Special Report: The wood industry: Ally for progre

The forest, aside from sustaining human’s life support system, acting as carbon sink to prevent further global warming and hosting indigenous biodiversity; also provides for man’s basic needs such as food, water, medicine and housing and construction materials.

These needs have exerted so much pressure on the forest as population continues to grow and as more and more people are pushed to the uplands in search of food and other livelihood. The forest’s multiple role deems it indispensable and necessitates its judicial and sustainable use.

At the forefront of its sustainable development is the wood industry which has weathered all adversities, including bad public perception, to be a reliable government partner in forest conservation and protection.

For 50 years now, the Philippine Wood Producers Association (PWPA), the umbrella organization of wood producers, processors, importers and exporters, have developed and preserved their timber license agreement areas to continuously provide for the Filipinos needs for lumber and other wood materials.

The industry was, likewise, instrumental in the development and implementation of the social forestry framework and the industrial tree plantation scheme that have proven beneficial to government efforts in reforestation through scarce private capital. These initiates have paved the way for the provision of livelihood and job opportunities, manpower and community development in far-flung areas where they operate.

Through its track record, the industry has proven that the private sector can promote efficiency in forest management to bring about its wise utilization and conservation.

As the government’s active ally in the forest’s sustainable development, the industry has accepted the challenge to establish more industrial plantation sites despite the lack of incentives likes those provided to other industries.

To ensure more investments in the forestry sector, the industry proposes the provision of more stable government policies, security of tenure to protect investments, access to new areas for development, provide incentives other than those given to other industries because of the peculiarity of forestrys’ long gestation period; and the enactment of the Sustainable Forest Management of Forest Resources bill which would stabilize policies and conditions in forestry investments.

The bill, aside from stabilizing conditions in the volatile wood industry, would also provide assistance to other wood — related ventures like those insurances given in other countries like New Zealand, Japan, Brazil and Chile.

The wood industry is pursuing new and innovative directions not only to ensure the country of wood supply but to protect the integrity of the environment that nourishes its businesses.

Philippine Wood Producers Association

When the Philippines was recuperating from the massive devastation caused by World War II, an emerging industry sector was at the forefront of national building and healing — the wood industry.

Those were the days when national leaders hailed the overall contribution of the industry in terms of providing much-needed job opportunities, opening new communities particularly in the south, thereby easing population pressure in Luzon, and sourcing all wood productions to local needs for housing and buildings nationwide.

A few years later, the industry ranked as the country’s second largest foreign exchange earner in terms of dollar income and helped improve the country’s balance reserves and balance of payments.

It was also during that time when the Philippine mahogany gained worldwide acceptance as hardwood species, notable as raw material used in the manufacture of lumber and plywood housing furniture and other popular uses.

As an industry based on renewable resources such as the forest, the Philippine Wood Producers Association (PWPA) grew from the ashes of the second world war to help rebuild the country.

The PWPA actually traces its roots from an early wood industry association organized by the American lumbermen and from the merger of similar groups through the years such as the Philippine Hardwood Manufacturers’ Association, the Philippine Lumber Producers Association, the Plywood Manufacturers Association of the Philippines and the Philippine Chamber of Wood Industries.

From about 1,300 timber licensees, mostly small holders, in the late 50s to the early 60s only about eight TLA-holders remain active to this day managed by two or three generations of responsible Filipino families who have made the forest not merely their source of business but also as a way of life for communities affected.

Prominent names in the industry during those times were Antonio de las Alas, H.C. Pope, A. W. Robertson, Tomas Morato, Sr., Carlos Fernandez, Gonzalo Puyat, Felipe Buencamino, Jr., Vicente Madrigal, Daniel Aguinaldo, Meneleo Carlos, Eduardo Cojuangco, Jose Sanvictores, Sr., Andres Soriano Sr., Gaudencio Antonino, Valeriano Bueno, Lorenzo Sarmiento, Gaudencio Mañalac, Conrado Alcantara, and later Jose Puyat, Jr., Jose dela Rosa, Renato Arevalo and Ernesto and Benjamin Sanvictores.

While uniformed quarters point to wood producers as the cause of deforestation and forest destruction, it will be noted, as evidenced by several local and international studies, that the loss of the country’s forests then were effected by their massive conversion to agriculture, plantation, grazing, resettlement, townsites sites and other uses. Said conversion accounted for 95 percent of the forest loss compared to destructive logging practices which accounted for only five percent.

From an original forest cover of 15 million hectares in the 1930s, only about six million hectares remain in declared forestland. The better managed and protected forest can be found in areas covered by TLA-holders wherein the government-prescribed and scientific methods of timber utilization, sustainable forest management and protection as well as establishment of industrial tree plantations are practiced.

Government authorities have acknowledged that the further loss of forest cover can be traced to illegal logging operations, kaingin methods of cultivation, forest fires, and to the pressures posed by a growing population in the uplands.

Contrary to negative public operation, only about 200,000 hectares from which an allowable annual cut of 650,000 cubic meters of wood are allowed to remained eight active TLA-Holders.

Out of said wood production, in 2000, the country exported some $359 million of generally finished products such as furniture and wood-based curio items; compared to wood importation of raw material such as logs amounting to $178 million to fill in the growing demand for domestic wood requirements.

Because nobody knows the forest better that these responsible forest managers, the industry will continue to be at the forefront of growth and nation-building while holding dear the beauty and benefits the forest brings to mankind.