Mechanism
  • Philippine Working Group
        • Who is the group
        • What the group
          seeks and promotes
        • Who the group
          works with
        • Approach, Activities
          and strategies
  • Provincial Technical
    Working Group
  • Carood Watershed
    Management Council
  • CEIE

Philippine Working Group

Who is the group

PWG on NRM agenda of the Philippines April2005
The Philippine Working Group (PWG) started out in 1994 as a group of practitioners and professionals keenly interested in addressing community involvement in forest management in a continuous and systematic manner. As an informal social mechanism, the PWG aims to reverse the trend of environmental degradation in the country. PWG members represent an array of disciplines and areas of competence and those who join are drawn from government, academe, non-government groups, research institutes, business, and international financial institutions. ESSC directs PWG activities and is a major institutional work strategy.
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What the group seeks and promotes

The PWG seeks and explores methods that promote and support community based natural resource management (CBNRM). The PWG acknowledges the critical balance the Philippines must maintain to ensure environmental sustainability and stability while the country’s resource base contributes to national economic development. CBNRM is seen as the key method for working with communities living in and on the margins of remaining forests, in the uplands and in coastal areas.

PWG also promotes assisted biodiversity regeneration as a more effective method in re-establishing forests and biodiversity than large-scale contract reforestation. This method relies on working with communities in and around forested areas.
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Who the group works with
Cambodian visitors in a PWG meeting
The PWG works with communities, learning with them and documenting their experiences, these provide the arguments to effect changes, shifts, adjustments, and transitions needed that draw national and program focus. The PWG recognizes the potential of associations and federations of community and CBFM people’s organizations to strengthen local stewardship. In particular indigenous communities are assisted through the crafting of cultural resource management plans, their integration and implementation. The group seeks to integrate these community plans into Local Government landuse plans and development programs intervening in IP areas. Parallel to this is the greater accountability sought from communities as they commit to the responsibility of management of their areas and the resources within.

PWG works in empowering local governments who primarily connect with upland communities by virtue of their mandate to provide basic social and welfare services. Local Governments also serve as managers and implementers of community-based forestry and mini-hydro projects in communal forests and community watersheds. These activities complement other devolved NRM functions from DENR such as enforcement of forest protection laws controlling illegal logging and other resource extraction activities in local government jurisdiction.
Forestry Officials
At the national level, PWG assumes an environmental brokering role by bringing the experiences of these communities and Local Governments to key officials in national government and the private sector who are willing to listen, take action, and make decisions at policy and program levels. The PWG regularly monitors movements in DENR through reviews of environmental policies and programs and contributes to the direction setting of the agency. The PWG also assists other NGOs by providing spatial data and policy analysis that supports their advocacy activities. The PWG also contributes to other resource-related discussions such as mining and is a credible source of advice for international development agencies crafting Philippine development assistance strategies.

Regionally, the PWG provides key inputs in current trends in community forest management and serves as a critical information and knowledge source for other countries in Southeast Asia. The PWG contributes to regional and international efforts by bringing the Philippine experience to various research, academic, and non-government gatherings. These gatherings assist in sharpening and focusing strategies, tools, and methods of analysis for PWG.



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The PWG strategies

PWG Process
PWG has an effective approach crafted through years of working with communities, local and national government agencies that is critical to unpacking complexities that emerge after discussions and meetings. The host of complexities includes overlapping issuances of tenure instruments, government proclamations, land uses, and other programs and plans involving natural resource management planning and implementation. These are then translated as basis for action points that are agreed upon by responsible government agencies and other stakeholders as “doables” within a timeframe. Continuous updates, reviews, and assessments are facilitated with the broader stakeholder group that reinforces and enables the different groups as they perform their tasks and mandates.

Activities
  • Site visits across the country that engage communities and other stakeholders in site-specific resource management issues and peeling the layers of incoherence, neglect, mistrust, and inaction
  • Meetings and discussions with key executive and legislative officials in government and other organizations resulting in adjustments and reviews of policies and programs that are not sufficiently working
  • Critical spatial, GIS, and remote sensing analysis and text-based research and review of national and local datasets on resource management related complexities
  • Community and resource mapping that provide a comprehensive community perspective that can be juxtaposed with government plans and development programs thereby fully integrating and involving communities in the development process
  • Setting-up of support structures and venues for LGUs that allow for planning and management review processes to unfold, gaps determined, and decision and responsibilities for solutions reached. PWG engages actively with local governments (provincial, municipal, and barangay) willing and politically confident to fully actualize devolution of governance in natural resource management.
PWG’s approach has always been one of learning, providing relevant and contemporary information that aims to help clarify resource management situations. Its activities are always hinged on what can be practically done by communities, assisting organizations and local and regional governments, on the basic assumption that these groups are striving for change.

Site visits may take the form of on-site assessments of programs under implementation that can be a reality check for communities and DENR, especially for livelihood options developed and activities underway



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CEIE is hosted and managed by
Environmental Science for Social Change
Ceie is a consortium initiative of
University of Stirling
Gruppo Conedis
Environmental Science for Social Change