This story is part of the Forest Fraud investigation, a series of articles across Southeast Asia that uses remote sensing technology, global supply chain tracking and ground reporting to expose the drivers of deforestation across protected areas in the region. Read Part 1 of the Philippines investigation here.
On the edge of Barangay Gupitan, Kapalong, Davao del Norte, the forest does not begin with trees.
It begins with memory.
Elders describe a landscape that once felt endless: dense canopies, thick roots, cold streams running even in the dry months. They speak of hunting paths shaded by towering hardwoods, of birds and insects that marked the seasons, of the quiet abundance of medicinal plants and wild food.
“In the 1980s,” Datu Evangelio Warag, an indigenous leader recalled, “our environment was still very healthy… there were dense forests with large trees.”
For generations, Indigenous Peoples have stood at the front lines of forest protection in the Philippines. Through customary law, communal land governance, and diversified farming systems, ancestral domains have often remained forested even as commercial logging, mining, and plantations expanded around them.
In many upland areas, Indigenous communities became the last defense for intact forests facing extraction. Where state enforcement was weak or absent, it was Indigenous governance that regulated land use, limited logging, and maintained biodiversity even as concessionaires, traders and investors raided the land.
The National Greening Program (NGP), launched in 2011, was framed as the country’s most ambitious reforestation and poverty-alleviation effort to date. The program promised to restore degraded forests while providing livelihoods, especially in Indigenous and upland communities.
IPs were encouraged to join precisely because they were already seen as forest stewards.
More than a decade later, data and interviews point to a different outcome. In this second part of a joint investigation by Davao Today and Lighthouse Reports, the team analyzed official government data and remote satellite imagery to reveal not only an overall failure of the program to meet many of these stated goals but also particularly poor results for IPs.
Instead of strengthening Indigenous stewardship, NGP coincided with higher forest loss on ancestral land, much of it occurring the very year projects were introduced.
This investigation reveals that a program designed to standardize and accelerate regreening and promised to empower Indigenous Peoples to put a halt to logging instead compromised their decision-making rights, required them to clear-cut their own land and mandated that they convert it into plantation style commercial plots for uncertain economic returns. Now, much of the IP managed NGP land lies denuded. Environmental defenders and rights groups now regard NGP as a means of state-sanctioned exploitation that clashes with the rights, goals and values of the Indigenous communities tasked with managing them, even as they reap some financial benefits.
A program that covers three Metro Manilas
Ancestral domains are a major part of NGP and have transformed much of the territory recognized as Ancestral Domains.
These landscapes are not just ecological frontlines — they are home to communities who remain among the most economically excluded in the country, with one in three Indigenous Peoples living below the poverty line in 2023, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority. They face widespread hunger, documented in recent World Bank reporting.
NGP lands tenured under ancestral domain instruments — Certificates of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) and Certificates of Ancestral Domain Claim (CADC) — cover nearly 200,000 hectares, roughly a tenth of the total NGP area, equivalent to about three times the size of Metro Manila.
Just under four-fifths of these lands are titled under CADT, granting collective ownership under the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act. The remainder are under CADC, an earlier recognition that provides stewardship but not full ownership.
Yet legal recognition did not automatically translate into protection.
Forest loss on NGP sites on titled land held by Indigenous communities is high.
“We joined to stop logging”
For many Indigenous communities, participation in NGP was driven by fear of losing their forests. Signing up was advertised as a way to hold back the commercial timber industry.
The National Greening Program was framed as rehabilitation: degraded slopes replanted, watersheds restored, communities contracted to maintain trees years after planting. Local environment offices were tasked to monitor survival, replacing seedlings that failed to grow.
“Before, logging was done by concessionaires,” said Datu Ernesto Cuyos, Chairperson of Ata-Manobo Kapalong Ancestral Domain Development Workers Association (AKADDWA). “DENR advised us to apply so illegal logging would stop.”
Others echoed the same motivation.
“Capitalists were entering the area. Forest cover was slowly disappearing,” said Romeo Mantayona, Chairperson of Igkanugon Lumad Association of Langilan Tribes Inc (ILALTI). “That’s why we requested projects for our area.”
