National Greening Program

Also known as: NGP · Expanded National Greening Program (ENGP) — the program's styling under EO 193 of 2015 · Enhanced National Greening Program — an alternative styling of the post-2015 program in DENR and reference usage · The greening program — the shorthand of the executive orders themselves

Government

Definition

The National Greening Program (NGP) is the Philippine government’s flagship reforestation undertaking of the 2010s, declared by Executive Order No. 26 of February 24, 2011 — long-titled “Declaring an Interdepartmental Convergence Initiative for a National Greening Program” and signed by President Benigno S. Aquino III — with the target of planting some 1.5 billion trees over about 1.5 million hectares of public land from 2011 to 2016. (LawPhil — EO 26) The order assigned the planting to public lands from forestlands and mangrove areas to ancestral domains, civil and military reservations, urban areas, and inactive or abandoned mine sites, in pursuit of poverty reduction, food security, biodiversity conservation, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. (LawPhil — EO 26) Implementation ran through a DENR-led convergence with the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) — the NGP Oversight Committee the order seated was the Steering Committee of the DA–DAR–DENR Convergence Initiative formed under Joint Memorandum Circular No. 1 of 2010, with the DENR as chair and lead agency. (LawPhil — EO 26)

The program was expanded, not ended, at the close of its first phase: Executive Order No. 193 of November 12, 2015 extended implementation from 2016 to 2028 as the Expanded National Greening Program (ENGP), covering “all the remaining unproductive, denuded and degraded forestlands” — an estimated 7.1 million hectares — and citing the FAO’s ranking of the Philippines fifth worldwide in forest-area gain from 2010 to 2015. (LawPhil — EO 193) The audited record is divided: Wikipedia’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources article calls the 2011–2016 greening the department’s flagship project against deforestation, land degradation, and rural poverty, while Commission on Audit examinations found the planting far short of its targets. (Wikipedia — DENR, Inquirer — Reforestation fail) Program register: first phase 2011–2016, continuing as the ENGP through 2028.

Identities

Source Type	Identity
Wikipedia	N/A — no standalone article (direct title fetch returned 404 this session); the program is covered within Wikipedia’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources article, which describes it as the department’s flagship project of 2011–2016
Wikidata	N/A — entity search returned no item for the program (verified this session)
DBpedia	N/A — dbpedia.org data endpoint unreachable this session (ETIMEDOUT)
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	reforestation — “The act or process of replanting a forest, especially after clear-cutting” (the program’s whole field, not the program; headword verified this session) (Wiktionary — reforestation)
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A — id.loc.gov unreachable this session (HTTP 403)
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A — AGROVOC concept lookup unreachable this session
Google Scholar	National Greening Program NGP EO 26 2011 EO 193 2015 Expanded National Greening Program ENGP DENR DA DAR convergence reforestation Philippines 1.5 billion trees 1.5 million hectares COA performance audit survival rate people’s organizations
ConceptNet	N/A — ConceptNet API unreachable this session (HTTP 502)
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

NGP
Expanded National Greening Program (ENGP) — the program’s styling under EO 193 of 2015
Enhanced National Greening Program — an alternative styling of the post-2015 program in DENR and reference usage
The greening program — the shorthand of the executive orders themselves

Examples and Analogies

A billion and a half trees on a six-year clock: the arithmetic of EO 26 — 1.5 billion trees across 1.5 million hectares between 2011 and 2016 — made the NGP one of the largest reforestation programs attempted in Southeast Asia, and the audits would judge that arithmetic too ambitious for the field machinery. (LawPhil — EO 26, Inquirer — Reforestation fail)
The moratorium’s twin: EO 26 was signed three weeks after Executive Order No. 23 of February 1, 2011 declared the moratorium on timber cutting in the natural and residual forests and directed the DENR, through the same convergence, to develop the NGP — the log ban and the planting program conceived as one two-handed policy. (LawPhil — EO 23)
Verified program data:
Creation: EO 26, signed in Manila on February 24, 2011, by President Benigno S. Aquino III (LawPhil — EO 26)
Target: approximately 1.5 billion trees on about 1.5 million hectares, 2011–2016, on forestlands, mangrove and protected areas, ancestral domains, civil and military reservations, urban areas, and inactive or abandoned mine sites (LawPhil — EO 26)
Governing machinery: NGP Oversight Committee (the DA–DAR–DENR Convergence Initiative’s Steering Committee), DENR chair; participating agencies to issue implementing guidelines within fifteen days (LawPhil — EO 26)
Predecessor efforts consolidated: the Upland Development Program and Luntiang Pilipinas (LawPhil — EO 26)
Extension: EO 193, signed November 12, 2015 — ENGP covering all remaining unproductive, denuded, and degraded forestlands, 2016–2028; DENR implementing rules within sixty days (LawPhil — EO 193)
Budget of record: ₱47.22 billion from 2011 to 2019, cut from ₱5.15 billion in 2018 to ₱2.60 billion in 2019 (Inquirer — Reforestation fail)

Usage Scenarios

1. Reforesting Degraded Forestlands

The program’s core use is the reforestation of the estimated 7.1 million hectares of unproductive, denuded, and degraded forestland the orders themselves cite — site by site, through seedling production, planting, and maintenance, on lands the audits found were sometimes mapped only after the planting. (LawPhil — EO 193, Inquirer — COA 2015)

2. Convergence Planning Across Departments

Program designers use the NGP as the template for interdepartmental convergence in the uplands: the Oversight Committee structure, the fifteen-day guideline mandate, and the roster of partner institutions from DepEd and CHED to the LGUs and the private sector. (LawPhil — EO 26)

