Greening program on track in WV BY ELSA S. SUBONG ILOILO City – An innovation that places validation teams in every province of Western Visayas has kept the implementation of the National Greening Program (NGP) on track. The validation teams are assigned by DENR Regional Executive Director Adeluisa Siapno to monitor the NGP status in each province and inject strategies to address the deficiencies in planting sites. NGP is a massive forest rehabilitation program of the government. It seeks to grow 1.5 billion trees in 1.5 million hectares nationwide within a period of six years, from 2011 to 2016. With the validation team on site, the problems are immediately acted upon, said DENR Region 6 director for Forest Management Service Livino Duran. This approach is appreciated by DENR’s partners site coordinators and people’s organizations because it prevents high mortality of planted seedlings, he added. As of date, the agency here has already covered 10,761.5 hectares of the 10,960 target for the year and could have reached it were it not for super typhoon “Yolanda.” Duran said DENR Region 6 ranks third among the 16 regional offices in the country as far as accomplishments in the NGP is concerned. Aside from being a reforestation initiative, the NGP is also seen as a climate change mitigation strategy as it seeks to enhance the country’s forest stock to absorb carbon dioxide, which is largely blamed for global warming. It is also designed to reduce poverty, providing alternative livelihood activities for marginalized upland and lowland households relating to seedling production and care and maintenance of newly-planted trees. This year’s implementation of the NGP in Region 6 has been faster compared to last year’s as the planting sites and the seedlings were prepared early, with the extension workers fully mobilized, coupled with the help of community-based organizations in the project sites. For 2014, Duran said the implementation can start as early as January as DENR has already identified the planting sites, potential people’s organization as partners, machineries in place and guidelines firmed up. (PIA-Iloilo/PN)
Posted on: Wed, 04 Dec 2013 20:21:22 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015