“Illegal logging in the past was the basis for DENR advising our elders to apply,” Kapalong Indigenous Peoples Municipal Representative (IPMR) Datu Evangelio Warag added.
For Warag and the other elders, the decision to join NGP was to protect their ancestral domain, which they had traditionally ruled, against the encroaching presence of outsiders.
Enrolling ancestral land in a government program was seen as a form of protection — a way to formalize control and keep outsiders out.
Instead, enrollment often became the starting point for losing control over their own territory.
Consent on paper, confusion on the ground
The first surprise that many Indigenous Peoples encountered was that NGP operated outside of, or rather, superseded, their own self-governance structure. Under the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA), projects implemented on ancestral land require Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC). FPIC is meant to ensure that communities understand what a project entails — and that they have the right to refuse.
Under Philippine law, ancestral domains are not ordinary public land. They are collectively owned territories governed by customary systems and protected under the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA), which recognizes Indigenous Cultural Communities and Indigenous Peoples (ICCs/IPs) as rights-holders, not merely beneficiaries of government programs.
“If there is no consensus, there is no FPIC,” said Ned Tuguinay of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA), referring to the stark choice between signing up for NGP or not. “It should not be reduced to … yes or no. It must be a genuine consensus of the community.”
There are two key rights at stake: the right to ancestral lands and the right to self-determination. If FPIC is compromised or hurriedly done, then both rights are violated – the right to self-determination in the access and utilization of the lands.
NGP is often described as a tree-planting program. On the ground, however, it functioned as something larger: a land-use and governance program that IPs say fundamentally alters local communities’ relationship with the land.
Part of that gap lies in how the program operates under its own implementation rules. NGP was not built to adapt to accommodations that emerge from genuine community consultations, according to IPs who have participated in the program. The DENR had targets to meet and a protocol to follow.
Once an area was enrolled, decisions about land use shifted through the state, primarily the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). The agency determined which areas were zoned for production or protection, what species could be planted, how planting would be carried out, and how beneficiaries would be paid.
None of these steps are in sync with the rights endowed to Indigenous Peoples. When government officials were asked which NGO sites were most difficult to oversee, they pointed to IP sites. “Talaingod and Kapalong—those have the most IPs, Ma’am. Most of the landowners there are IPs because it’s a CADT area,” said Ermelita R. Alfarero, NGP focal person for Davao del Norte Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office (PENRO).
In theory, no program like NGP should override Indigenous decision-making on ancestral land.
In practice, many communities found that joining NGP meant surrendering control over how their land was classified, cleared, and replanted.
“They participate because they see themselves as stewards of the land,” said current International Solidarity Officer of KATRIBU Kalipunan ng Katutubong Mamamayan ng Pilipinas Beverly Longid. “The money is seen as added compensation. They don’t realize that once they sign agreements, they may be giving up stewardship, ownership, or even use of the land.”
Despite signing over their rights to determining how to manage their lands, many never imagined they would contribute to the problem of deforestation.
Forest loss where protection was expected
Many Indigenous Peoples’ groups soon discovered that under the conditions imposed by NGP, it was an impossible task to keep their lands green. An analysis of NGP sites shows a striking pattern: lands under Indigenous tenure experienced higher forest loss than the national average. Overall, IP-tenured NGP lands experienced 40% higher forest loss rates than average for NGP sites: 5.7% forest loss, compared with the 4% across the program.
In absolute terms, IP-tenured NGP lands lost over 11,000 hectares of forest, accounting for 14% of all forest loss recorded within NGP nationwide.
These figures are notable because CADTs are supposed to provide Indigenous communities with collective ownership and control.
The fact that forest loss remained high suggests that once NGP projects began, Indigenous tenure alone was not enough to prevent conversion of forests to agro-forestry.
Clearing begins when projects begin
Many communities discovered that the first requirement under their new NGP contracts was to cut down the existing trees, not to plant new ones.
