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Regulating the Quality of Seedlings for Forest Restoration: Lessons from the National Greening Program in the Philippines

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Abstract

The use of low quality planting material is one of the major reasons for the limited success of past reforestation programs in the Philippines and elsewhere in the tropics. In the Philippines, a national policy has been in place since 2010, which regulates the quality of seedlings. As part of the policy, government reforestation programs are required to use only high quality seedlings from accredited seedling suppliers. A survey of nurseries producing seedlings for the National Greening Program in Eastern Visayas and Northern Mindanao regions was carried out to determine the effectiveness and challenges in implementing the forest nursery accreditation policy. The survey identified factors that limit the effectiveness of seedling quality regulation including lack of auditing of seedling quality in accredited nurseries, insufficient monitoring of the seedling supply chain among the network of nurseries supplying seedlings for reforestation programs, inadequate seedling production schedules, and inappropriate criteria for seedling quality assessment. The limited sources of high quality germplasm, nursery operators’ limited information on the attributes of high quality planting materials and lack of knowledge about high quality seedling production technologies contributed to the widespread production of low quality seedlings. The lack of seedling quality checks makes the government’s bidding scheme of seedling purchases prone to favouring the proliferation of low quality seedlings that are usually sold at lower prices. Nursery accreditation represents a major initiative in promoting the success of Philippine reforestation but our study found that considerable improvement of the policy and of its implementation is necessary. From our study, key lessons can be learned for the implementation of forest landscape restoration initiatives in other tropical developing countries.

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Notes

  1. The NGP is a government-initiated and stakeholder-based reforestation flagship program of former President Aquino which aims to reforest 1.5 M ha of public domain land from 2011 until 2016 for poverty reduction, food security, biodiversity conservation, environmental stability and climate change mitigation and adaptation (DENR 2012).

  2. See http://www.bonnchallenge.org.

  3. In the Philippines, all land having a slope of 18 % or more is classified as forestland or public land (although many are without forest cover) and managed by the DENR. Land with a slope of less than 18 % is categorized as alienable and disposable, which can be privately acquired and titled (Emtage 2004).

  4. The criteria and importance weights followed the method of assessing seedling physical quality that was developed under the ACIAR Quality Seedling Project (ASEM/2006/091) with details presented in Gregorio et al. (2009).

  5. Reforestation projects are mainly implemented in public land and participating communities obtain a tenurial contract with DENR to possess the land, develop, and utilize the resources therein for 25 years and usually renewable for another 25 years. Untenured areas are public land subjected to reforestation by POs or NGOs but without existing tenurial agreement. In this case, the role of POs and NGOs is limited to rehabilitation of the area, which usually spans for three years.

  6. Plus trees exhibit superior phenotypic characteristics making them suitable seed sources. These features include straight, clear and cylindrical bole; considerable merchantable height, prolific seeder, and absence of pests and diseases.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) through the project ASEM/2011/050 Improving Watershed Rehabilitation Outcomes Using a Systems Approach (known locally as the Watershed Rehabilitation Project) and the collaboration of local and regional officials of the Philippines Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in Regions 8 and 10 in undertaking the survey. The authors are also indebted to the nursery operators for providing crucial information during the interviews and allowing the authors to carry out destructive sampling of their seedlings without cost.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tropical Forests and People Research Centre, University of the Sunshine Coast, Maroochydore DC, QLD, 4558, Australia

    Nestor Gregorio, John Herbohn & Steve Harrison

  2. School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia

    John Herbohn

  3. ACIAR Smallholder Forestry Project, Visayas State University, Baybay City, 6521-A, Leyte, Philippines

    Arturo Pasa & Angela Ferraren

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  1. Nestor Gregorio
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  2. John Herbohn
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  3. Steve Harrison
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  4. Arturo Pasa
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  5. Angela Ferraren
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nestor Gregorio.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 3.

Table 3 Description of scales for each criterion used to assess the quality of seedlings
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Gregorio, N., Herbohn, J., Harrison, S. et al. Regulating the Quality of Seedlings for Forest Restoration: Lessons from the National Greening Program in the Philippines. Small-scale Forestry 16, 83–102 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-016-9344-z

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