AntePodium
An Antipodean electronic journal of world affairs published by the
School of Political Science and International Relations at Victoria
University of Wellington [2/01]
Corruption, Poverty and the Loss of
Biological Treasure in the Philippines
Herb Thompson, Professor of Economics, Murdoch University, WA,
Australia
"For all men are by nature provided of notable multiplying glasses, (that is their
Passions and Self-love,) through which, every little payment appeareth a great
grievance; but are destitute of those prospective glasses…to see a farre off the
miseries that hang over them, and cannot without such payments be avoyded”.
(Thomas Hobbes 1651: 239)
Introduction
Thomas Hobbes [1651] was well aware of the all-too-human tendency to sacrifice more
weighty long-term interests on the altar of short-term problems and their resolution.
However, as will be argued, the short-term problems in the Philippines are antecedental
to the long-term interests of us all.
Economically, The Philippines was making reasonable gains in growth, as well as the
reduction of poverty, during the 1990s until it was hit simultaneously by the 1997
regional financial crisis and the El Nino weather shocks (World Bank 2000c: 2). After
hitting another low point in 1998/19991 the Philippine economy did grow faster than
1
Philippines at a Glance (1999)
Population (millions)
Population annual growth (%)
Life expectancy at birth
Infant mortality (per 1.000 live births)
Illiteracy (% of population age 15+)
Total debt/GDP
Annual growth GNP per capita (%)
Inflation (%)
Current account balance (USD million)
Total debt (USD million)
Source: World Bank 1999a
76.8
2.2
69
32
5
48.4
1.3
8.2
11,292
52,212
expected in the second quarter of 2000. Gross domestic product expanded by 4.5 per cent
year-on-year.2 Inflation fell below its high level of 8.2 per cent in 1999, but is slowly
rising once again to 6.9% in January 2001. The current account remains in surplus but
unemployment rose to 13.9 percent in April 2000, which is the highest in 9 years, and
reflects a sharp drop in agriculture employment (World Bank 2000a). This rise in
unemployment is a most unsatisfactory occurrence given the fact that the rural poor
already make up 75 per cent of the total number of poor people in the nation. Although
poverty has declined over the last 15 years, the unfortunate reality is that per capita
income has still not reached the level of 1982. Real per capita GDP was USD1,915 in
1982 and USD1,824 in 1998 (World Bank 2000b). In line with the major hypothesis of
this paper, there is increasing evidence in the Philippines to show that the elimination of
unemployment slows down tropical rainforest deforestation. One project on the
Philippine island of Palawan is exemplary, where an irrigation project was used to draw
in wage labourers to newly created rice fields in the lowlands. This had an immediate
effect in reducing the pressure on families to migrate in order to cultivate forested areas
nearby (Helmuth 1999).
Along with reducing unemployment and fighting poverty, the new President MacapagalArroyo has two additional jobs to complete if she is to achieve a favourable result by the
conclusion of her tenure in office. First, in the short run she must dramatically change the
culture of corruption that Presidents such as Marcos and Estrada have asserted. Second,
and more seriously, she must “see a farre off the miseries that hang over them” and stop
the degradation of Philippine forests and the resulting loss of species. She will require
assistance. Herein we examine the inter-relation between the processes of political
corruption and the degradation of one of the most important components of the earth’s
commons – the Philippines. Neither the people of the Philippines, nor the rest of the
world’s population can any longer afford the ecological disaster that has played itself out
in this nation over the past forty years. The key proposition of this paper is that
corruption, poverty, deforestation and species loss are all part of an interrelated structural
totality.
Although not directly relevant, one of the caricatural final acts of ex-President Estrada,
which demonstrates the corruption/ecological nexus was the clear felling of a protected
forest inside the former US military base Camp John Hay. This was done in order to
make way for an exclusive enclave of 25 log cabins built especially for Joseph Estrada
and 15 of his cronies. Camp John Hay, nestled 5,000 feet in the mountains of Baguio
City, used to be the premier rest and recreation centre of US forces in the Philippines. It
became one of the playgrounds for Estrada and his closest friends and business cronies.