Across IP-tenured NGP sites, a quarter of all forest loss occurred in the very year projects were established.
This “establishment-year spike” is higher than the national NGP pattern, where about one-fifth of loss occurs in the first year.
Once a site was approved, communities were required to “prepare” land to meet planting targets.
Much of the land enrolled under NGP was legally classified as timberland. But timberland did not necessarily mean empty or degraded land. In many ancestral domains, what stood were regenerating secondary forests — landscapes that had experienced logging decades earlier and were slowly recovering.
“They were no longer virgin forests,” said Loreto, Agusan del Sur Indigenous Peoples Municipal Representative (IPMR) Datu Kulipapa Arsenio Tawide Sr. “They had already been logged.” These were not untouched forests, but neither were they idle land. They were ecosystems in recovery.
In practice, preparation often meant clearing existing vegetation — even in areas already forested or under traditional agroforestry.
Satellite monitoring tracks canopy removal. It does not register the removal of other types of cover, like shrubs or small amounts of undergrowth. Land preparation was described in Bisaya as “galason,” which involves clearing small plants before planting.
“We have to clear the land thoroughly because we are paid for the clearing,” Warag added.
The concentration of canopy removal in the year of establishment suggests that in many areas, the land preparation was more extensive than just removing undergrowth – it was removing tree cover, including secondary forest. Across NGP sites, forests were cleared when an area was declared an NGP site.
“By law, planting should be done in idle or degraded forest land,” said Forester Dennis Gilbero from Agusan del Sur State College of Agriculture and Technology. “But on the ground, many of these areas are already forested.”
From Indigenous agroforestry and farming to monocropping
Before NGP, many ancestral domains supported diverse, low-risk farming systems shaped by generations of practice.
Communities planted upland rice, corn, root crops, fruit trees, coffee, cacao, and native species. Forest patches were maintained for water regulation, hunting and cultural use.
NGP reshaped these landscapes.
Government data shows half of IP-tenured sites grow two or fewer species and over a third of IP-tenured area is monocropped.
For communities, the shift carried risks. Monocropping reduced food diversity and increased dependence on volatile cash markets. It also lends itself to industrial agriculture where return on investment can take years, not small scale farmers surviving hand to mouth.
Indigenous Peoples told what to grow and where to grow it
Indigenous Peoples were not only told they were only permitted to grow one or two crops, they were also told what to grow and in many cases, it was exotic species that the community did not want.
“It was DENR who decided what would be planted,” IPMR Datu Evangelio Warag said.
For many communities, these classifications and commodity assignments were embedded in technical plans and procedural consultations, difficult to influence without independent legal or technical support.
“Forest characteristics vary, so the kinds of trees planted should adapt to the particular area. Honestly, DENR treated it as a blanket implementation of reforestation,” explained KATRIBU’s Beverly Longid. “The trees introduced were the same everywhere—narra, falcata, gmelina, rubber. Aren’t these the same trees used for commercial logging?”
Power imbalances further weakened FPIC. Agencies held authority over zoning and implementation, while communities were left navigating unfamiliar terms and long-term implications.
In production-designated zones, technical guidance and species lists often include fast-growing timber and high-value crop species alongside native trees, shaping how sites are developed and managed as plantations.
Across many sites, planting was shaped by production zones and market-ready species — including fast-growing timber trees, alongside cacao and coffee, bamboo, fruit-bearing agroforestry crops, and other commercially valuable plantation species — chosen not only for ecological recovery, but for how quickly they could grow, how easily they could be harvested and where they could be sold.
Loreto, a forested town in Agusan del Sur, has long been identified by authorities as an illegal logging hotspot. It reflects a wider pattern in Caraga, where many remaining forests overlap with ancestral domains.
But deforestation here is not only about what is cut — it is also about what replaces the trees.
Even local officials are unable to advocate for commodities prioritized by IPs. “In the early years, field offices like CENRO (Community Environment and Natural Resources Office) submitted recommendations on suitable commodities that would thrive locally,” said Ruben Tubal, NGP Focal Person for CENRO-Loreto, “But ultimately, the decision came from the central office.”
