Empowering Communities for Sustainable Land Management

While global awareness of forests' significance has grown, Southeast Asia grapples with ongoing forest loss. The region has lost approximately 80 million hectares of forest between 2005 and 2015, with projections indicating further shrinkage or growth. In the Philippines, the Food and Agricultural Organization estimated that the country has the second fastest deforestation rate in Southeast Asia and seventh globally between 2000 and 2005, losing roughly 2.1% of its forest cover annually. The cause for the loss is human activities like converting forests to farms, using trees for fuel, illegal logging, and clearing land for mining all contribute to this rapid decline.