3. Programming the Expanded Program, 2016–2028

Under EO 193 the same machinery plans the longer horizon — all remaining degraded forestlands to 2028, DENR implementing rules within sixty days, participation by all sectors “especially the private sector.” (LawPhil — EO 193)

4. Audit and Accountability Research

Researchers use the NGP as the Philippine case study in target-driven environmental programming: the Commission on Audit’s 2013 examination of ₱7.2 billion across ten regions and its 2019 performance audit of the 2011–2019 record supply the canonical findings. (Inquirer — COA 2015, Inquirer — Reforestation fail)

Strategies

Converge the departments: running reforestation through the DA–DAR–DENR Convergence Initiative aligned planting with agriculture and agrarian reform, on the premise that upland poverty and tenure, not silviculture alone, decide whether trees survive. (LawPhil — EO 26)
Plant for livelihood as well as cover: the program mixed timber with agroforestry species — falcata, coffee, cacao — to give communities a harvest, a choice the Philippine Institute for Development Studies had flagged by 2016 as adding less forest cover than the accounting assumed. (Inquirer — Reforestation fail)
Extend what the FAO credited: EO 193’s expansion to 2028 rested its case on the FAO’s ranking of the Philippines fifth in worldwide forest-area gain for 2010–2015 — scaling the program on an external assessment. (LawPhil — EO 193)
Pair the program with enforcement: the same season’s EO 23 banned harvesting in the natural and residual forests and created the DENR-chaired Anti-Illegal Logging Task Force — planting and policing as one policy. (LawPhil — EO 23)

Security and Safety Measures

Survey, mapping, and planning before planting: the audits’ central finding is the absence of exactly this safeguard — areas chosen without mapping or planning turned out non-plantable, and seedlings delivered late were planted at the wrong end of the rainy season. (Inquirer — COA 2015)
Maintenance through partner organizations: the program design depends on identified people’s organizations to guard and monitor plantations; the 2013 audit found sites where no partner organization existed to do the monitoring. (Inquirer — COA 2015)
For researchers: cite the program by its instruments — EO 26 (2011) for the NGP, EO 193 (2015) for the ENGP — and keep the audit scales distinct: the ₱7.2-billion, ten-region findings of the 2013 examination belong to the first phase, and the 88.17-percent shortfall figure belongs to the 2011–2019 record as a whole. (LawPhil — EO 26, LawPhil — EO 193, Inquirer — Reforestation fail)

Historical Context

The NGP was born in the opening season of the Aquino administration’s forest policy. Executive Order No. 23 of February 1, 2011 declared the moratorium on the cutting and harvesting of timber in the natural and residual forests, barred the DENR from issuing new logging contracts in those forests, created the Anti-Illegal Logging Task Force, and directed the DENR through the DA–DAR–DENR Convergence Initiative to develop a greening program for poverty reduction, food security, and climate change adaptation and mitigation. (LawPhil — EO 23) Three weeks later, on February 24, 2011, EO 26 declared that program a national undertaking — consolidating the earlier efforts, fixing the 1.5-billion-tree target, and seating the DENR-chaired Oversight Committee. (LawPhil — EO 26)

Implementation ran through the decade under the audits’ gaze. A Commission on Audit examination reported in April 2015 judged the ₱7.2-billion first-phase effort across ten regions unsuccessful for want of efficient implementation and monitoring; the commission’s December 2019 performance audit, as reported in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, found the program had missed 88.17 percent of its 2011–2019 target, with 177,441 hectares of forest-cover gain against the 1.5-million-hectare goal on ₱47.22 billion of spending — after which the budget was roughly halved for 2019. (Inquirer — COA 2015, Inquirer — Reforestation fail) The statutory frame endured regardless: EO 193 of November 12, 2015 had already extended the program’s coverage to 2028, and the DENR’s reference record still describes the 2011–2016 greening as the department’s flagship project of those years. (LawPhil — EO 193, Wikipedia — DENR)

Challenges and Controversies

The Commission on Audit Findings

The 2013 audit reported in 2015 found the ₱7.2-billion program (₱5.9 billion for tree planting, ₱1.3 billion for cadastral surveys) unsuccessful in ten regions: non-plantable areas chosen for want of mapping and planning, seedlings delivered late into the wrong planting season, missing partner organizations to monitor plantations, low sapling survival, ₱31.6 million in deficient bidding, and completion rates as low as 20 percent of 17,697 hectares in Central Luzon and 53 percent of 14,954 hectares in Ilocos. (Inquirer — COA 2015) The 2019 performance audit sharpened the verdict — 88.17 percent of the 2011–2019 target missed, 177,441 hectares of gain against 1.5 million targeted — and summed itself up in the commission’s phrase, “Haste makes waste.” (Inquirer — Reforestation fail)

Survival and the Species Mix

Seedling survival became the program’s standing vulnerability: sites where seedlings “barely survived” were documented after the 2018 typhoons Ompong and Rosita, and the planting of falcata and agroforestry crops such as coffee and cacao — chosen for livelihood — was flagged as adding less forest cover than the accounting assumed, a concern the Philippine Institute for Development Studies had raised by 2016. (Inquirer — Reforestation fail)

Target-Driven Versus Community-Centered Design

The audits traced failure less to theft than to design: targets the commission called too ambitious were imposed without adequate survey, mapping, and planning; remote, untenured areas were programmed before the people’s organizations meant to hold them were identified; and the commission recommended a community-centered rather than target-driven strategy with capacity-adjusted goals. (Inquirer — Reforestation fail)

Counting the Program’s Forest

Even the gains carried an asterisk: reported forest-cover increases were attributed partly to natural growth, plausibly a consequence of the logging moratorium of EO 23 rather than of planting — the measurement question that shadows every claim made for the program’s second decade. (Inquirer — Reforestation fail)