- Indigenous communities in the Philippines’ Mt. Kalatungan protected area have since 2021 carried out a tree-planting campaign to restore native vegetation lost to decades of commercial logging and agriculture.
- Known as rainforestation, it aims to rejuvenate vital ecosystem services like flood mitigation, which benefits urban areas downstream, while also providing incentives for the communities driving the restoration.
- The rainforestation program is led by community groups, making use of their knowledge of native plants, and marks a shift from the government’s decades-long, centrally managed reforestation efforts that relied on planting nonnative species.
- Communities are already benefiting from exports of the coffee that they grow in the shade of larger trees, but proponents of the scheme say there needs to be more interest and funding from outside to ensure long-term success.
On the slopes of Mount Kalatungan, a protected area on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines, rows of robusta coffee shrubs thrive alongside tropical hardwoods like lauan. The verdant mountain is enveloped in mid-afternoon fog, with a cold breeze sweeping through. Reynante Polenda, a 40-year-old Manobo tribesman, carefully weeds around the trees he planted years ago, using his bolo, while birds chirp in the background.
“It should be kept cleared of weeds because the trees will struggle to grow if you don’t,” Polenda tells Mongabay. His breath comes in heavy gasps, and sweat drips down his face as he continues. “It’s tiring, but it’s worth it for the plants to grow well.”
Many would call this agroforestry, but in this part of the Philippines it’s known as “rainforestation farming” and it’s combined with a payment for ecosystem services initiative administered by local NGO Xavier Science Foundation (XSF). The goal here is to restore forestland degraded by decades of commercial logging and agricultural expansion, to rejuvenate vital ecosystem services like flood mitigation, and to incentivize the communities driving the restoration.
Rainforestation farming
Rainforestation farming, developed by Visayas State University (VSU) in the central Philippines in the 1990s, aims “to counter the ongoing destruction of the natural environment in the humid tropics,” former VSU president Paciencia Milan wrote in her book about this agroforestry system, which gained formal government recognition in 2004.
Rainforestation farming marks a shift from the government’s decades-long, centrally managed reforestation efforts — which relied on fast-growing exotic species without considering the area’s original vegetation or the basic needs of upland farmers — to a community-led, decentralized approach that prioritizes native and endemic trees with ecological and economic value.
“Farmers were encouraged to choose what and where to plant, provided land tenure is secured,” Milan wrote. “Because they were given the options to decide, they had the responsibility to take care of what they planted because of its socioeconomic value to them.”
In Mindanao’s Bukidnon province lies Mount Kalatungan Range Natural Park, a 35,221-hectare (87,033-acre) protected area, two-thirds of which is covered in primary forest. Within this range, households selected for the rainforestation farming project are growing coffee, a key income source, and a variety of endemic tree species like red and white lauan (genus Shorea), which support wildlife such as the critically endangered Philippine eagle (Pithecophaga jefferyi).
For XSF, no group was better suited for engagement than NAMAMAYUK, an Indigenous Manobo organization of more than 200 households, whose 3,506-hectare (8,664-acre) ancestral domain in the town of Pangantucan overlaps with Mt. Kalatungan Range Natural Park. From 2021 until 2024, around 40 households have enrolled their land in the project, each earning at least 60,000 pesos, or $1,029, per hectare ($415 per acre) for planting and maintaining a rainforestation farm.
XSF executive director Roel Ravanera says the initiative, launched in 2014 and pilot-tested with the Indigenous Talaandig organization MILALITTRA, connects the private sector with Indigenous communities, with businesses financing the communities’ forest protection and conservation efforts.
“Under the [payment for ecosystem services] scheme, local communities are compensated for tree planting, maintenance and monitoring, ensuring the survival of the trees for at least three years,” he tells Mongabay.
NAMAMAYUK’s Indigenous knowledge systems and practices are considered in the project design, and its leaders and members have been involved throughout the process, from agreeing to participate to identifying suitable land and selecting plant species that naturally grow in the area. This, Ravanera says, ensures the initiative is socioeconomically, culturally and environmentally compatible.