They included, among others, Philippines Air Lines chairman Lucio Tan, BW Resources
chairman Dante Tan, plastics king William Gatchalian, businessmen Jacinto Ng, Lucio
2
Comparative Growth Rates (percent)
1980-85
1985-90
Indonesia
6.2
Malaysia
5.5
Philippines
-0.1
Source: World Bank 2000c: 9
6.5
5.5
2.7
1990-97
1998
7.6
8.7
3.1
-14.3
-4.8
-0.5
Co, the duty-free shop magnate, and Enrique Razon, who monopolised the contracts to
service the country’s ports.
Having had the pine forest clear felled, Estrada ordered the importation of Canadian
cedar wood to build the cabins at a cost of P40 million each (slightly less than USD1
million each). Baguio environmentalists pointed out that under the Bases Conversion
Development Act, tree cutting in military reservations is allowed only to prevent forest
fires. As will be indicated below, having sufficient legislation has never been the problem
in the Philippines (Rimban and Leonen 2000).
The following section limns the extremely important short run struggle to rid the political
structure of corruption. This is followed by an examination of the continuing forest
degradation and specie loss in the Philippines based upon reduced, but continuing illegal
logging, and shift the increasing spectre of shifting cultivation by the landless poor.
Finally, our analysis shows that while significant progress is being made in terms of bans,
executive orders and legislation, there is much, at the practical level to be accomplished.
As argued the variables of corruption, poverty and the rapid rate of tropical forest
degradation and species loss, are integrated in a holistic dilemma. Before attention can be
directed to saving the earth’s commons upon which we all depend, the omission of
corruption and poverty is a battle that is seminal. A conclusion draws upon the lessons to
be learned.
The Corruption Battle
Early in 1999, President Joseph Ejercito Estrada’s administration requested the World
Bank to make recommendations to help the government strengthen its fight against
corruption in the Philippines. The World Bank agreed, noting that the links between
corruption and the country’s development were becoming increasingly clear. In his July
27, 1998, State of the Nation Address, President Estrada had singled out the struggle
against graft and corruption as his fundamental priority. “To begin with,” he stated, “we
have to reduce the cost of governance, costs that go higher and higher and higher with
each corrupt act, with each wasteful project” (World Bank 2000d: i and 3).
Fifteen years after she was swept into power by the first People Power Revolution,
former President Corazon Cojuangco Aquino remains a symbol of the opposition to
corruption. The unexpected widow of Ninoy Aquino became the country’s 11th chief
executive in 1986 and, although she too was periodically under various clouds of
suspicion, she made important and irrefutable progress in the reduction of political rentseeking and patronage (Remigio 1993: 201). Much remains to be accomplished (World
Bank 2000c: v).
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (daughter of former president Diosdado Macapagal) sworn in
as President 20 January 2001, begins yet another chapter of reinventing the Presidency of
the Philippines. Ex-Philippine President Joseph Estrada, a manifest drunken, incompetent
criminal follows Ferdinand Marcos into oblivion after having lost the support of every
representative institution in the Philippines (The Philippine Inquirer, 28-1-01: 1).
However, the first day after President Macapagal-Arroyo took the reins of power a clique
friendly to deposed Estrada were contemplating a coup. The self-styled coup leaders were
Senators Juan Ponce Enrile and Gregorio Honasan and former Philippine National Police
chief Director General Panfilo Lacson. At least five Army companies, said to be loyal to
Enrile and Honasan, were ordered to head for Metro Manila from Enrile’s home province
of Cagayan by the conspirators. Eduardo "Danding" Cojuangco, a known crony and
political backer of Estrada, had offered to fund the destabilisation plot (The Philippine
Star, 23-1-01). Although Enrile and Honasan were among the heroes of the 1986 popular
revolt that toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos, they have, since then, been at the helm of
at least seven rightist uprisings against Marcos’ successors. While no direct action
occurred immediately, the clique symbolised the unstable predicament of MacapagalArroyo.
