By Robina Asido

The government will prioritize the reforestation of two million hectares as only seven million out of 15 million hectares of classified forest lands still have forest cover, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) said Tuesday.

Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Maria Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga said based on the satellite imagery used by National Natural Resource Geospatial Database, out of the 15 million hectares of classified forest lands in the country only seven million hectares have forest cover.

"Realistically speaking, we cannot complete the 15 million in terms of reforestation. What we are doing now is we have prioritized the first million in terms of verifying the area where it is really needed. So, the first million is there although we are looking at two million hectares that we would like of course to reforest once again," she said.

"In terms of our own targets in DENR, we want to do two million hectares as a priority. The one million have been mapped adequately and we can actually already show this to local decision-makers as well as private sector, community-based forestry and management groups to say that this is our priority," she added.

The National Natural Resource Geospatial Database is a mapping tool that would be used to help identify areas for reforestation, watershed management and mining policies, among others.

Loyzaga also stressed that the determining factor for the agency to step forward are the budget and partners of the DENR this environmental effort.

"We need partnerships, and the only way we’re going to be able to implement the reforestation at a phase that maybe anticipated by everyone, is to build the partnerships in those priority areas," she said.

"So, the one million is the modest target for our being able to actually get partnerships to move forward. Two million is our reach ‘no, is our reach; but we hope that we reach ten at least in terms of the overall 15 by the end," she added. DMS