Targeting to have 15 million hectares of forested land, 50 percent of which may be production forest, the following will be implemented to increase forest cover by 600,000 hectares by 2016;
a. Continue and enhance the protection of forest and reforested areas (especially in critical watersheds) and sustain the productivity of agroforestry areas:
• Manage, protect, and develop natural forest, established plantation, and economically important nontimber forest products and species;
• Encourage communities to enhance protection and sustain productivity of reforestation areas and upland areas for livelihood and poverty alleviation;
• Transform open, denuded and degraded areas into protection forests and/or economically-productive assets; and
• Encourage communities to develop multipurpose forests in open, denuded and degraded areas;
b. Complete the delineation of forestland boundaries and develop plans for forest land use and watershed management:
• Delineate and assess forestland boundaries and push for the enactment of relevant bills, placing all untenured /open access areas under management regimes;
• Carry out collaborative watershed management planning cum vulnerability assessment and implementation among DENR, LGUs and other watershed stakeholders towards responsible forest management; and
• Develop a portfolio approach for forest investment in collaboration with the LGUs and the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), which shall jointly prepare a forest land use plan identifying areas for protection and areas for investment and provide the necessary permits and clearances prior to development;
c. Improve baseline information, and conduct valuation and accounting of forest resources:
• Conduct monitoring and evaluation using common criteria and indicators, third-party monitoring, and forest certification, among others; and
• Strengthen the decision-support system through an inventory of forest resources, baseline data generation and GIS mapping, and forest valuation and natural resource accounting;
d. Implement the Philippine National REDD32 + Strategy (PNRPS). The PNRPS aims to empower forestland managers and support groups that sustainably and equitably manage forestlands and ancestral domains with enhanced carbon stock and reduced greenhouse gasses emission. Besides reducing forest degradation and deforestation, the strategy alleviates poverty, conserves biodiversity, and improves governance.
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32 REDD is an acronym for Reducing Emissions form Degradation and Deforestation.