the forest frontier will aggravate rural poverty. However this reasoning underestimates the scale of timber extraction, and masks resource capture and collusive corruption. Illegal logging in fact forms an obstacle for sustainable rural development in and around the protected area by destroying ecosystems, distorting markets, and subverting the rule of law. Strengthening law enforcement and controlling corruption are prerequisites for sustainable forest management in and around protected areas in insular southeast Asia.
Highlights
In February 2005, a village councillor in San Isidro, a small barangay on the boundary of the Northern Sierra Madre Natural Park (NSMNP) in Isabela province, placed an improvised signpost along the road: ‘Informing all homebound trucks to drop one board for the barangay hall, church and cottage as requested by the barangay councillor AP’
Government officials turn a blind eye to the illegal logging activities in the protected area; they claim that environmental legislation cannot be enforced as the rural poor depend on timber revenues
We have argued that illegal logging in the NSMNP is not a small-scale livelihood activity of the rural poor as is often claimed by government officials
Summary
In February 2005, a village councillor in San Isidro, a small barangay (village) on the boundary of the Northern Sierra Madre Natural Park (NSMNP) in Isabela province, placed an improvised signpost along the road: ‘Informing all homebound trucks to drop one board for the barangay hall, church and cottage as requested by the barangay councillor AP’. Government officials turn a blind eye to the illegal logging activities in the protected area; they claim that environmental legislation cannot be enforced as the rural poor depend on timber revenues. Policy interventions aimed to counter illegal timber extraction by alleviating rural poverty, creating an alternative wood supply or enhancing the capacity of the DENR, fail to control illegal logging activities in the absence of effective law enforcement. Based on recent developments in Isabela where a coalition of civil society organisations and the reform-oriented provincial governor had remarkable success in controlling illegal logging activities, we conclude that improving the rule of law is a prerequisite for community-based forest conservation and poverty alleviation in insular southeast Asia. Bamboo harvesting and slash-and-burn farming (kaingin) are important economic activities for the rural poor in the Northern Sierra Madre, which in theory are illegal under Philippine forestry laws, but in practice are tolerated by government officials. Agricultural encroachment is an important proximate cause for deforestation in the NSMNP, but unlike timber extraction, it is primarily motivated by subsistence needs (Overmars 2006)
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