Master_thesis

protected area. The active participation as well as the support of actors from Social Concern
Coalition especially during the public consultations significantly helped in translating their
beliefs in the NIPAS Act. By referring back to table 4, it shows that the beliefs of Social
Concern Coalition were frequently expressed in the public consultations. In addition, the pie
charts in Fig.7 (see page 37) picture that the percentage of NGOs and POs participating in
the public consultation was much bigger than the other groups of actors and maintained its
consistency in all consultations. Because of this, sections pertaining to the recognition of
IPs and local communities became very pronounced provisions of the NIPAS Act as well as
a unique added component to the protected areas system. Despite the fact that the beliefs of
the Economic Development Coalition were translated in the NIPAS Act such as
compromising some parts of protected area for income generating activities (e.g.
establishment of geothermal reservations), the manner in which their beliefs were translated
is not as evident as that of the other Coalitions. Even though some of the legislative
committees were supportive of the beliefs of the Economic Development Coalition (see
table 5), a much thorough and in depth study is needed with this coalition in order to
determine their methods of translating their beliefs.
The second aspect pertains to the policy change through policy-oriented learning.
According to Sabatier, the most likely reason for the emergence of a new subsystem is when
a group of actors become dissatisfied enough with an existing subsystem and its neglect of a
particular problem to go and form their own. Chapter 1 describes the policy objectives of
the Revised Forestry Code focusing on economic growth and industrialization. The forest
policy subsystem (featuring the Revised Forestry Code) was obviously dominated by
Economic Development Coalition 14 . Hurst (1990) even describes the policy as geared
toward industrial rather than social or environmental concerns. Those two concerns had
been neglected in the said policy. The desire of the Philippine government to foster
development led to concentration in the establishment of wood processing industries and
reforestation using fast-growing species. In addition, land reclassification and survey of
forest lands were hastened in order to convert these lands to forest plantations while most of
the indigenous peoples inhabiting the area were forced to move out.
However, it cannot be said that the protected area policy making subsystem is a newly
emerged subsystem because the idea of protected areas had already existed since 1932 in the
14 Because the Code was issued by Presidential Decree, few actors participated in the decision-making of this
policy and many literatures claimed that the Code is inclined toward Economic Development.
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