Accountability Begins in the Forests
Reflections on COA’s Findings on DENR’s Forestland Management
On January 3, 2026, the Commission on Audit (COA) delivered a sobering message on one of our nation’s core environmental programs: the Forestland Management Project (FMP) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) was criticized as “mismanaged.” Manila Bulletin
At first glance, this may sound like another bureaucratic reprimand — another audit finding filed away under “government inefficiencies.” But for communities across the archipelago whose lives and livelihoods are bound to forests, rivers, and biodiversity, the report signals something more fundamental: the state’s stewardship of our natural commons is under scrutiny, and for good reason.
The Forestland Management Project was not a trivial program. It was designed to strengthen forestland governance, support community engagement, and provide sustainable pathways for forest-dependent peoples. Yet, nearly four decades into our democratic experiment, forests are still being lost at alarming rates, conflicts over land continue to escalate, and many of the very communities the program aimed to uplift remain on the peripheries of decision-making.
COA’s strong language — “mismanaged” — should jolt policymakers out of complacency. But it should also prompt deeper reflection: where did the vision falter, and whose voices were missing in the process?
Let’s be clear: audit reports are not just technical documents. They reflect governance choices — some deliberate, some unintended — that have tangible impacts on human communities and fragile ecosystems. When forestland programs are mismanaged, that failure is felt most by Indigenous Peoples, upland farmers, fisherfolk, and rural families who rely on forests for water, food, fuel, and cultural identity.
Indeed, community-based forest management — the concept underpinning much of forest policy — requires more than statutes on paper or budget allocations in spreadsheets. It requires real participation, transparent decision-making, and accountability mechanisms that are accessible to ordinary citizens. A program that neglects these basics is a program bound to fail its stated goals.
The COA’s critique should not be met with denial or defensiveness. Instead, it should spark systemic conversations about how forest governance in the Philippines can be re-anchored around people and ecological integrity. A few key questions emerge:
- Are communities genuinely empowered in forest planning and monitoring, or are they treated as beneficiaries rather than rights-holders?
- Are performance indicators in forest programs tied to ecological outcomes, or merely to bureaucratic compliance?
- Are forest resources managed in ways that protect biodiversity, secure tenure, and sustain livelihoods — or are short-term metrics of “output” masking deeper structural gaps?
- And perhaps most importantly: who bears the risk when forest policies fail?
These questions matter not only in Metro Manila boardrooms but more so in Palawan, Mindanao, the Cordilleras, and every rural landscape where forests are life. When a government program falters, it is those on the ground — who have historically been excluded from power — who suffer the consequences first.
For advocacy groups, civil society, and concerned citizens, this COA report is more than a critique of administrative oversight. It is an invitation to redouble efforts for transparent, participatory, and rights-based forest governance. The DENR and the national government more broadly, must respond to audits not defensively, but with measures that are genuinely transformative.
This means affirming community forest rights, ensuring that Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) and permits are not rubber-stamped but rigorously vetted, and that programs like the Forestland Management Project are continuously evaluated with frontline stakeholders at the table.
It also means that civil society must hold the state accountable not only when audits are released, but in the day-to-day implementation of policies that shape the future of our forests.
In a country where climate change, biodiversity loss, and land conflicts are daily realities, forest governance cannot be an afterthought. It must be a central axis around which justice, equity, and sustainability revolve.
The forests — and the people who steward them — deserve no less.
