In the Philippines, women are growing a forest — and financial resilience
November 11, 2024 | By Kendra Staggs
One afternoon in mid-December 2021, Ida Mae Gumosan heard raindrops on the roof of her home on the island of Palawan, in the Philippines. Assuming it was just a passing storm, she and her family — her husband, three children and parents — paid the rain little mind.
But by the time darkness fell, the downpour grew so heavy and the wind so fierce, it nearly knocked the house sideways.
This was Odette, a Category 5-equivalent super typhoon that ripped through the Philippines, claiming more than 400 lives and displacing more than 30,000 people. The winds transformed the thickly forested northern and central part of the island into open-canopy forest, or, in the clinical terms of one assessment, “non-forest.”
In Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park, the island’s crown jewel, Odette damaged 57% of the forest, jeopardizing the lives of local Indigenous families, who depend on the bounty of the forest and its nearby river to survive. “When I was a teenager, we had food there,” Gumosan says. “When Odette came, there was nothing.”
Three years later, Gumosan is able to support her family working as a nursery aide for the Puerto Princesa Forest Restoration Initiative, a Conservation International-sponsored project to plant more than 400,000 seedlings to restore Palawan forests destroyed by Super Typhoon Odette. It’s part of a larger global effort by the Priceless Planet Coalition, launched by Mastercard with Conservation International and the World Resources Institute, to restore 100 million trees around the world.
These projects extend beyond carbon sequestration — they’re aimed at creating economic opportunities for women in the region, enabling them to better provide for their families. Gumosan is one of the many local women and community members leading the charge on nursery construction, maintenance and seedling production.
“Sometimes we just rely on what the land provides. That’s it,” Gumosan says. “Until we had the opportunity to work with the Conservation International project. And through God’s grace our lives have improved, because we now earn a living, a source of food.”
Climate catastrophes are increasingly wreaking havoc on lower-income countries. According to a report from the World Bank, the 74 lowest-income nations have suffered eight times as many natural disasters over the past ten years than they did in the 1980s. If unchecked, these disasters could force more than 200 million people to migrate within their own countries, forcing as many as 130 million people into poverty.
And when disaster strikes, women and girls suffer the most. According to the United Nations, this partly stems from the fact that they make up the majority of the population in poverty who depend on local resources for their livelihood, something that’s particularly true in rural settings. As a result, an estimated four out of five people displaced after a climate event are women or girls, and women and children are 14 times more likely to die than men.
For this reason, it’s crucial for climate action organizations, like Conservation International and the World Resources Institute, and private-sector partners to do more than mitigate climate change. They must help to build resilience and restore the livelihoods of the world’s most vulnerable citizens.
Many local woman are taking the lead in the constructuion of the nursery and the potting, sowing and weeding of the seedlings to restore the forests destroyed by Odette. (Photos courtesy of Conservation International)
The key to developing inclusive climate solutions is to directly involve those most impacted. “In the case of the Priceless Planet Coalition’s projects in the Philippines, our restoration partners had to think strategically about how to encourage the active participation of women," says Simon Calasanz, Mastercard’s country manager for the Philippines. "This starts with ensuring that women are actively included in discussions and decisions, not just present for them. The focus on women is intentional, as we recognize women’s pivotal role within their families. Encouraging women’s participation in and contribution to the economy will reshape dynamics within households and empower them to unlock their full potential.”
Conservation International invited women from the surrounding communities to attend meetings to plan the forest restoration initiative. “Women are always encouraged to participate in meetings and are even more encouraged by the fact that the community facilitator of the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park — our key partner in our restoration sites — is a woman,” says Conservation International’s Jeanne Tabangay, the Palawan Biodiversity Corridor director.
At the meetings, local women provide input on key components, such as identifying what jobs they could do without sacrificing time with their children. The women settled on tasks that could be performed at a nearby nursery, such as potting, sowing, weeding, sorting and recording seedlings. Working nearby allows mothers the flexibility to either go home to meet their children at lunchtime or bring them to the nursery, eliminating concerns around childcare and empowering them to contribute financially to their households.
“Women involved in restoration are proud that they are earning income,” Tabangay says. “Not only can they meet the needs of their families by providing them with food and better clothing, but their involvement in this restoration project offers them a sense of purpose as they play a role in managing their ancestral domain.”
Community organizer Evangeline G. Cabon says the value of the project is twofold. “For me, this project was a huge help,” she says. “With unemployment rates so high these days, it offers women and men a livelihood, and secondly, it helps protect nature.”
By collaborating with local Indigenous communities like the Batak and the Tagbanua, says Wilson Barbon, Conservation International’s country executive director for Asia Pacific-Philippines, “we aim to create a path where conservation not only protects nature but also enhances the well-being and resilience of the people who rely on it.”
So far, the coalition’s project in the Philippines has created 18,355 workdays for local community members, 40% of them involving work from women. The importance of designing and implementing restoration projects in a gender-inclusive lens ensures that women are also key recipients of the benefits, says Mastercard Chief Sustainability Officer Ellen Jackowski.
“We can move toward a more equitable approach in the fight against climate change and environmental degradation,” she says. “We need to recognize and value the role of women like Gumosan and Cabon, not just as participants but as leaders and decision-makers.”
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