More than a quarter of all IP-tenured NGP land is located in Caraga. Since establishment, 11.1% of that area has lost forest cover, nearly three times the national NGP average.
Zamboanga Peninsula (Region IX) followed with 8.5% forest loss, despite hosting far less IP-tenured NGP land.
At the provincial level, the losses were sharper still.
A cheap, convenient timber takes over IP lands
The most common commodity grown by government mandate across IP NGP sites is a tree that takes a long time to reach maturity, is difficult to get to market and suffers massive price fluctuations when it gets there. This leads many IP communities to quietly plant crops that will earn them money faster off the books on NGP sites.
“They saw Caraga as a timber corridor,” Luis Gonzaga, NGP regional coordinator for Caraga said. “That’s why falcata expanded rapidly.”
Caraga has long been a center of logging and timber processing, its roads and mills built around moving wood out of forests.
In such places, reforestation does not arrive outside the timber economy. It is an outgrowth of extractive agro-forestry.
In Loreto, which has large portions of ancestral lands classified under the NGP production zones, falcata has become the dominant species, not necessarily because the people wanted it, but because it met the commercial timber model envisioned by the program.
IPMR Datu Kulipapa Arsenio Tawide Sr., now in his mid-60s, carries the concerns of Loreto’s Indigenous Peoples with the steadiness of someone long accustomed to the weight of disappointment. Beyond the 150 families of Brgy. Lumad, he serves the wider Lumad communities across a 96,000-hectare ancestral domain — mediating land disputes, sitting through drawn-out meetings where boundaries and futures are debated. He followed his brother into the National Greening Program in 2016, entering the space where state policy meets ancestral soil. He has a quiet resolve: that Lumad children complete their schooling, that families secure a stable livelihood and that their land remains something they can continue to protect and cultivate.
“Most Manobo communities planted falcata because that was what we understood under the NGP,” said Tawide “But we don’t want to continue. There is little income compared to the expenses — you pay ?1,000 a day just for a carabao, plus chainsaw, gasoline, and labor, and then buyers offer only around ?2,000 per cubic meter.”
While falcata, a fast-growing timber species, has been identified for its potential for use in the production of plywood and commercial lumber that can be harvested relatively quickly, the reality for those who planted it in the upland barangays is that the harvest time does not only mean cutting trees, but also having the logs inspected and approved by authorities, which can be quite costly if the logs are to be hauled from the upland areas without farm-to-market roads.
“When falcata is planted, you have to wait seven to ten years before you can harvest,” said Joanne Revilla, beneficiary from the Veruela Ministerial Fellowship of Agusan del Sur Inc. “You also cannot plant other crops near it. During those years, there is little to no income.”
This has led to a growing disconnect between the program’s promise for income generation and the actual economics of timber production, which has prompted some of the older NGP plantations to turn to other crops such as coconut, banana, and other crops that promise better returns. In Zamboanga Sibugay, nearly two out of every five hectares of IP-tenured NGP land lost forest cover. The province has two NGP sites within IP-tenured areas, both classified as production zones and each covering about 50 hectares. One site is planted with rubber, while the other contains a mix of rubber and falcata.
Even though it put at risk their NGP funding, many IP groups found themselves forced to grow other crops alongside sanctioned commodities to make ends meet.
“When the price of falcata was high, people planted falcata. But when the price went down, the same areas were converted into bananas and coconut,” Tubal said.
Luis Gonzaga, NGP focal person in Caraga, said the choice that farmers make to abandon agro-forestry for crops that will turn a profit more quickly is driven by a community not able or prepared to make an investment scale in industrial logging. He explained that farmers log and choose not to replant due to falling prices and rising costs. He noted that even when hauled to Davao or Cagayan, price increases are only marginal, and local sales fetch even lower rates. With farmers shouldering expenses for cutting, hauling, and labor — and facing low buying prices from wood processing plants with limited capacity — many are losing money, making falcata increasingly unattractive to replant.
