THE Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is seeking a budget of P28.67 billion for its operation next year, including a whopping P9.4 billion to implement the Expanded National Greening Program (E-NGP) with the help of the private sector, particularly mining firms.
Under the leadership of Environment Secretary Regina Paz L. Lopez, the DENR would continue to rehabilitate open, degraded and denuded forest, but would focus more on promoting enterprise development to empower upland dwellers, Environment Undersecretary for Policy and Planning Marlo Mendoza said.
Under the National Expenditure Program (NEP) submitted by Malacañang to Congress, the DENR’s budget request for 2017 is higher by P6.87 billion, compared to the current year’s P21.8 billion.
Around P6.9 billion will go to personnel services, which is higher by P2.5 billion from this year, to cover the mandated hike in the salary of government workers, which takes effect next year, Imee de la Cruz of the DENR’s Budget Division point told the BusinessMirror.
Next year the DENR will spend around P10.9 billion for maintenance and other operating expense and P10.86 billion for capital outlays.
The bulk of the DENR’s budget next year goes to the massive reforestation program of the government, with the DENR being the lead-implementing agency. For 2017, the DENR is seeking P9.4 billion for the E-NGP, to sustain the massive reforestation effort of the previous administration by rehabilitating 300,000 hectares.
An environmental advocate, Lopez has been tightening the screws on mining, and has, so far, caused the suspension of 10 large-scale mining operations. Lopez promised to turn the miners affected by the campaign against irresponsible mining into DENR partners through the NGP, as she vowed to promote enterprise development in pursuing the program.
The budget request for the E-NGP is P1.2 billion higher than the current year’s budget of P8.1 billion. Part of the budget is for the maintenance of NGP sites established in 2014, 2015 and 2016, covering a total of 985,000 hectares.
The DENR is scheduled to defend the agency’s proposed budget in Congress on September 5, although Mendoza said preliminary meetings have already been held with Sen. Loren B. Legarda, chairman of the Senate on Committee on Finance, and Sen. Cynthia A. Villar, chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Natural Resources. “The Duterte administration believes in the new thrust of Secretary Lopez. There are certain principles that the secretary believes in. Of course, good governance and promoting transparency are there. We have outlined anticorruption measures, that is why they are confident that the budget would go to the intended purpose, including social justice, ensuring equity and marked improvement on the people’s living conditions,” Mendoza said.
Next year he said the DENR would be outcome-oriented.
“In the past, it was input and output—how many hectares have been planted. The way the programs and plans were designed, we failed to ensure these will translate into a more positive well-being of our upland farmers” he said. It has been demonstrated that environmental projects will be more successful or have an impact if they are directly linked to livelihood. We will now look into it from a social entrepreneurship or enterprise development point of view,” he added.
According to Mendoza, the National Convergence Initiative of the past administration will be adopted in the implementation of the E-NGP, which will also promote agroforestry, sustainable agriculture, and land and water conservation. “There will be more cash crops and more fruit trees,” he said.
Mendoza said because of climate change, lowlands have become flood-prone. “We will also train upland farmers science-based soil conservation and water-conservation technologies,” he said.
“There will be extension officers who will really talk to the farmers. Of course, our extension officers would also be trained first. For agroforestry, we will have special arrangement with the Department of Agriculture under the convergence,” he added.
Mendoza said contour farming would be the name of the game in upland areas.
“We will influence the farmers what to plant and how to do farming. Upland has big impact on lowlands, which is in our mandate. Our upland development programs would be geared toward making communities climate-proofed, but at the same time, farmers would be making money,” he said. “We will cluster organizations and link them to markets.” Meanwhile, the DENR is also seeking close to P600 million in funding for the rehabilitation of the country’s coastal and marine ecosystem.
Instead of just rehabilitating the country’s degraded network of coral reefs, the target is to establish more marine protected areas, Mendoza said.
From the food-security point of view and climate-change mitigation, the DENR would also invest in the establishment of MPAs, which, Mendoza said, is cost-effective than the costly artificial coral restoration or rehabilitation.
“Experts said if you protect an area, recovery is faster. With corals recovering from damage, there will be more fish and more marine life,” he said.
“We would like to capacitate LGUs [local government units] because there is really a need to establish more MPAs by teaching them. If they are capacitated, if they understand that there is a link to poverty reduction and climate-change resilience, together with mangrove and beach-forest rehabilitation, they will appreciate it more,” he said.
According to Mendoza, the DENR will map out areas and identify which of them are prone to coastal erosion, storm surge and areas that really need rehabilitation.
According to Mendoza, the DENR would be more proactive. “We will help decide which crops to plant best and we will link them to markets. Agroforestry technologies will also be taught. There are good models but they are not used. We would use them heavily and mainstream these models. The science community would play a role in this,” he said.
Mendoza also said government-to-government linkages would also play an important role in achieving Lopez’s brainchild programs to empower upland communities.
“When Secretary Lopez said we will help the upland farmers and we will promote social justice, she is serious and we will help them,” Mendoza said.