Estrada accumulated significant wealth throughout his term, beginning in June 1998,
from “bribes and kickbacks”. He continues to have that wealth at his disposal either to
provide for his defence, or for counter-insurgency activities with his mates. A search in
the Securities and Exchange Commission identified 66 corporations in which he, his
wives and various children were listed as incorporators, board members or substantial
shareholders. He and his family also own 17 pieces of real estate in Metro Manila,
Tagaytay and Baguio totalling USD45 million (Coronel 2001). During his 31 months in
office, ousted President Estrada, according to private prosecutors, was able to stash away
the equivalent of USD500 million, in multiple secret bank accounts via the use of six
aliases (Marfil 2001). One of his mistresses, Laarni Enriquez, is known to have had
USD12 million in a single bank account.
While Estrada and his cronies were plotting the recapture of power, Macapagal-Arroyo
proceeded to protect herself by appointing trusted holdovers and new heroes of “people
power II” to her cabinet. She announced the retention of Armed Forces chief General
Angelo Reyes, whose defection to the opposition forces turned the tide in the movement
to oust Joseph Estrada as president. But within days some juggling of the appointment
book took place as she withdrew nominations of her national security adviser, retiredGeneral Lisandro Abadia, under a cloud of suspicion with respect to the alleged misuse
of the military pension fund (Avendaño and Cueto 2001). At the same time she publicly
acknowledged the "evil designs" to destabilise her administration and sternly promised
her enemies: "I shall crush you" (Pablo 2001)
Named as new justice secretary was Hernando Perez, a former congressman who served
as a private prosecutor in the impeachment trial of Estrada. Sen. Raul Roco, one of the
judges who voted to open sealed bank accounts crucial to the corruption case against
Estrada, was named secretary of the Department of Education, Culture and Sports.
Appointed head of the Presidential Management Staff was Vicky Garchitorena, head of a
group that originally called for the civil disobedience campaign against Estrada (The
Philippine Star, 23-1-01)
Newly-appointed Finance Secretary Alberto Romulo pointed out that it would be
necessary to focus on reviewing the country’s economic growth targets as well as
trimming the country’s bloated budget deficit. "We were left with a Herculean task. It is
difficult to clean up the mess," Romulo said, referring to the economic problems
promoting investors’ lack of confidence in the country. Initially, efforts are necessary to
increase revenue collection, especially from delinquent big-time tax evaders. Eduardo
"Danding" Cojuangco and Lucio Tan were the top candidates on his hit list.
However, it must be emphasised that “a change of personalities is not a change in the
government or the state”. Most of the government has not changed at all. “The formal
structure of centralised, elitist and corrupt government built up over decades remains in
place. The distribution of wealth remains as skewed as ever, with so much wealth
scandalously concentrated in a few families and corporations while the vast majority of
people wallow in abject poverty” (Verzola 2001). 20 per cent of the population receive
more than 50 per cent of the income and the bottom 20 per cent of the people receive
only 6 per cent (Myers 1999: 21).
In the Philippines, poverty and corruption go hand-in-hand. What had been a relatively
prosperous nation in the region following World War II, has been economically and
politically decimated. Since Marcos took the reigns of power, the wealth of the nation has
been progressively siphoned off by corrupt leaders and their aristocratic cronies. This has
been made possible by cosmetic economic and political state, tarted up by an American
copycat institutional structure, and impregnated by a landed aristocracy.
Biodiversity Loss
From the 1960s right up to the previous decade, rampant deforestation and the resulting
loss of biodiversity has been the norm in the Philippines, as has been the case throughout
much of Southeast Asia.3 This has been attributed to a number of causal factors that
include uncontrolled logging, forest conversion for plantation and mining activities,
swidden agriculture, fuelwood gathering and upland migration (Contreras 1991).
Consequently, the proportion of land under forest declined from about 49 per cent in
1950 to 22 per cent in 1987, and continuing down to 18 per cent at present (ADB: 7;
World Bank 1999b: 69). Although the Philippines ranks 7th of 17 megadiversity countries
(countries holding two-thirds of the earth’s biological resources), in the last half of the
20th century 60 per cent of Philippine flora became extinct. Today the Philippines has
remaining about 13,500 plant species, which represent five per cent of the world’s flora.
