Dichoso with the Padilla brothers.
PHOTO COURTESY OF DENR
CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – Celebrity brothers Robin and Royette Padilla have signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) for a 200-hectare reforestation project in Pres. Aquino’s home province of Tarlac.
“Under the agreement, Royette’s Angeles City-based non-government organization Utopia International Inc. will provide funds for the reforestation effort in a 200 -hectare denuded forest area in Bamban town,” DENR Regional Executive Director Maximo Dichoso said. Robin is also a member of his brother’s group.
The Bamban Aeta Tribal Association (BATA) was also tasked in the project to raise 100,000 indigenous forest tree seedlings with the technical assistance of DENR. “BATA, through its chair Oscar Rivera, shall set up nursery and forest plantations the Aeta tribesmen’s ancestral domain,” Dichoso added.
“This reforestation project is not only benefi cial to our environment which is threatened by climate change but also beneficial to the Aeta communities which will be provided livelihood,” Dichoso added.
The project is under the DENR’s National Greening Program (NGP) which was created in 2011 by Pres. Aquino through Executive Order No.26 “to pursue sustainable development for poverty reduction, food security, biodiversity conservation, and climate change mitigation and adaptation,” he said.
Dichoso noted that the NGP “aims to plant 1.5 billion trees covering about 1.5 million hectares for a period of six years (2011-2016) in lands of public domain, including forest lands, mangrove and protected areas, ancestral domains, civil and military reservations and urban areas.”
Dichoso also said that for 2014, NGP targets 20,885 hectares for reforestation.
