Governance Challenges in Community-Based Forest Management in the Philippines

Community-based forest management (CBFM) is the national strategy for forest conservation in the Philippines. This research explores state-led CBFM in the Northern Negros Natural Park (NNNP). Inside the park, multiple CBFM project sites exist under two state-led programs: the Integrated Social Forestry Program and the Community-Based Forest Management Program. These CBFM initiatives in the park have been hindered by the combination of local proximate factors—conservation not being a local priority, a lack of experience in conservation and community resource management, and a lack of awareness of state-led initiatives and associated regulations—and underlying structural factors—policy design and implementation that fails to adequately address these proximate factors, a lack of sustained government support for local projects, and overlapping but poorly integrated initiatives between offices across institutional scales and on the ground. The success of future state-led conservation initiatives in the park partially hinges on rectifying these problems.