From this figure, 32% is endemic and found mostly in the primary forests (The Freeman
3
Land Use Changes in Developing Countries, 1950-1992
Forest land
Country
1000 hectares
Percentage
Bangladesh (1973-92)
-339
-15.2
Cambodia (1967-92)
-1,772
-13.3
Indonesia (1973-92)
-15,627
-12.8
Laos (1973-92)
-1,900
-13.2
Malaysia (1973-92)
-3,588
-15.6
-330
-0.9
-4,603
-31.5
0
0
-4,000
-29.3
PNG
Philippines (1967-92)
Solomon Islands (1973-92)
Viet Nam (1973-92)
Source: Barraclough 2000: 23-25
Online 1999). And it is those living in poverty who are most affected most by the
biological catastrophe.
“Degradation has already undermined the long-term value of forest resources and
reduced the value of the Philippines’s biological heritage for current and future
generations. As with urban pollution, the poor suffer disproportionately from
declining productivity of forests, soils, and fisheries. The biological diversity of
the Philippines is still rich but is threatened by severely denuded natural
vegetation, a weak protected areas system, population pressure, and inadequate
law enforcement. The current rate of irreversible biodiversity loss is probably
higher in the Philippines than in any other country in East Asia” (World Bank
1999b: 69).
The country's forest industry in the past, based primarily on the export of logs and
lumber, reached its peak output in the 1960s and early 1970s. In the 1970s, the logging
and wood processing industries were one of the ten principal export earners, contributing
12.5 per cent to the gross domestic product. In the 1980s, output began to decline due to
decreasing timber resources, finally resulting in a log export ban in 1986 and a lumber
export ban in 1989 (ADB: 42). In any case, it has never simply been a question of
political bans, limits or legislation in the Philippines. Under Marcos, as early as 1979,
with Presidential Decree No. 1159, logging firms were required to reforest their
concession areas with the same species harvested, replacing each cut or damaged tree
with tree seedlings (Hyman 1983:517).
Agents of the state have always limited their regulatory and fiscal functions in forest
management, preferring instead to grant vast forest concessions, through the Timber
License Agreement (TLA) system, to private timber companies, which engaged in direct
extractive and management activities. The TLA system degenerated into a patrimonial
mechanism under Marcos, where forest concessions were awarded on the strength of
partisan linkages between power brokers (Magno 1994: 261).
Increasingly, world attention was drawn to the problem by the intensity of ecological
disasters that were attributed to deforestation. These included the fires in Mindanao and
the floods in Negros Oriental, Samar and the most publicised disaster in Leyte, all of
which caused tremendous damage to lives and properties (Mather 1993: 2). Ten years
ago, the flash flood that swept through the city of Ormoc on the West Coast of Leyte,
killed more than 6,000 people. Triggered by Tropical Storm Thelma, the winds of about
65 km per hour were not considered particularly strong, and few residents of the city of
about 120,000 people, bothered to change their routine. However, the fact that the winds
were accompanied by very heavy rains, six inches in a matter of hours, denuded
mountainsides were sent crashing into the Anilao River. The River burst its banks and
washed homes, cars and thousands of people and livestock into the sea. It was the most
devastating flooding to ever hit a populated area in the Philippines.
Virtually no one has ever disagreed that deforestation was largely to blame. Today,
satellite maps show that only 12 per cent of Leyte remains forested, and most of what's
left is only the residual degraded forest that remained after the loggers were finished.
Local officials, including Ormoc's mayor, the local congressman, and the governor all
agreed that illegal logging was rampant and carried out under the protection of local
military and police officers, and with the co-operation of local Department of
Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) officers (ADB: xiv; Philippine Issues: 45;
New Scientist: 40). Congressman Manuel Horca Jr., representative from the second
district of Leyte had been identified as one of the major illegal loggers in Leyte, along
with top police officials and local government representatives. After being sacked from
his position, as an engineer in the public service, in the late 1970's for forgery, he was
appointed as provincial engineer in Leyte. During the 1987 elections he was provided
with monetary assistance by his brother-in-law, Pedro Porciuncula, who was one of the
biggest gambling lords in Metro Manila as well as a major illegal logger himself. This
support allowed Horca to join the Laban ng Demodratikong Pilipino and win the
Congressional seat. A DENR syndicate known as the “Magnificent Seven”, and headed
by Vincente Paragas, the regional technical director in Eastern Visayas for forestry
matters colluded openly with Horca and others on a regular basis (The Philippine Daily
Inquirer, Editorial, 6-12-91: 1, 4 and 12).
