On the slopes of Mount Kalatungan, a protected space on the island of Mindanao within the southern Philippines, rows of robusta espresso shrubs thrive alongside tropical hardwoods like lauan.
The verdant mountain is enveloped in mid-afternoon fog, with a chilly breeze sweeping by means of. Reynante Polenda, a 40-year-old Manobo tribesman, fastidiously weeds across the timber he planted years in the past, utilizing his bolo, whereas birds chirp within the background.
“It must be saved cleared of weeds as a result of the timber will wrestle to develop in case you don’t,” Polenda tells Mongabay. His breath is available in heavy gasps, and sweat drips down his face as he continues. “It’s tiring, however it’s price it for the crops to develop effectively.”
Many would name this agroforestry, however on this a part of the Philippines it’s often known as “rainforestation farming” and it’s mixed with a cost for ecosystem providers initiative administered by native NGO Xavier Science Basis (XSF).
The aim right here is to revive forestland degraded by a long time of economic logging and agricultural enlargement, to rejuvenate important ecosystem providers like flood mitigation, and to incentivise the communities driving the restoration.
Rainforestation farming
Rainforestation farming, developed by Visayas State College (VSU) within the central Philippines within the Nineties, goals “to counter the continuing destruction of the pure atmosphere within the humid tropics,” former VSU president Paciencia Milan wrote in her guide about this agroforestry system, which gained formal authorities recognition in 2004.
Rainforestation farming marks a shift from the federal government’s decades-long, centrally managed reforestation efforts — which relied on fast-growing unique species with out contemplating the realm’s authentic vegetation or the fundamental wants of upland farmers — to a community-led, decentralised strategy that prioritises native and endemic timber with ecological and financial worth.
“Farmers have been inspired to decide on what and the place to plant, offered land tenure is secured,” Milan wrote. “As a result of they got the choices to determine, that they had the duty to deal with what they planted due to its socioeconomic worth to them.”
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We seek the advice of the IPs [Indigenous peoples] as a result of they’re those who actually know the land. What they really need are indigenous species — these they used to plant… Their system, referred to as rainforestation, includes planting native timber with espresso in between.
Roel Ravanera, government director, Xavier Science Basis
In Mindanao’s Bukidnon province lies Mount Kalatungan Vary Pure Park, a 35,221-hectare (87,033-acre) protected space, two-thirds of which is roofed in major forest.
Inside this vary, households chosen for the rainforestation farming mission are rising espresso, a key earnings supply, and quite a lot of endemic tree species like pink and white lauan (genus Shorea), which assist wildlife such because the critically endangered Philippine eagle (Pithecophaga jefferyi).
For XSF, no group was higher suited to engagement than NAMAMAYUK, an Indigenous Manobo organisation of greater than 200 households, whose 3,506-hectare (8,664-acre) ancestral area within the city of Pangantucan overlaps with Mount Kalatungan Vary Pure Park. From 2021 till 2024, round 40 households have enrolled their land within the mission, every incomes a minimum of 60,000 pesos, or US$1,029, per hectare (US$415 per acre) for planting and sustaining a rainforestation farm.
XSF government director Roel Ravanera says the initiative, launched in 2014 and pilot-tested with the Indigenous Talaandig organisation MILALITTRA, connects the personal sector with Indigenous communities, with companies financing the communities’ forest safety and conservation efforts.
“Beneath the [payment for ecosystem services] scheme, native communities are compensated for tree planting, upkeep and monitoring, making certain the survival of the timber for a minimum of three years,” he tells Mongabay.
NAMAMAYUK’s Indigenous data methods and practices are thought-about within the mission design, and its leaders and members have been concerned all through the method, from agreeing to take part to figuring out appropriate land and choosing plant species that naturally develop within the space. This, Ravanera says, ensures the initiative is socioeconomically, culturally and environmentally suitable.
“We seek the advice of the IPs [Indigenous peoples] as a result of they’re those who actually know the land,” Ravanera says. “What they really need are indigenous species — these they used to plant … Their system, referred to as rainforestation, includes planting native timber with espresso in between.”
