The Philippines has committed to protecting nearly a quarter of its land by 2040. But its biggest obstacle is not a lack of ambition. It is a lack of people — and a lack of financing.
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Implementing the country’s updated Philippine Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (PBSAP) requires roughly US$530 million annually, yet current biodiversity spending covers only a fraction of that, leaving an 80 per cent financing gap. As international development assistance contracts, conservationists warn the shortfall threatens to leave the country’s biodiversity targets underfunded.
Nowhere is that gap more visible than in the country’s forests.
To achieve its target of conserving 24 per cent of its terrestrial ecosystems, equivalent to 7.44 million hectares, the Philippines would need about 14,880 forest rangers, based on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) benchmark of one ranger for every 500 hectares in high-threat protected areas.
Government data released to Eco-Business by the Philippines’ Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) shows it currently employs just 2,227.
John Leo Algo, national coordinator of civil society group Aksyon Klima Pilipinas, notes that the country is “lacking up to 14 times the number of rangers it needs to protect our forests.”
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The government can make strides in defining more protected areas as much as it wants, but this becomes a mere mapping exercise if the massive needs for implementation on-the-ground are not met.
John Leo Algo, national coordinator, Aksyon Klima Pilipinas
He added that although the IUCN benchmark is achievable, it would require “billions of pesos from public finance to be allotted for hiring, training, and provision of the necessary equipment,” adding that “programmes, activities, and projects related to environmental protection remain woefully underfunded.”
The consequences are already becoming apparent.
Global Forest Watch data shows the Philippines lost 200,000 hectares of primary forest between 2002 and 2025, while 62 per cent of all tree cover loss between 2001 and 2025 occurred in areas where permanent deforestation was the dominant driver.
Among the country’s biodiversity hotspots, Palawan recorded the highest tree cover loss at 220,000 hectares, followed by Agusan del Sur, Zamboanga del Norte, Davao Oriental and Quezon.
Ironically, some of the country’s most forest-rich regions also have some of its thinnest ranger coverage.
In the Cordillera Administrative Region, a single forest ranger is responsible for monitoring an average of 6,196 hectares. In Region IV-B (Mimaropa), which includes Palawan — home to some of Southeast Asia’s oldest and most biodiverse rainforests — each ranger watches over roughly 6,063 hectares, more than twelve times the area recommended for high-threat landscapes. Six thousand hectares is roughly the size of 8,400 international soccer fields.
Biodiversity targets risk remaining on paper
The Philippines updated its biodiversity strategy in late 2025 to align with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, committing to effectively conserve 24 per cent of terrestrial land and 16 per cent of coastal and marine ecosystems by 2040 through expanded protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures.
But conservation groups say the challenge is no longer setting ambitious targets. It is paying for the people and institutions needed to deliver them.
Maria Theresa De la Cruz, manager of environmental non-profit Haribon Foundation’s Conservation Education and Advocacy Department, said the challenge is no longer setting ambitious targets but implementing them.
“Forest cover has plummeted from approximately 70 per cent in the early 1900s to a mere 24 per cent today. We are losing around 47,000 hectares of forest cover nationwide every single year, while 9,000 hectares of primary forest are lost annually in the Sierra Madre (Luzon Island’s green corridor) alone,” she said.
Why implementation is falling behind
According to De la Cruz, insufficient financing is only one part of a broader implementation challenge.
“Funding for Protected Area management remains limited and uneven, affecting long-term patrolling, monitoring and restoration efforts,” she told Eco-Business.
She said many Protected Area Management Boards (PAMBs) remain constrained by limited technical capacity, operational continuity and financial resources, reducing their ability to address illegal logging, land conversion and extractive activities.
Governance challenges are compounded by fragmented decision-making within the DENR, where different bureaus oversee biodiversity conservation, forest management and mining under separate mandates that can produce conflicting land-use decisions.
Similarly, Aksyon Klima Pilipinas’s Algo noted that national policies have outpaced implementation on the ground.
“The government can make strides in defining more protected areas as much as it wants, but this becomes a mere mapping exercise if the massive needs for implementation on-the-ground are not met.”
