How improved governance can help achieve the biodiversity conservation goals of the Philippine National Greening Program

The Philippine National Greening Program (NGP) is a Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR) initiative designed to increase forest cover on degraded lands for poverty reduction, food security, biodiversity conservation, and climate change mitigation. Despite the inclusion of an explicit biodiversity objective in the NGP, the Philippine government is struggling to implement projects that explicitly address biodiversity recovery. Using a case-study methodology, we identified three constraints that obstruct achievement of the NGP’s biodiversity conservation goals: 1) a focus on planting targets; 2) disregard for established community-based forestry practices; and 3) poor planning, organization, and implementation. These factors restricted establishment of diverse plantings suited to biodiversity recovery. Poor governance emerged as an overarching issue that connects each of these factors. Specific regulatory guidelines clearly need to be added to existing policy frameworks to assist planners and practitioners in the implementation of biodiversity-focused projects. Our results also indicate that these three factors and governance limitations, which impede attainment of biodiversity objectives, also affect production goals of the program. It is evident that establishing species-rich projects alone will benefit biodiversity little unless broader steps are taken to improve implementation processes across the NGP.