“We consult the IPs [Indigenous peoples] because they are the ones who truly know the land,” Ravanera says. “What they really want are indigenous species — those they used to plant … Their system, called rainforestation, involves planting native trees with coffee in between.”
Manobo farmer Polenda says that coffee, as a shade-loving plant, thrives when intercropped with native trees. Since 2021, he has dedicated his half-hectare (1.2-acre) plot of land to the initiative. A father of one toddler, he says the income from planting and maintaining the tree seedlings via the initiative has helped supplement his income, enabling the family to buy household needs.
In December 2024, Polenda and others had their first coffee harvest. Joannah Dumaquita, manager of MILFACO, the marketing arm of MILALITTRA’s award-winning coffee, tells Mongabay the organization will partner with NAMAMAYUK to process and market its produce for international markets.
It’s not only coffee and hardwood trees that thrive on Polenda’s subsistence farm; other crops like taro, sweet potato and a variety of fruit-bearing trees all grow here without environmentally harmful synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Polenda says the project has taught him farming techniques such as spaced planting and pruning to improve crop yields.
As Polenda’s farm began to thrive, he started noticing an increase in wildlife sightings — a trend also observed by elders and other tribal members in the community. “Since then, I’ve also noticed that wild animals, such as deers, birds and boars, have increased in my farmland,” he says. These are among the 100 animal species that call both Kalatungan and the neighboring Kitanglad protected area home.
Nature-based flood control
Beyond regreening areas degraded by logging and commercial plantation encroachment, the rainforestation and payment for ecosystem services schemes in this part of Kalatungan aim to help mitigate flooding, a recurring issue downstream, particularly in the city of Cagayan de Oro (CDO).
The headwaters of the Cagayan de Oro River originate on the slopes of Kalatungan and Kitanglad, another protected mountain range covering 47,270 hectares (116,807 acres). These watersheds play a critical role in flood control by temporarily storing and gradually releasing water to reduce flood peaks. However, upland forest degradation has weakened this function, a concern that gained wider public attention only after Tropical Storm Washi.
Washi, locally known as Sendong, delivered a harsh lesson on the importance of protecting the mountains. When the storm struck in December 2011, the CDO River Basin swelled with floodwaters and logs, killing more than 1,260 people and causing 1.3 billion pesos ($30 million at the time) in damage to agriculture and property.
Stormwater infrastructure, like the recently built flood control project in CDO, and nature-based solutions, such as rainforestation farming, emerged as key strategies. The CDO-based XSF says both are crucial to safeguarding the city’s more than 720,000 residents from future storms.
“But given the intensity of the current problem, the focus should be on [nature-based solutions],” Ravanera says. “What’s needed is a connection between them. Because if people downstream don’t see what’s happening upstream, they won’t take care of it.”
Ravanera says that post-Washi, both the public and private sectors have begun prioritizing nature-based solutions in the CDO River Basin.
For instance, with support from the Forest Foundation Philippines, funded by debt-for-nature swaps, XSF partnered with seven Kalatungan-based Indigenous peoples’ organizations to plant thousands of trees from 2015 to 2022. In the NAMAMAYUK area alone, more than 80% of the 39,423 seedlings planted had survived as of the 2021 monitoring. This puts the project on track to far exceed the 44% average five-year survival rate reported in a study tracking forest restoration projects in South and Southeast Asia.
In addition to the NGO-led projects, the government also collaborates directly with various Indigenous peoples’ organizations on reforestation efforts. Among them is MILALITTRA, which represents the Talaandig tribe in Miarayon, another town adjoining Kalatungan. The group helped plant a variety of endemic trees as part of the National Greening Program.
Raz Catubay, a forester with the local office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, says that in 2021 and 2022 these government-sponsored projects planted a total of 31,240 seedlings of native tree species across 25 hectares (62 acres) of degraded forestland in Miarayon. The survival rate has been 80-90%, which Catubay credits to “active involvement of Indigenous peoples, whose knowledge guided the selection of suitable land and species.”
