Background
On February 24, 2011, President Benigno S Aquino III issued Executive Order (EO) 26, declaring the implementation of the National Greening Program as a government priority program to reduce poverty, promote food security, environmental stability and biodiversity conservation, and enhance climate change mitigation and adaptation.
The Executive Order supports and complements EO No. 23, an earlier directive of President Aquino, which bans logging in natural and residual forests, as well as Proclamation No. 125, declaring 2011 as the National Year of Forests in the Philippines. It mandates the DA-DAR-DENR Convergence Initiative to be the oversight committee for the program, with DENR as the lead agency.
National Greening Program
On May 13, 2011, the President led the launching of the National Greening Program (NGP) at the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) headquarters in Quezon City.
The program specifically seeks to plant 1.5 billion seedlings in 1.5 million hectares of public lands nationwide in six years, from 2011 to 2016—more than twice the government’s accomplishment for the past 25 years, which adds to about 730,000 hectares.
Areas for planting under the program include forestlands, mangrove and protected areas, ancestral domains, civil and military reservations, urban areas under the greening plan of LGUs, inactive and abandoned mine sites, and other suitable lands of the public domain.
The NGP also seeks to improve water quality in rivers and irrigation for farm lands, reduce the potential for flooding, soak up carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and lay the foundation for an expanded wood-products economy.