Asia Pacific Journal of Multidisciplinary Research P-ISSN 2350-7756 | E-ISSN 2350-8442 | Volume 2, No. 6 | December 2014 __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 111 P-ISSN 2350-7756 | E-ISSN 2350-8442 | www.apjmr.com Services in the Forests: How Can Conservation and Development Be Reconciled? Raymund B. Gemora, Ed. D. West Visayas State University – Janiuay Campus Janiuay, Iloilo, Philippines raymund_gemora@yahoo.com Date Received: October 21, 2014; Date Revised: November 24, 2014 Abstract- This study attempted to examine how conservation and development can be reconciled and if there have been initiatives to demonstrate the ability to encourage forest conservation through market mechanisms involving direct involvement in forestation. The study was a qualitative study. The present study focused on the services in the forests, how conservation and development be reconciled. This study, based on in-depth interview, reveal that to be effective in the long-run, programs have to consider the needs and priorities of forest dwellers, which are indeed beyond market-based incentives; a win-win discourse combining forest conservation and poverty alleviation through appropriate provision may hide vested interests of developed communities. Finally, proving the workability of activities and their quantification for emissions credit will be critical for the launching of reducing emissions from forestation and degradation in the future climate agreement. Keywords: services, forest, conservation, development, reconciled I. INTRODUCTION Rainforests cover only 6 percent of the earth’s land surface and yet biologists estimate that half the species of plants, animals and other organisms are found in tropical rainforests, on the word of Edward Wilson, a research professor at Harvard. Between 1.5 million and 1.8 million species in the world have been described but the true number of living species range from 3.6 million to more than 100 million. The Philippines is part of the 6 percent with tropical rainforests. It is estimated that from 2000 to 2005, the Philippines lost 2.1 percent of its forest every year, the second fastest rate in Southeast Asia (next to Burma) and the seventh in the world. In addition, the Philippines has more than 3,000 native tree species according to the Philippine Tropical Forest Conservation Foundation (PTCF). The Philippines is originally almost entirely forested, but by the end of the nineteenth century large areas had been cleared for agriculture, notably in the Visayas, where Negros, Bohol and Cebu had already lost much of their forest cover. Agricultural expansion continued throughout the twentieth century, but the most extensive and rapid deforestation was caused by commercial logging in the latter half of the century. This had a particular impact on primary lowland dipterocarp forests, the most valuable commercially, which shrunk from an estimated 10 million ha in the 1950s to only one million by the late 1980s. New logging roads allowed access to farmers and timber collectors, who cleared more forest and prevented the regeneration of logged forest. Civil strife has affected many parts of Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago. Throughout the country, insurgents may have prevented logging and agricultural development, but sometimes they may have promoted these activities, and the deliberate conflagration of forests on Mindanao— associated with insurgency—is a problem, particularly on the Zamboanga peninsula (Philippine Forests, 2011). Today, forest cover varies considerably across the archipelago but is everywhere drastically reduced— according to satellite data from the late 1980s, Mindoro retained 8.5% forest cover, Luzon 24%, Mindanao 29% and Palawan 54%. In the Eastern Visayas, Samar retained 33%, Leyte 14% and Bohol 6%, and in the Western Visayas, Negros 4% and Panay 8%. These figures are, however, probably overestimates, and only a proportion of the cover estimated on each island was closed-canopy forest. Further forest loss and degradation has taken place since these estimates were made, as a result of kaingin farming (otherwise termed ‘slash-and-burn’ or shifting cultivation), fire-maintained