Forest Management Tenurial Instruments

FOREST MANAGEMENT TENURIAL INSTRUMENTS

by Anton Antonio

March 31, 2015

One of the biggest and contemptuous issues in upland management is tenure.  Security of tenure provides upland communities with an incentive to invest in sustainable management of the lands, waters and other resources found in the uplands.  It should be noted that forestlands are owned by the State.  This public policy made participation of upland communities and other legitimate stakeholders in upland management very precarious.  In the 1990s however, tenurial instruments were developed to allow private sector participation.

Forest tenurial instruments are used by the State to allocate public forestlands to individuals, organizations and other entities for effective and responsible sustainable management.  Sustainable management, in this sense, means the priority is on forest conservation over resource extraction.

The following are the legal tenurial instruments given by the State:

1. Timber License Agreement (TLA) – a license issued to corporations to cut trees in no more than 100,000 hectares of forestlands using selective logging technique (a management technique which involves the removal of mature, sickly and defective trees while leaving an adequate number of healthy residual trees to assure future crops of timber and forest cover for forest conservation.  The TLA system has been phased-out by government to favour the Integrated Forest Management Agreement (IFMA) which is also a forest development initiative.
2. Community-Based Forest Management Agreement (CBFMA) – a production sharing agreement between upland communities and the government to develop, use, manage, and conserve a specific portion of a specific forestland.  The CBFMA is consistent with principles of sustainable development and pursuant to a community resource management framework which encourages communities living within the forest area to actively participate in the sustainable management of the forest area.  The CBFMA exempts the holders from paying rent for the land and paying forest charges on timber and forest products harvested from plantation.  This effectively encourages tenure holders to establish forest plantations.
3. Socialized Industrial Forest Management Agreement (SIFMA) – an agreement between the government (through the Department of Environment and Natural Resources or DENR) and a natural or judicial person the right to develop, use and manage a small tract of forestland (1 to 10 hectares for individuals or single families and 10 to 500 hectares for associations or cooperatives) consistent the principle of sustainable development.  The SIFMA (like the CBFMA) is also a production sharing agreement which encourages investments from the private sector.
4.  Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) and Certificate of Ancestral Land Title (CALT) – are certificates issued by the DENR to an indigenous community or people declaring, identifying, and recognizing their claim to a territory they possessed and occupied and used communally or individually in accordance with their customs and traditions.  The CADT and CALT encourage the indigenous peoples communities to engage in economic activities to increase their income in a sustainable way.  These tenurial instruments are consistent with the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) enacted in 1997.
5.  Industrial Forest Management Agreement (IFMA) – a 25-year production sharing agreement between the DENR and an individual or a corporation to develop, use, and manage a specific tract of forestland.  The IFMA was developed to replace the TLA and therefore carried the sustainable management principles of the TLA; especially the selective logging system.

These are the forest management tenurial instruments.

Just my little thoughts…

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