Davao Oriental focuses on restoring forests
CITY, DAVAO ORIENTAL --- The provincial government of Davao Oriental has launched its new forest restoration program called Nagkakaisang Lingkod-bayan ng Davao Oriental – Forest Landscape Restoration for Sustainable Development.
The province is host to a number of important biodiversity areas, among them is the Mount Hamiguitan Range Wildlife Sanctuary which is the first and only World Heritage Site in Mindanao.
In his Executive Order Number 10, Davao Oriental Governor Nelson Dayanghirang says the program is “the provincial approach to ensure inclusive and sustainable development of the province’s forest resources and local communities in harmony with the National Greening Program and with the sustainable development goals.”
The governor says the new forest restoration program is an “offshoot of the Nagkakaisang Lingkod-bayan ng Davao Oriental Barangay Outreach Caravan of the provincial government of Davao Oriental and is consistent with the United Nations Agenda 2030 with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals which, as a whole, are the basis for the Philippine Development Agenda 2017-2022 with the administration’s AmBisyon Natin 2040 expressed as the Matatag, Maginhawa, at Panatag na Buhay and the Davao Regional Development Plan 2017-2022.”
He added that “considering trees as renewable resources that can be used for adaptive and preventive purposes for climate change impacts, and as a sustainable source of income if properly managed, developing tree farms or plantations in production forest or in private alienable and disposable lands and ancestral lands is encouraged not only for ecological considerations but also to support the local wood requirements for construction and wood processing industries and as an environment-friendly livelihood source for the local communities, especially for areas where poverty incidence is high, such as in the ancestral lands in the uplands and in marginal areas of the lowlands and coastal zones.”