But the program, he said, is structurally sound: target-based, commodity-based, monitored according to approved work plans, but only if NGP stewardship is continued over the long-term. Plant outside the plan, and survival, according to DENR records, not as in the way it counts to communities, is zero. But the real tension, he said, is in sustainability: funding is only for three years; sanctioned tree species need at least five to establish themselves and initial funding is only for three years. Those who plant faster growing crops are breaking the rules and can lose their funding.
“There were NGP sites that were converted during the pandemic. In one case, around 33 hectares that were supposed to be under reforestation [with timber] ended up being planted with agricultural crops,” Ruben Tubal of CENRO-Loreto said.“Especially for NGP areas established earlier, around 2011 to 2013, we saw cases where the land use shifted over time.”
Money, incentives, and the race to plant for little returns on investment
NGP injected billions of pesos into rural areas over a few years, often relieving poverty in the short term. Payments are tied to outputs: seedlings planted, hectares covered. While the injection of funds raised many communities out of poverty, there were trade offs.
Short contracts and per-seedling payments encouraged speed.
Consultations often focused on short-term benefits — cash payments, seedlings, promises of protection — while long-term land-use transformations were poorly explained.
“They explain that there is a government program, that there will be payment,” Elvie Limbing, a community member in Bugdangan, Loreto said. “They do not explain what happens after.”
NGP changed the community’s relationship to what they were growing.
“Paying people ?2 or ?5 per tree turns it into employment,” Longid said. “People stop caring whether the trees or methods are appropriate.”
Once payments were released, follow-up was limited. Several interviewees raised concerns about seedlings dying in nurseries or after planting, with little accountability.
The structure rewarded compliance with targets, not ecological success.
“Planting trees neatly in rows doesn’t make a forest,” Longid added.
What remains after a decade
By 2020, one-third of IP-tenured NGP land had no tree cover.
Not all NGP sites managed by IPs experienced the same levels of deforestation.
Protection-zoned areas under strong Indigenous management recorded just 2.7% forest loss, far lower than production zones. In these areas, IPs were tasked with protecting and expanding native forests.
In the next part of this investigation, we will probe who has been profiting from NGP, where commodities grown on land deforested during NGP end up and how regulation could help rehabilitate the program and restore the original mission of NGP.
After all the years of planting, waiting, and harvesting under the program’s terms, Tawide has become more pragmatic: focusing on how to eke out a living from the land through crops he can sell at market faster.
“I have been thinking of stopping,” Tawide said. “Falcata takes a long time to grow. It would have been better if we planted coconut. Coconut is forever. It can truly solve schooling needs… Before, we wanted falcata; now it seems disappointing.”
Reporting for this story was supported by Journalismfund Europe and the Environmental Reporting Collective (ERC).This story is part of the Forest Fraud investigation, a series of articles across Southeast Asia that uses remote sensing technology, global supply chain tracking and ground reporting to expose the drivers of deforestation across protected areas in the region. Read Part 1 of the Philippines investigation here
Credits
Authors\ Lucelle Bonzo, Min Lawi Lun, Eva Constantaras
Editor\ Eva Constantaras
Project Manager\ Paul Nicholas Soriano
Data\ Lucelle Bonzo, Min Lawi Lun
Methodology
Annual forest loss data (2001-2024) was sourced from the University of Maryland’s Global Forest Change dataset. Shapefiles of NGP sites, along with their attributes, were obtained from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources’s Forestry Spatial Dataset Portal. Calculation of yearly forest loss at the NGP site level was conducted through Google Earth Engine (GEE). Satellite imagery was obtained from Planet. The methodology published in Part 1 of this investigation series provides a more detailed description of the above.
Note that IP-tenured NGP sites do not make up the entirety of NGP sites managed by Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines. The NGP site-level dataset published by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) only contains “tenure” as a column. From that column, we extracted just the rows or sites that have “CADT” or “CADC” tenure to constitute what we call “IP-tenured NGP sites”.
Information on what is grown in NGP sites comes from the list of species provided for each NGP site in the dataset. How much of each species and where in each site they are grown are not provided.
