Identifying management options for expiring timber license agreement areas

kEYWORD: Community-based Natural Forest Management, Asia. Asia, Philippines, incentives, industrial forestry, logging, sustainable forestry, land use, plantation, contracts, forest concession, land tenure, conflict, case study, economic analysis, planning document. SUMMARY: This report analyzes potential problems with expiring Timber License Agreements (TLAs) in the Philippines, and provides feasible management options to control for these problems. The TLAs are currently operated by private timber companies and affect over 200,000 hectares, comprising most of the remaining forestlands in the country. The main problems associated with the expiring TLAs are open access and land use conflicts. The author suggests that the most pressing issues can be best handled using market-based economic instruments, including: Methods for planning sustainable management of the forestlands; Mechanisms for allocating award of development rights from TLA to other management methods; Methods for creating divisibility and transferability of tenure instruments and concession areas; Sources of investment capital for long-term investments in plantation development and management; Mechanisms for revenue sharing and collection of the market value of rent in use of forestlands and development of forest products; and Methods of monitoring the performance of forestland developers using environmental indicators in the sustainable management guidelines. In addition to the current emphasis on community based forest management in the Philippines, the report suggests that greater weight should be placed on exploring community-corporate partnerships, and on the potential contributions of corporate investors for reforestation activities and development of large-scale plantations.