On a rainy afternoon in September 2024, Mongabay meets with Talaandig tribal leader Datu Dexter Besto over a cup of coffee, known for its export quality. Inside the coffee processing center, with a view of Mt. Kalatungan’s lush greenery, he emphasizes that every aspect of their culture is deeply intertwined with their forest.
“Preserving it provides the strong foundation of our watersheds on which lowlanders also depend,” Besto says. “Protecting the forest is also a way for us to show respect to our ancestors who started this.”
Continuity challenges
Indigenous organizations like NAMAMAYUK have ensured that forest patrols continue beyond the typical three-to-five-year project time frame to protect both planted and old-growth trees from illegal loggers. In partnership with the Kalatungan management authority, NAMAMAYUK and XSF established a group called Bantay sa Yutang Kabilin (Defenders of Ancestral Domain) with 41 volunteers who conduct foot patrols several times a week in small teams and at least once a month as a larger group. They radio in any threats they encounter to government enforcement units.
Rewilding expert Aldrin Mallari says extending protection efforts beyond the project’s lifespan is crucial to reducing threats that could hinder forest recovery, which can take decades. Mallari, executive director of the research NGO CCIPH, says this approach ensures the areas are “not just regreened, but [their] ecological functions are truly restored,” making the initiative a truly successful one.
Inside his home, NAMAMAYUK elder Datu Herminio Guinto, leads a night of rituals that include prayers and the offering of a butchered chicken to seek the spirits’ permission for Mongabay to enter the community’s ancestral lands.
Once blessings from the spirits are confirmed, the elders collectively share that their involvement in forest restoration and patrolling sends a message to lowlanders: they are not destroying the mountains, but are safeguarding them from encroaching business interests, including logging that cleared large areas of their forest decades ago and the current expansion of commercial plantations of banana, pineapple and highland vegetables.
“We are part of the mountain’s protection, and the government and our partners recognize the [Indigenous knowledge systems and practices] of Lumads [Indigenous peoples] as essential to conservation strategies that help sustain the forest,” Guinto tells Mongabay. “But it’s painful to think that whenever floods or heavy rains affect communities downstream, we are often the ones blamed.”
Since the timelines for these recently concluded reforestation projects are often limited by funders’ schedules, sustainability remains a challenge. Indigenous leaders from both NAMAMAYUK and MILALITTRA say they hope that people in cities will contribute — whether through technical, financial or logistical support — to ensure the continued success of these Indigenous-led protection efforts.
“Because this is where we live — in our ancestral land — we take forest stewardship seriously,” Guinto says. “If we destroy the mountains, we’re the first to suffer the consequences, even before those in Cagayan de Oro.”
In three years under the private sector-funded payment-for-ecosystem-services scheme, NAMAMAYUK’s 30-hectare (74-acre) rainforestation site saw 49,980 endemic trees and coffee shrubs planted, with a 98.8% survival rate. XSF is now seeking funders to sustain the project in Kalatungan beyond its initial run.
Anthropologist Easterluna Canoy is the executive director of the Kitanglad Integrated NGO (KIN), which has been active since 1996 and has served as a pioneering NGO partner of the Kitanglad and Kalatungan protected area management offices. Canoy says that while the current scheme has been successful on many fronts, it overlooks culture-based ecosystem support. Should external groups wish to continue this intervention, she suggests that Indigenous peoples in Bukidnon’s state-declared protected areas and even tribal-declared ones “should be incentivized not only for reforestation activities but also for preserving and passing on traditional ecological knowledge that supports forest conservation.”
“This support should not necessarily be financial but could include the provision of basic social services, such as access to formal education, health care, potable water and, ultimately, security of tenure to their ancestral land that can persist regardless of government leadership changes,” she tells Mongabay.
Banner Image: Reynante Polenda, a 40-year-old Manobo tribesman, is among the Indigenous rainforestation farmers in Mount Kalatungan Range Natural Park. Image by Keith Anthony Fabro/Mongabay
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