Assessing the effectiveness of the engagement of local people in restoring degraded forest landscapes in leyte and Biliran Provinces, the Philippines

Background

The National Greening Program (NGP), a large-scale forest landscape reforestation (FLR) initiative in the Philippines, seeks to plant billions of trees across millions of hectares by working across sectors, particularly with local communities. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) implements the NGP and contracts People’s Organizations (POs) to carry out reforestation activities. However, national leaders have set reforestation targets through a top-down approach. Earlier studies in Leyte and Biliran highlighted challenges such as weak coordination among government levels, inconsistent funding for local participants, mistrust between communities and the government, and limited community capacity to sustain reforestation efforts.

Goals and Methods

This study examines how decentralization, devolution, and power dynamics shape local engagement in the NGP by analyzing four projects in Leyte and Biliran to identify key factors influencing participation and to provide insights for improving community involvement in reforestation and broader FLR initiatives. Using a qualitative case study approach, researchers selected four POs as primary units of analysis and collected data through group interviews with PO members and officials, a self-assessment exercise evaluating eight key factors, and face-to-face interviews with representatives from partner agencies. They then applied content analysis and the spectrum of engagement framework to assess the level of local participation.

Conclusions and Takeaways

While the NGP has mobilized POs for collective action, weak devolution of power has prevented meaningful local participation, requiring significant improvements in engagement strategies to establish a participatory decision-making process. A key issue is the lack of clear tenure rights for POs over plantation sites and harvested products, which limits community empowerment. The program’s top-down structure has restricted local influence, reducing the effectiveness of community participation—challenges that align with findings from other NGP evaluations in the Philippines, pointing to systemic issues. Though these insights may inform other community-based reforestation efforts, governance structures and local conditions must be considered before generalizing conclusions. Ultimately, successful FLR initiatives must go beyond hiring local labor and instead empower communities with real decision-making authority, integrating local contexts into project design to ensure meaningful participation in restoration efforts.