Manobo farmer Polenda says that espresso, as a shade-loving plant, thrives when intercropped with native timber. Since 2021, he has devoted his half-hectare (1.2-acre) plot of land to the initiative. A father of 1 toddler, he says the earnings from planting and sustaining the tree seedlings through the initiative has helped complement his earnings, enabling the household to purchase family wants.
In December 2024, Polenda and others had their first espresso harvest. Joannah Dumaquita, supervisor of MILFACO, the advertising arm of MILALITTRA’s award-winning espresso, tells Mongabay the organisation will accomplice with NAMAMAYUK to course of and market its produce for worldwide markets.
It’s not solely espresso and hardwood timber that thrive on Polenda’s subsistence farm; different crops like taro, candy potato and quite a lot of fruit-bearing timber all develop right here with out environmentally dangerous artificial fertilisers and pesticides. Polenda says the mission has taught him farming methods similar to spaced planting and pruning to enhance crop yields.
As Polenda’s farm started to thrive, he began noticing a rise in wildlife sightings — a pattern additionally noticed by elders and different tribal members in the neighborhood. “Since then, I’ve additionally observed that wild animals, similar to deers, birds and boars, have elevated in my farmland,” he says. These are among the many 100 animal species that decision each Kalatungan and the neighboring Kitanglad protected space house.
Nature-based flood management
Past regreening areas degraded by logging and business plantation encroachment, the rainforestation and cost for ecosystem providers schemes on this a part of Kalatungan intention to assist mitigate flooding, a recurring subject downstream, notably within the metropolis of Cagayan de Oro (CDO).
The headwaters of the Cagayan de Oro River originate on the slopes of Kalatungan and Kitanglad, one other protected mountain vary protecting 47,270 hectares (116,807 acres). These watersheds play a crucial function in flood management by quickly storing and progressively releasing water to scale back flood peaks. Nonetheless, upland forest degradation has weakened this operate, a priority that gained wider public consideration solely after Tropical Storm Washi.
Washi, domestically often known as Sendong, delivered a harsh lesson on the significance of defending the mountains. When the storm struck in December 2011, the CDO River Basin swelled with floodwaters and logs, killing greater than 1,260 folks and inflicting 1.3 billion pesos (US$30 million on the time) in harm to agriculture and property.
Stormwater infrastructure, just like the lately constructed flood management mission in CDO, and nature-based options, similar to rainforestation farming, emerged as key methods. The CDO-based XSF says each are essential to safeguarding the town’s greater than 720,000 residents from future storms.
“However given the depth of the present drawback, the main target must be on [nature-based solutions],” Ravanera says. “What’s wanted is a connection between them. As a result of if folks downstream don’t see what’s occurring upstream, they received’t deal with it.”
Ravanera says that post-Washi, each the private and non-private sectors have begun prioritizing nature-based options within the CDO River Basin.
As an illustration, with assist from the Forest Basis Philippines, funded by debt-for-nature swaps, XSF partnered with seven Kalatungan-based Indigenous peoples’ organisations to plant 1000’s of timber from 2015 to 2022. Within the NAMAMAYUK space alone, greater than 80 per cent of the 39,423 seedlings planted had survived as of the 2021 monitoring. This places the mission on observe to far exceed the 44 per cent common five-year survival fee reported in a examine monitoring forest restoration initiatives in South and Southeast Asia.
Along with the NGO-led initiatives, the federal government additionally collaborates instantly with varied Indigenous peoples’ organisations on reforestation efforts. Amongst them is MILALITTRA, which represents the Talaandig tribe in Miarayon, one other city adjoining Kalatungan. The group helped plant quite a lot of endemic timber as a part of the Nationwide Greening Program.
Raz Catubay, a forester with the native workplace of the Division of Setting and Pure Sources, says that in 2021 and 2022 these government-sponsored initiatives planted a complete of 31,240 seedlings of native tree species throughout 25 hectares (62 acres) of degraded forestland in Miarayon. The survival fee has been 80-90 per cent, which Catubay credit to “energetic involvement of Indigenous peoples, whose data guided the collection of appropriate land and species.”