The former DENR Secretary, Senator Ernesto Maceda (who was sacked by Aquino in
1986 under pressure from the military that alleged corruption within his Department) said
efforts to stop logging had failed because Aquino's relatives were deeply involved in the
timber industry. He said that relatives of the President headed the line of applicants for
logging permits when he was the Minister for Natural Resources, and he had little choice
but to oblige. In an interview with Junie Kalaw (personal interview 12-2-92) of the
environmental group Haribon, Kalaw said that: “non-government organisations as well as
local people, have long told the government agencies who is responsible for cutting the
forests, which generals are protecting them (or logging themselves), and which DENR
and local officials make the processing and transport of logs possible - only to be told that
there's no evidence to warrant prosecuting them”. Further he noted that “more than half
of the members of the House or Representatives are loggers or have interests in the
industry”. The Speaker of the House of Representatives at the time of the Ormoc flood,
Ramon Mitra, a member from Palawan, was the archetypal traditional politician and
landowner making a fortune logging the rainforests in his own electorate. And Juan
Ponce Enrile, one of those suspected of plotting a coup against President MacapagalArroyo, mentioned above, owned many of the logging concessions in the north of Luzon
(Philippine Issues: 11).
Most recently the problem has shifted in both degree and kind. The average annual
deforestation rate, primarily due to illegal logging, was 300,000 hectares in the late
1960s, dropping to 150,000 hectares in the 1970s, and settling at an annual present rate
estimated at about 100,000 hectares. Presently, a serious process of converting upland
forests into “slash-and-burn” (kaingin) cultivated lands is also being pursued by the poor
and landless seeking, other sources of livelihood. Ormoc, Leyte is once again
symptomatic of this process. Following the great flood that decimated the town in 1991,
the landless began to move to the uplands. Ormoc, being a microcosm of Philippine
society weaves together a feudal structure where a small number of families control most
of the land. The landless and homeless followed the trails left by the logging companies.
There, they engage in kaingin (Vitug 1993: 1-3). The intensity of the incursion and the
unauthorised nature of land occupation promote rapid exploitation of the forests with
little regard to sustaining their productivity, repetitively moving from one site to another.
Approximately 8 million people are involved in this type of shifting cultivation activity
(Ganguli 1995: 232). Now the fate of the rainforest and marginal, poor farmers are
interconnected. According to Myers, “the greatest single cause of deforestation, even
more destructive than commercial logging, gold mining, or cattle ranching, is slash-andburn farming as practiced by small-scale farmers” (Myers 1999: 20).
Given rapid population growth (2.3 per cent annually), increased competition for lowland
farming areas, concentrated land holdings (three per cent of the total number of farms and
plantations take up 25 per cent of the agricultural land). The fact that 70 per cent of rural
households either own no land or less than two hectares each shows that a crisis is in the
offing. Inequality in rural Philippines has been, and is becoming more serious (Balisacan
1992: 132-133). The arable land per rural inhabitant in the Philippines is now 0.4 hectare.
Millions of impoverished peasants are abandoning their homes and migrating to forested
uplands to search for new locations to scrape out a living for their families. Mostly slashand-burn cultivators, they earn USD500 or less annually. Hilly uplands in the Philippines
are losing well over 5 percent of their forests every year, and the resultant erosion
damages watersheds and wreaks havoc on lowland farms. Lowland irrigation systems are
degraded, driving out still more small farmers. The mountainous uplands are unusually
vulnerable to soil erosion, as the hills generally slope from eighteen to thirty degrees.
Some of the smaller farms may occupy even forty-five-degree slopes (Myers 1999: 21).