He added that many terrestrial and marine protected areas still lack management plans, operational Protected Area Management Boards and adequate funding to carry out conservation work. The result is the emergence of so-called “paper parks”.
“Without proper operational budgets or trained personnel, a PAMB cannot effectively monitor habitat health, implement threat-reduction programs, or prosecute illegal encroachments,” De la Cruz said.
“This weakness turns crucial forest ecosystems into unprotected boundaries that exist only on paper.”
More than guards in the forest
Experts stress that forest rangers perform far more than an enforcement role.
“Forest rangers do more than just guarding; they fulfill different roles in aid of conservation for forestlands that most people would not even lay their eyes on,” Algo explained.
“They are first responders in cases of wildfires or heavy rainfall in these areas. They collect data on trends and activities of species within these areas that helps inform decision-making. They stop illegal activities such as logging and poaching and cooperate with nearby communities and Indigenous Peoples in conducting conservation activities.”
When ranger numbers are too low, De la Cruz said, the consequences ripple far beyond forests.
She explained that understaffed protected areas leave forests vulnerable to illegal logging, wildlife poaching and encroachment while exposing nearby communities to greater flood and landslide risks.
Conservation cannot rely on rangers alone
Yet experts caution that simply hiring thousands more rangers will not solve the problem.
De la Cruz is among them who said ranger deployment should reflect differences in terrain and threats across the country rather than relying on a uniform national standard.
“To realistically meet the PBSAP’s goals, ranger-to-forest ratios must be tightened and calibrated based on local threats and terrain accessibility,” she said. “While international baselines suggest a ratio of one ranger per 500 to 1,000 hectares for high-threat zones, achieving this nationwide through government hiring alone is not financially and institutionally feasible.”
“It would be highly challenging for an individual ranger to detect, verify, and intercept active violations — such as illegal logging or organised wildlife poaching networks — across thousands of hectares of dense forest,” De la Cruz said.
Instead, Haribon Foundation is advocating for a broader conservation model that integrates government rangers with Indigenous Peoples, local communities, volunteer forest guards and citizen science.
“This means moving beyond a purely ranger-dependent model toward a system where rangers are supported by formally recognised and well-equipped community-based volunteer forest guards such as Bantay Gubat, and citizen science networks such as the Citizen Action in Monitoring Ecosystem (CAME),” she said.
Wilson John Barbon, country executive director of Conservation International Foundation Philippines, believes rangers remain fundamental to biodiversity protection, but their effectiveness ultimately depends on “strong community engagement, inter-agency coordination, and incentives that encourage collaboration rather than violation.”
“Protected areas are only effective when they are backed by long-term investment in management and enforcement,” Barbon told Eco-Business.
“Strengthening local governance, supporting Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and ensuring protected areas are actively managed are all critical to delivering real conservation outcomes — not just protected areas in name.”
Turning biodiversity commitments into investment
As governments prepare for the first global review of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework at COP17 in Armenia later this year, conservationists say the Philippines’ ranger shortage highlights a broader global challenge: ambitious biodiversity commitments mean little without sustained investment to implement them.
For Algo, the priority is substantially increasing public spending while attracting non-debt biodiversity finance that delivers both climate and nature outcomes.
For Barbon, it means establishing a formal whole-of-government mechanism to coordinate biodiversity implementation alongside a long-term financing strategy capable of translating funding commitments into action.
De la Cruz argues financing must also move beyond traditional government budgets toward payments for ecosystem services, biodiversity credits and high-integrity carbon finance, while embedding biodiversity targets into local land-use planning.
But she says success ultimately depends on changing how society values nature itself.
“As we move toward the 2030 and 2040 milestones, we see the most urgent priority as shifting how we value nature beyond its economic and existential importance to people, toward recognising the rights of nature, where ecosystems and species have inherent value and the right to exist, persist and regenerate,” she concluded.
Ahead of COP17, the Philippines’ ranger shortage illustrates the wider challenge confronting biodiversity conservation: governments may be setting increasingly ambitious protection targets, but without sustained investment in the people and institutions responsible for enforcing them, those commitments risk remaining little more than lines on a map.
