Iloilo targets up to 4,000 hectares of trees yearly

ILOILO CITY — The Iloilo provincial government aims to restore and establish up to 4,000 hectares of tree-growing areas each year as it links expanded forest cover to climate resilience and flood mitigation.

Cesar Emmanuelle Buyco, chief of the Provincial Government Environment and Natural Resources Office (PGENRO), said the province is shifting the way it measures forest restoration — from counting individual trees to tracking the land area covered by tree-growing activities.

The province previously targeted planting about 1.5 million trees annually.

“Our target, we moved up from targeting 1.5 million trees a year. Now we are looking at the thousands of hectares. We are not looking at the individual trees,” Buyco said Saturday, Sept. 19.

“By hectares, we are looking at around 3,000 to 4,000 hectares a year of target,” he added.

Buyco said Iloilo aims to raise its forest cover from an estimated 18% at present to 33% by 2040.

He said the office’s assessment placed forest cover at about 12% when he joined PGENRO in 2021.

On Saturday, more than 1,000 volunteers from the provincial government, local government units, national government agencies, and the private sector joined a tree-growing activity in Barangay Balabag, Anilao, as part of the 27th Piyesta sa Kakahuyan.

Around 2,000 jackfruit, cacao, and coffee seedlings were planted in the upland areas.

The Piyesta sa Kakahuyan was launched through Provincial Ordinance No. 2000-04 in September 2000 to promote environmental conservation and participatory forest governance in the province.

Buyco acknowledged that only around 44% to 50% of planted trees have been reported to survive in the province’s previous tree-growing initiatives.

He noted that the surviving trees continue to contribute to the province’s forest cover.

“We are going in the correct direction and with the new program, we hope to have a much steeper climb in our numbers,” Buyco said.

The provincial government’s Tanum Iloilo initiative has recorded 7,925,778 trees planted from 2021 to 2026.

Tanum Iloilo is the flagship environmental program of Gov. Arthur Defensor Jr. and was institutionalized through Executive Order No. 195, Series of 2024.

The provincial government has also set a long-term goal of making Iloilo a “Forest Province” by 2044.

Buyco said expanding forest cover has become increasingly important as Iloilo experiences more intense rainfall and other effects associated with climate change.

“We can now feel that the climate is very different from before. When it rains, it is really heavy, unlike before when only a minimal amount of rainwater would fall. The volume of rain that used to fall in one month now falls in just one day,” he said.

He said forests help regulate water flow by retaining rainwater, reducing surface runoff, and improving the ability of soil to absorb water — functions that can help reduce flooding.

“All of these are the effects of climate change, and the only sure way for us to recover is through planting trees,” Buyco said.

He described tree growing as a key flood-mitigation measure for the province.

“The best flood control project is tree planting in the province,” he said