Forrest land degradation, created by both illegal loggers and slash-and-burn cultivators, is
estimated (Ganguli 1995: 230-32), to have resulted in the loss of USD 3.5 billion of
environmental benefits, which includes soil productivity and the safeguarding of
downstream infrastructure. In response, the government has initiated the Integrated Social
Forestry Program (ISFP). ISFP instrumentalities are: (i) grant of tenure over the occupied
forest land (not exceeding 7 hectares/family) for a renewable period of 25 years; (ii)
assistance in formulating farming and small-scale forestry plans; (iii) priority for wagebased employment; and (iv) finalisation of settler census to control migration. The
progress of ISFP has been modest, and the migratory incursion continues unabated.
Limited progress is due to (i) minimal provision of infrastructure; (ii) insufficient land
allotment for households to earn adequate income; (iii) technical packages which produce
income streams over too lengthy a period of time; and (iv) the continued assumption by
beneficiaries that their surrounding environment was only for temporary abode. To assist
in responding to these weaknesses, the DENR is decentralising its operations to local
field offices, strengthening monitoring systems, issuing certificates of ancestral land
claims, and formalising community forest management agreements.
Another, more subtle problem has arisen that is of concern to environmental nationalists
in the Philippines. Former environment undersecretary Delfin Ganapin Jr. said, “the
Philippines’ diverse natural resources have been attracting biopirates” (The Freeman
1999). According to Ganapin, the Philippines is home to some of the world’s most
important plant species known for their medicinal, beauty and fragrance values. Big
international companies, including overseas universities, provide grants to Philippine
academics for research, and then use them to get plants used for producing medicine,
perfume and other products. While this issue lies outside the parameters of this paper, it
is becoming representative of concerns throughout the less-developed world, and will
become a major issue in the Philippines in the near future. Referring to the point raised
above, that President Macapagal-Arroyo would require assistance, this kind of
multinational corporate activity appears to be, metaphorically, kicking sand in the face of
a people under severe economic, political and environmental stress.
Saving the Earth’s Commons
Poverty has been a major issue of concern in the Philippines as it adversely impacts on
the country’s social, economic, environmental, and political development. Latest family
income surveys show that income worsened dramatically between 1994 and 1997
(National Council for Sustainable Development 1999). As forest resources have declined,
just as dramatically, over the past four decades, this has led to an increased incidence of
flooding lowland areas, along with adverse impacts on biodiversity in the uplands. Now
the poor are actively cutting down and burning the remaining forest in order to survive.
How many species can we afford to lose biologically and ecologically? (Solbrig 1991)
When does the loss become significant, serious, crucial, critical or catastrophic? Myers
takes the position that the optimum number of species to be preserved is the maximum
number we are able to preserve (Myers 1993: 76). Presently, we are living up to the
expectations of Thomas Hobbes by effectively asserting that we can afford to allow large
numbers of species to become extinct on the grounds that we cannot afford otherwise.
The corollary of this stance is that we are implicitly deciding that thousands of future
generations can certainly do without large numbers of species, and that we feel
sufficiently certain we know what we are talking about when we make that decision on
their unconsulted behalf. While not legally corrupt, it is more serious, in terms of global
negative externalities, than economic and political corruption. By focusing on “people
power” in the Philippines today, it must not be forgotten that the decline of tropical
rainforests and the resulting loss of thousands of species annually are a global, irreparable
disaster (Beck 1992: 102).
It has become a truism in the Philippines, as well as most other nations, that critics of
increasing national poverty, and of irresponsible forest practices, first look to government
regulations and controls as the answer (Pearse 1992: 7). If a nation’s government is rife
with corruption then there is little opportunity even to enforce or promote the regulations
and controls that exist.
In 1989 the Philippine Strategy for Sustainable Development was adopted as a
framework for policy implementation for the rehabilitation of degraded ecosystems,
encouragement of sustainable growth in rural areas, reform of tenure rights for the forestresident communities, and greater recognition of the interest of future generations
(Ganguli 1995: 229).
The Philippines adopted the Master Plan for Forestry Development in 1990 providing the
framework for combating deforestation (Society of Filipino Foresters 1991:7-9).
