Keeping Samar green

Initiated through a collaboration led by Audax Global, the Green Samar Project aims to implement the largest reforestation effort in the country, marking another significant step toward combating climate change.

According to Karen Olivia Jimeno, chief legal counsel for SofCap Partners, the Green Samar Project is the first large-scale reforestation project in the Philippines.

The project aims primarily to restore some 90,000 hectares of degraded forest in the northwestern part of the 335,105-hectare Samar Island National Park (SINP).

“That’s not counting the livelihood component which would plant trees in the perimeter of that protected area,” Jimeno told DAILY TRIBUNE’s Straight Talk.

“For the reforestation component, we will be planting indigenous trees. We seek to restore the forest as it was before,” Jimeno said.

Located in Samar province, the SINP, which contains the largest contiguous tract of old-forest growth in the country, lies within the Eastern Visayas Bio-Geographic Zone and the Greater Mindanao Faunal Region and is considered to be the center of biodiversity in the Philippines.

“It’s the largest in the country that’s protected,” said Allana Montelibano, director for business development of Audax Global.

“You know how difficult it is to maintain such a huge area. This is a good project because we don’t really have the money or resources to reforest and to recreate the SINP so we need foreign funding,” Montelibano said.

Everything that will be planted in the SINP, she stressed, will not be harvested but will be maintained.

Montelibano explained that the Green Samar Project was conceptualized through a collaboration initiated by Audax Global founder Jeremy Knight.

“It’s a project of purpose and it’s sustainable and at the same time it has a deeper purpose, and the more I studied it the more I realized it can work here because the Philippines is known as one of the most biodiverse countries in the world,” she said.

Why Samar?

Montelibano said it was because there was already a bamboo plantation in Samar.

“We thought the bamboo would be a good socioeconomic component of the project because Samar always has typhoons and bamboo is resilient,” she said.

Jimeno said SINP is vying to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

As part of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ banner Enhanced National Greening Program, the government plans to reforest at least one million hectares in the country before 2028.