NABUNTURAN, Compostela Valley -- In its bid to strengthen its environmental program, the provincial government here launched a reforestation program.

Dubbed “20Million15 Trees,” the provincial launching was held in time for Maco’s foundation week celebration and VOLTER greening program. “We have already launched as early as 2004 and this is an urgent call for all of us to heed,” said Mayor Arthur Carlos Voltaire Rimando.

Earlier, a tree planting was simultaneously conducted at the municipal tree park and all 37 barangays of Maco followed by a run for a cause participated by both government and private sectors.

Councilor Ruwel Peter Gonzaga said that environmental protection is one of the administration’s priorities and encourages everyone that aside from merely planting trees, it is also their responsibility to take care and ensure its survival.

Both local greening programs support and complement EO No. 23, an earlier directive of President Aquino, which bans logging in natural and residual forests, as well as Proclamation No. 125, declaring 2011 as the National Year of Forests in the Philippines. It mandates the DA-DAR-DENR Convergence Initiative to be the oversight committee for the program, with DENR as the lead agency.

Its objectives includes climate change mitigation, poverty reduction, sustainable management of natural resources, promotion of public awareness and instilling of social and environmental consciousness on the value of forest and watersheds, and harmonization of all greening efforts of the province, civil society and the private sector.

The components of the program are production of planting materials (forest tress, fruit trees, rubber, cacao, coffee, bamboo, mangroves and others.) It will also rehabilitate degraded areas in priority watersheds and protected areas, rivers, stream banks and other suitable areas and develop tress, forest parks, upland farms (agro-forestry) and greenbelts in suitable sites in urban areas including the maintenance and protection of planted trees and established plantations by partner implementers.

With the target of having 20,000,015 trees planted and grown in the year 2015, the areas to be planted are forestlands, mangrove areas, protected areas, ancestral domains, civil and military reservations, riverbanks, stream banks, urban areas identified by the LGUs such as parks, open spaces, highways, roadsides, church, schools and office compounds, inactive and abandoned mine sites, other suitable public and private lands.