Many people may have forgotten the country’s National Greening Program (NGP) launched in 2011, continued until 2016, and was extended until 2028. Recognized as one of the largest tree planting programs in the world, it was started by the administration of then-President Aquino as a reforestation program to plant 1.5 billion trees across 1.5 million hectares.
Recently, the NGP was recognized “not only for its environmental benefits but also for its ability to transform rural economies and reduce poverty.” The recognition came from Jeffrey Pagel who assessed the program in an article, “Rooting out poverty: The socioeconomic co-benefits of large-scale tree planting.”
“As global attention increasingly turns toward nature-based solutions for tackling climate change and poverty, large-scale tree planting initiatives like the Philippines’ National Greening Program (NGP) offers a powerful example of what is possible. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals call for aligning ecosystem services with development objectives, and the NGP stands as a model for achieving these twin goals,” he wrote in a study written with Lorenzo Sileci. Pagel is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Environmental Economics at the London School of Economics and an Associate at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
“Tree planting programs offer the potential to not only sequester carbon, but also create jobs and transfer productive forestry assets to receiving individuals or communities,” the study said.
The municipalities that participated in the program were found to have experienced a six percentage point reduction in poverty. What the paper found as “remarkable” is that the effects of the greening program stayed on up to seven years after the NGP’s rollout, “with no reversal in trend.”
The paper said that the results “indicate that tree planting programs like the NGP can contribute to both immediate poverty alleviation and long-term economic development.”
The NGP, aside from planting trees, also paid local organizations to work on related activities to support the forest, from producing seedlings, to planting and maintaining the trees for three years. After that, the organizations manage the plantation and retain the proceeds from its produce.
The paper posted on the World Bank blog said this model “not only ensured economic buy-in but also enabled long-term poverty alleviation. From 2011 to 2016, the NGP implemented over 80,000 projects, planting hundreds of thousands of hectares, creating jobs, and empowering local communities.”
The environmental gains delivered by the NGP, which the paper lauded as significant, were measured. “Our estimates show that the NGP sequestered between 71.4 and 303 million metric tons of CO2 over 10 years. At the lower bound, this is equivalent to the emissions of 17 million gasoline-powered vehicles driven for one year or the CO2 output from 18 coal-fired power plants.”
More specifically in monetary terms, it was calculated that NGP reduced emissions at a cost ranging from $2 to $10 per ton. It estimated that “the sequestered CO2 is valued between $163 million and $9.57 billion.”
The paper recommends that other countries study the effects of the NGP to address the interconnected challenges of climate change and development.
“As countries around the world look to scale up their climate actions in the coming years, programs like the NGP should be considered not only for their environmental benefits but also for their ability to transform rural economies and reduce poverty.”
The results of the study especially confirm the reason why tree planting is important, and since it was implemented decades ago, its effects are now measurable. Let us keep the tree planting movement going!
