The Philippines
Deforestation in the Philippines primarily began in the 1960s and has since destroyed nearly 90% of the forest, displacing rural community members. Through the employment of the local community, we will plant over 3,000 hectares (nearly 7,500 acres) of forest land while employing local people.
Why reforest in the Philippines?
Logging, slash-and-burn agriculture, land development, and forest fires are major factors contributing to the high deforestation rate in the Philippines. Starting in the 1960s, Philippine mahogany was cut down almost entirely to extinction. The disappearance of these trees led to soil erosion, contaminated waterways, and indigenous communities displaced from their land. As more forest is lost, biodiversity drops, plant, and animal species go extinct, and indigenous communities lose the productivity of their land.
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47,000 hectares
of forest are destroyed each year
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17% of the population
live below the poverty line
How we started
With the support of local communities and the government, we established our first planting sites in 2021 in remote areas of the southern regions. Our team worked through fully-remote training, communication barriers, and travel restrictions to safely establish sites in Kibuwa and Canitoan. Despite these unforeseen roadblocks, our team is working closely with the Filipino community to begin producing, planting, and protecting millions of trees.
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Bukidnon
Kibuwa Site
- Preserving the local forest and montane rainforest on indigenous land
Working with the local community to address fire prevention and management
Training and implementing sustainable farming practices
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Misamis Oriental
Canitoan-Pagatpat Site
Helping the community fulfill an agreement with their government to legally acquire the land they inhabit through reforestation
Implementing agroforestry techniques to promote food security
Protecting the forests and communities from logging
"Only at Eden": partnering with a community to gain land rights
By taking a bottom-up approach, our team in the Philippines is helping the Canitoan people in Mindanao claim legal rights to their land. The Canitoan people have a twenty-five-year agreement with the local government to reforest their land in order to bring biodiversity back to the area. When they reach their goal, the government will grant them legal title to the land, meaning this community will own land for the first time in their history. Our role is to provide the community with economic incentives and easily replicable planting techniques to support them in restoring their local environment and economy.
Our progress to date
In the first year of work, despite strict lockdown guidelines, our Philippines team partnered with indigenous groups to develop two nurseries, each with a capacity of 20,000 seedlings per month, and surveyed over 3,000 hectares (nearly 7,500 acres) of land.
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2
project sites
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40+ employees
empowered with fair wages