THE Department of Environment and Natural Resources is eyeing some four million hectares of public land and other denuded forest lands for planting by towns engaged in furniture and woodwork industry.

Environment Secretary Michael Defensor said the department is meeting with executive of the Departments of Agrarian Reform and Agriculture and the National Economic and Development Authority to formalize the program.

“We are coming out with guidelines in the designation of forest plantations for several towns,” he said in an interview.  “These [forest plantations] will be managed by the local governments and the people, or in partnership with private entities.”

Besides meeting their wood requirements for furniture and woodwork, the forest plantations will also provide jobs, Defensor said.

“They [local governments] will be the ones to plant trees.  In five to seven years, the trees are ready for harvesting and they can use these wood products for their industries,” he added.

Defensor cited the case of furniture, woodwork and sash industries in Taytay, Rizal, which has suffered from scarcity in raw material since the log ban was carried out in December 2004.

The town, which claims to be the woodwork capital of the Philippines, could use a 20,000-hectare portion of the Marikina watershed as forest plantation, he said.

Defensor noted that the lifting of the log ban in Davao and the Caraga Region in March is not enough to meet the country’s annual wood requirements of three million cubic meters.

By the end of the year, some 600,000 hectares of forest land in Luzon will be exempted from the log ban, bringing the forest area where logging activities are allowed to one million hectares, Defensor said.