President Ramos also issued Executive Order 263 "Adopting Community-Based Forest
Management (CBFM) as the National Strategy to Ensure Sustainable Development of
Forest Resources". The environmental non-government organisation community (ENGO)
is a major vehicle for the state’s community forestry policy with ENGOs serving as a
critical link between the DENR and the grassroots organisations responsible for policy
implementation at the local level. Diverse ENGOs use the Green Forum-Philippines, a
loose federation, created in early 1990, as a means of giving each other support,
exchanging expertise and working together on various sustainable development
campaigns and projects (Bryant and Bailey 1997: 151).
Pursuant to DENR's mandate to manage the natural forest resources on a sustainable
basis, and in accordance with the recommendations of the Philippine Master Plan for
Forestry Development and the Natural Resources Management Program, the following
orders were issued:
“1. Logging in the old growth (virgin) forests shall henceforth be prohibited
starting 01 January 1992. These forests will form part of the permanent national
forest estate primarily under the Integrated Protected Area System (IPAS).
2. Logging operations shall, beginning 01 January 1992 shift to the second growth
(residual) forests, except on the following areas where logging shall also be
prohibited; areas with slope of 50% and greater, in areas above 1000 meters
elevation, within 20-meters of either side of stream bank for stream bank
protection, wilderness areas, proclaimed watershed reservation, in areas identified
with historical value and in other areas proclaimed for ecological and
environmental protection” (DENR 1991).
The DENR was given the go-ahead to vigorously prosecute illegal logging and related
cases pursuant to its mandate as the primary government agency responsible for the
conservation of the country's environment and natural resources. And, in accordance with
the DENR Special Order No. 1580, Series of 1993, which created a Special Prosecution
Task Force code-named "Task Force TAGA-USIG", the following guidelines in the
prosecution of illegal logging and related cases were promulgated:
“Responsibility for Prosecution - As a general policy, the prosecution of illegal
logging and related cases shall be the primary responsibility of the Regional
Offices, through their Legal Officers, subject to the supervision and control of the
Assistant Secretary for Legal Affairs. In this connection, the Regional Legal
Officers shall actively collaborate with the City/Provincial Prosecutors in the
various designated to compose the Special Task Force on Environment and
Natural Resources pursuant to Department Order No. 205, dated June 17, 1993 of
the Department of Justice” (DENR 1994).
Internationally, the nation became a signatory to the United Nation’s Framework on
Climate Change, which was ratified in 1994 and was also a signatory to the Convention
on Biodiversity Conservation. The country’s commitments under this Convention are
being systematically pursued within the framework of the Philippine Strategy for
Biodiversity Conservation, endorsed by the Philippine Council for Sustainable
Development and President Fidel V. Ramos, who approved and promulgated it in April
1994 (National Council for Sustainable Development 1999).
In 1995, President Ramos promulgated Executive Order No. 263 “to create and promote
the Community-based forest management system to achieve sustainable forestry and
social justice”. The DENR Secretary was required to submit a “National Comprehensive
Community Forestry Action Plan to the President within six months”.
In 1999, a World Bank report made it abundantly clear to Estrada that improving public
governance, the reduction of corruption, the reduction of poverty, and protection of the
nation’s natural heritage were fundamentally linked as a policy package. Unfortunately,
the assumption that Estrada understood the implications of the report was misguided.
“…the urgency of enhancing public governance has increased…President Joseph
Estrada’s administration recognises the importance of good governance - among
its top priorities are tackling graft and corruption.… The driving forces of
environmental problems in the Philippines include high poverty, rapid population
growth, fiscal and macroeconomic policies that discourage sustainable
environmental management, lack of secure land and resource tenure, and
inadequate environmental safeguards and enforcement tools” (World Bank 1999b:
3, 17, 67).
The situation in the Philippines illustrates the interconnection between preservation of the
world’s plants and animals and the plight of the poor. With a corrupt rent-seeking regime
in power, there is no possibility that the resources essential to solving both problems will
occur. Since the lands they inhabit are considered unsuitable for mainstream agriculture,
displaced peasants are now causing a disproportionate share of the world’s deforestation,
much of it in exactly the areas that are home to the most diverse species of wildlife. To
save the tropical rainforests requires a multifaceted attack on both corruption and poverty
in the Philippines.
