MARAWI CITY, Philippines — The Mindanao State University (MSU) system and the hierarchy of the 21-year-old Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) have formed an alliance to restore and protect critical watersheds in Lanao del Sur in pursuit of the greening program of the national government.

The alliance was formed recently under a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) forged here by MSU System president Macapado Muslim and forester Kahala Kedtag, ARMM’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) secretary.

The ceremony also marked the launching of the regional greening program which Kedtag described as the “beginning of collaborative efforts in protecting, restoring, and rehabilitating the watersheds in the province.”

Earlier reports said the watersheds around Lake Lanao, a major source of hydroelectricity in Mindanao, have been rendered at critical level by unabated illegal logging operations in the province for decades.

Kedtag said the alliance covers the opening of forest tree nurseries and facilities to produce some 500,000 tree seedlings needed to cover about 856 hectares of forest land in the province under the National Greening Program (NGP).

A total of P3.5 million will be allocated for each nursery, he said.

He said the NGP, a flagship program of the Aquino administration prescribing the planting of 1.5 billion trees in about 1.5 billion hectares of land for a period of six years – 2011-2016, is “the widest and most sustained reforestation venture” of the national government.

At the signing ceremony here, Dr. Muslim assured the MSU system’s full support to various projects in line with the reform agenda of ARMM caretaker-Governor Mujiv Hataman.

“I gave you the full support of the whole MSU system to your initiatives on environment and other big-ticket projects to help achieve peace and development in the region and in Mindanao,” he said.

Muslim said the ARMM government can tap the expertise of technical people produced by the MSU’s College of Forestry and Environmental Studies and College of Agriculture, two of the strongest and best performing colleges in agriculture and forestry in the Philippines.

“There are over 140 Ph.D. holders in forestry and agriculture in MSU-main campus here alone. They can be of help in initiating the restorative and rehabilitative efforts (of the ARMM government) in the watersheds of Lanao,” he added.

Muslim said that most of the top environment and natural resources officers in Mindanao are from MSU.

Hataman acknowledged the important role of MSU in shaping Mindanao, even as revealed that “most” of his cabinet officials are products of the 52-year-old premiere university system.