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Manila. Timber harvesting in natural forests in the Philippines was banned indefinitely this month in a presidential order to prevent the destructive flooding and landslides linked to logging.

The ban came after weeks of heavy rain unleashed severe flooding in several regions that claimed the lives of 47 people, forced over a million people into evacuation centers and caused damage to crops and property worth about $35 million.

Under the new logging restrictions, announced on Feb. 1, timber may be harvested only in tree plantations. In essence, explained Environment Secretary Ramon Paje: “You cannot harvest what you did not plant.”

Conservationists welcomed the ban but worry about how effective it will be in a country with powerful logging interests and weak law implementation. “This will certainly be a test of Aquino’s resolve,” Greenpeace’s country representative Mark Dia said of President Benigno Aquino.

The Philippines — once covered by lush rainforests — was ranked the world’s fourth-most threatened forested region in a biogeographical survey this month by Conservation International, a Washington-based environmental group.

The top three hot spots were Indo-Burma, New Caledonia and Sundaland, a region covering the Malay peninsula and the islands of Borneo, Java and Sumatra.

In the early 1950s, the Philippines had 15 million hectares of forests covering around half the archipelago’s land mass. By 1997, there were just 5.4 million ha.

Since then, reforestation programs have raised the coverage to 7.2 million ha, according to current Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) data.

Plantations — the only areas where logging is now legal — cover 330,000 ha of total forested land.

President Aquino’s move is not the first to tackle the problem. To reduce deforestation, timber exports were banned in 1989 by his mother, former president Corazon Aquino — and the ban has not been lifted since then.

But exports of furniture and woodcrafts have grown strongly in recent years, totalling $1.1 billion last year, up 23 per cent from 2009. Domestically, timber is used mainly in the furniture and construction industries, with the latter posting growth of 22.6 per cent last year.

To what extent logging is to blame for flooding and landslides has long been intensely debated here. Climate change was certainly seen as a major factor in the unseasonably heavy rain that hit parts of the country earlier this year. But there is plenty of evidence, too, that degradation of forested areas contributed to landslides and flooding over the years.

Among the debris flushed down a mountainside in the flash floods that killed more than 6,000 people in the central Philippine town of Ormoc in November 1991 were hundreds of logs and shipping containers full of cut timber.

The ban on logging in natural forests also mandated the creation of a government task force to lead the fight against illegal logging. Mr Dia says there is an acute shortage of forest rangers, with just one patrolling 4,000 ha of forested land.

There are no official estimates on the extent of illegal timber harvesting by small-scale farmers and logging syndicates. But a published source cited in a 2008 report on global illegal logging by the United States’ Congressional Research Service estimated that up to 45 per cent of logging in the Philippines is illegal.

Illegal logging carries a maximum penalty of 20 years’ jail. Marilea Muniez of Code Red Philippines, which works with forest-based communities, said small-scale loggers get convicted from time to time, but there have been no recent cases of a big-time illegal logger being convicted.

The wood industry not surprisingly opposes the ban, and has warned of heavy job losses — around 650,000 people work in wood processing — and an increased reliance on timber imports, which account for around half of the timber used here.

But administration officials say Aquino will not budge. “This is an investment in our country’s future and the environment,” said presidential spokesman Ricky Carandang. “There is no intention to back off.”

Environmental issues appear to be an increasingly prominent part of the Aquino administration’s agenda. Earlier this month, Aquino announced that no new mining permits would be issued on the mineral-rich western island of Palawan, where the country’s last primary rainforests grow.

Reprinted courtesy of Straits Times Indonesia. To subscribe to Straits Times Indonesia and/or the Jakarta Globe call 2553 5055.