Palawan is shedding its forests at a rate outpacing the destructive commercial logging era of the 1980s, according to a new study by Atty. Joselito C. Alisuag, former executive director of the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD).
“The frontier is closing, but it is not yet lost,” Alisuag stated in his study furnished to Palawan News.
He described Palawan as the Philippine province with the most tree cover loss nationwide, citing Global Forest Watch data showing roughly 219,000 hectares lost between 2001 and 2025.
Alisuag said Palawan lost 48,000 hectares of primary forest from 2002 to 2025, a 10% reduction that accounts for 22% of all tree cover loss in the period, even though ECAN’s “core zones” were designed to give such areas maximum protection.
Alisuag traced the resurgence to a mix of deforestation factors. Nickel mining, driven by global demand for stainless steel and electric vehicle batteries, requires the removal of the “entire layer of soil and vegetation,” which the study distinguishes from selective logging by noting it results in “permanent habitat loss.” Despite the SEP Act’s restrictions, he stated that “government agencies like the DENR have continued to approve tree-cutting permits for these mineral zones.”
He also pointed out that large-scale agribusiness has emerged as a major driver of deforestation following the introduction of oil palm plantations in southern Palawan around 2007.
He also noted that with a province’s population growing at 2.66% annually “largely due to migration from other parts of the Philippines”, communities are being pushed into upland areas to practice kaingin, or slash-and-burn farming. He added that forest fires, concentrated in Puerto Princesa City, added roughly 4,900 hectares of loss and create what he described as “a self-reinforcing cycle of degradation.”
Alisuag identified the southern town of Rizal as the “deforestation epicenter,” with loss rates nearly three times the provincial average, followed by Puerto Princesa City, where urban sprawl and wildfires are cutting into the province’s largest initial forest cover.
Brooke’s Point was cited in the study for retaining 56,000 hectares of natural forest, equivalent to around 63% of its land area as of 2020, while the island municipality of Cuyo was described as “the extreme limit of forest degradation.”
Alisuag argued that Palawan has shifted from a net carbon sink to a net source of emissions. “The transition of Palawan from a carbon sink to a net source of emissions is a critical indicator of ecological destabilization,” he stated.
He said that this problem cannot be offset by plantation-style reforestation, pointing out that “a plantation is not a forest” since monoculture tree farms store far less carbon and support far less biodiversity than primary growth forests.
In his policy recommendations, Alisuag called for a stricter enforcement of core zone protections, arguing the buffer zones “were designed to be protective barriers, not permissive corridors.”
He also urged a shift toward native-species reforestation over monoculture plantations, and greater investment in secure land tenure and alternative livelihoods to reduce pressure on forest edges from kaingin and illegal logging.
“The forests are not a resource to be consumed. They are a legacy to be preserved,” he stated.
