Tackling corruption for governing REDD in the Philippines

National efforts to reverse forest degradation in the Philippines have taken on a new dimension in the context of recent international focus on mitigating the effects of climate change. This paper underlines the interest in participating in schemes for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) in the Philippines, providing policy considerations for the implementation of REDD. It focuses particularly on issues of rent-seeking and corruption in the forestry sector.

The author highlights the move away from a state property regime in forest management towards decentralised tenure arrangements and community-based approaches. In this context, two basic community tenure instruments for forests have been put in place: CBFMA and CSCs, which can be granted to 'People’s Organisations' (POs) and 'Individuals and Families', respectively. Both systems have been allowing for bribery in many of their features. Activities related to the harvesting, transportation, and sale of forest products have also been the subjects of corruption.

The document finds that:

• current institutional and legal mechanisms are likely to provide only a weak accountability check on REDD schemes
• the main government agency with responsibility for natural resource management and the environment is the target of persistent allegations of corruption
• corruption in the forestry sector can involve a complex network of individual participants, and follow unwritten rules of secrecy and misconduct.
  

Policy considerations include:

• encouraging transformative forest governance to develop effective safeguards
• a locally-organised multi-stakeholder REDD council could actively be involved in identifying, monitoring and evaluating REDD projects
• sustaining momentum in the national REDD and strategy process (e.g. strengthening the Climate Change Commission)
• broadening participation in and knowledge of REDD
• establishing access to information and transparency standards
  
• insulating REDD monitoring from corruption through strategies which ensure that measurement, reporting, and verification activities will be protected from manipulation.