On a wet afternoon in September 2024, Mongabay meets with Talaandig tribal chief Datu Dexter Besto over a cup of espresso, recognized for its export high quality. Contained in the espresso processing centre, with a view of Mount Kalatungan’s lush greenery, he emphasises that each facet of their tradition is deeply intertwined with their forest.
“Preserving it offers the robust basis of our watersheds on which lowlanders additionally rely,” Besto says. “Defending the forest can also be a method for us to indicate respect to our ancestors who began this.”
Continuity challenges
Indigenous organisations like NAMAMAYUK have ensured that forest patrols proceed past the everyday three-to-five-year mission timeframe to guard each planted and old-growth timber from unlawful loggers. In partnership with the Kalatungan administration authority, NAMAMAYUK and XSF established a bunch referred to as Bantay sa Yutang Kabilin (Defenders of Ancestral Area) with 41 volunteers who conduct foot patrols a number of instances per week in small groups and a minimum of as soon as a month as a bigger group. They radio in any threats they encounter to authorities enforcement models.
Rewilding skilled Aldrin Mallari says extending safety efforts past the mission’s lifespan is essential to decreasing threats that would hinder forest restoration, which may take a long time. Mallari, government director of the analysis NGO CCIPH, says this strategy ensures the areas are “not simply regreened, however [their] ecological capabilities are actually restored,” making the initiative a really profitable one.
Inside his house, NAMAMAYUK elder Datu Herminio Guinto, leads an evening of rituals that embrace prayers and the providing of a butchered hen to hunt the spirits’ permission for Mongabay to enter the neighborhood’s ancestral lands.
As soon as blessings from the spirits are confirmed, the elders collectively share that their involvement in forest restoration and patrolling sends a message to lowlanders: they aren’t destroying the mountains, however are safeguarding them from encroaching enterprise pursuits, together with logging that cleared giant areas of their forest a long time in the past and the present enlargement of economic plantations of banana, pineapple and highland greens.
“We’re a part of the mountain’s safety, and the federal government and our companions recognise the [Indigenous knowledge systems and practices] of Lumads [Indigenous peoples] as important to conservation methods that assist maintain the forest,” Guinto tells Mongabay. “Nevertheless it’s painful to assume that each time floods or heavy rains have an effect on communities downstream, we are sometimes those blamed.”
For the reason that timelines for these lately concluded reforestation initiatives are sometimes restricted by funders’ schedules, sustainability stays a problem. Indigenous leaders from each NAMAMAYUK and MILALITTRA say they hope that individuals in cities will contribute — whether or not by means of technical, monetary or logistical assist — to make sure the continued success of those Indigenous-led safety efforts.
“As a result of that is the place we reside — in our ancestral land — we take forest stewardship severely,” Guinto says. “If we destroy the mountains, we’re the primary to endure the implications, even earlier than these in Cagayan de Oro.”
In three years underneath the personal sector-funded payment-for-ecosystem-services scheme, NAMAMAYUK’s 30-hectare (74-acre) rainforestation web site noticed 49,980 endemic timber and occasional shrubs planted, with a 98.8 per cent survival fee. XSF is now in search of funders to maintain the mission in Kalatungan past its preliminary run.
Anthropologist Easterluna Canoy is the manager director of the Kitanglad Built-in NGO (KIN), which has been energetic since 1996 and has served as a pioneering NGO accomplice of the Kitanglad and Kalatungan protected space administration places of work.
Canoy says that whereas the present scheme has been profitable on many fronts, it overlooks culture-based ecosystem assist. Ought to exterior teams want to proceed this intervention, she means that Indigenous peoples in Bukidnon’s state-declared protected areas and even tribal-declared ones “must be incentivised not just for reforestation actions but additionally for preserving and passing on conventional ecological data that helps forest conservation.”
“This assist mustn’t essentially be monetary however might embrace the availability of primary social providers, similar to entry to formal schooling, well being care, potable water and, finally, safety of tenure to their ancestral land that may persist no matter authorities management modifications,” she tells Mongabay.
This story was revealed with permission from Mongabay.com.