Conclusion
Some of the lessons learned in the Philippines are: 1) it is imperative to provide longterm security of tenure to local beneficiaries involved in reforestation activities as a
poverty reduction policy; 2) the existing forest rules, regulations and laws are not enough
to prevent illegal logging or slow down shifting cultivation because corruption is rife and
enforcement is lacking; 3) if poverty is a driving cause, community participation provides
one important means of protecting and preventing deforestation; 4) forest policies can
only evolve on the basis of cumulative knowledge and information of those who live in
or near the forest; 5) corruption leads not only to lack of public governance, but
increasing poverty and ecological disasters; and 6) poverty, corruption and deforestation
are interlinked in the Philippines.
Even within a neoliberal perspective, much remains to be accomplished in the
Philippines. The share of government spending and removal of vested interests in the
rural sector must advance rapidly, particularly in the poorest areas such as Central
Mindanao, Eastern Visayas, and the Cordilleras. Crony protectionism and rent seeking,
detrimental to the poor must be halted. The sugar industry, one of the most anachronistic
feudal ramparts, could be one of the litmus tests for President Macapagal-Arroyo, whose
family is linked to the protectionist sugar bloc (Philippine Center for Investigative Justice
2001).
The nexus between poverty, corrupt leaders and deforestation must be broken by
elimination of all the elements together. The comparative advantage of people dependant
on the forest is that: a) they have exceptional knowledge about their local environment
with extensive experience concerning those things that affect their existence; b) they are
aware of the interconnectedness of plants, animals and soils, their interrelationships and
ecology; and c) they have become very ingenious at making do with the natural and
mechanical resources at their disposal (DeWalt 1994: 125). The comparative advantage
of the numerous, broad-based civil society organisations in the Philippines is that they
have turned “people power” into a potent force, by driving corrupt criminals out of office.
Finally, we must be reminded that systems as large and as complicated as the earth's
crust, the stock market, and international ecosystems, can break down not only under the
force of a mighty blow but also at the flick of a butterfly’s wing. Large interactive
political-economic systems perpetually organise and reorganise themselves to critical
states, in which a minor event may start a chain reaction that can lead to social upheaval
or catastrophe, whether it be generated by a corrupt President, a collapse in agricultural
subsistence, El Niño, or the logging of steep forested hillsides by frantic peasants. Large
interactive systems cannot be examined in the same way as small, orderly systems, by
studying their elements separately and by analysing their mechanisms individually. The
dynamics of large interactive systems must be described holistically and interactively
(Bak and Chen 1991: 26-32; Arthur, et al.1997: 4-5).
To think about the environment as a ‘politicised environment’ helps to overcome the
human-environment dichotomy that is a major weakness of most environmental research
(Szerszynski, et al. 1996). The role of power (corruption), in the mediation of relations
between agents over environmental matters, becomes of paramount consideration. The
control over societal resources, the prioritisation of projects, the representation of
environmental valuation and the formation of unequal distribution and access to capital
leading to poverty, inscribes the environment with the relationships of class power.
The understanding that arises from analysing the Philippines holistically is that any nonpolitical approach that calls upon generalised public opinion or the leader of a particular
regime to end the devastation is supremely misguided. The leaders (Marcos/Estrada), in
this instance, if not directly implicated in causing rural poverty and tropical deforestation,
are surely part of the problem, by withdrawing both the attention and resources from
disastrous national and international crises. Further, it is not simply a function of “rotten”
individuals, but the social relationships that permit these types of people to gain and
utilise power that are at issue. Leaders, even Macapagal-Arroyo, cannot solve problems
of poverty and biological disappearance until “people power” confronts the unequal
power of classes within the Philippines. Substantial social and economic dislocation is
required to both destroy the corruptive power of individuals, but moreso, the corruption
of class power (Williams 1995: 50). Getting rid of Estrada may have been necessary, but
it is hardly sufficient.
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