The Forest Management Bureau has identified opportunities for more partnership and collaboration between government and the private sector on meeting requirements of the National Greening Program.
Aside from producing, planting, caring and protecting seedlings, which government’s partners are helping undertake, FMB said the opportunities include capacity and skills development, technology transfer, plantation development, market tie-ups as well as provision of farm tools, implements, post-harvest facilities and processing technology.
The opportunities vary as FMB Dir. Ricardo Calderon noted NGP is government’s largest reforestation bid so far and seeks helping address poverty, environmental stability, food security and climate change concerns.
“NGP is beyond reforestation,” he said.
For the years 2013 to 2016, government set an annual reforestation target of 300,000 hectares nationwide.
The annual targets involve planting 150 million to 300 million seedlings of exotic and indigenous tree species per year.
Such targets are higher than the 200,000 hectares and 100,000 hectares government set for NGP greening in 2012 and 2011, respectively.
Calderon is bullish partnerships and collaboration on technology transfer will help government meet NGP’s greening targets.
“I’m very confident we’ll hit those as technology is on our side,” he said.
The Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources earlier assured using science to help realize NGP’s goal of reforesting by 2016 some 1.5 million hectares of open, denuded and degraded forest land nationwide.
Among scientific applications for NGP is use of micro-organisms that help boost seedling growth.
DENR is also cloning NGP seedlings from parts of good-quality parent stocks to ensure availability of the best plant materials possible for the program.
The agency is eyeing further partnerships with State universities and colleges on producing cloned NGP seedlings after sealing deals on the matter with various public higher learning institutions.
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