A developing nation often finds debts as stumbling blocks in its economic development. Debt for nature swaps are a welcome remedy for such nations as the twin objectives of debt minimization and environment conservation are achieved with one agreement.
Debt-for-Nature Swap is a program that helps a country to minimized negative effect of debt owned by a country then preserves d and saved the environment of the country. It was a process which a commercial debt by a certain country will be purchased by an international non-government organization from banks or governments and then transfer them to the debtor country. Then the debtor country can now use the funds for the conservation of the environment. This was begun in the 1980s when institutions like the World Wildlife Fund decided to take up the cause of environment protection and conservation.
Philippines is one from the 50 countries around the world that agreed to participate with the Debt-for-Nature Swap. It was also on REPUBLIC ACT NO. 6724 SEC 4 in which it states that “Debt-for-Nature Swap Program. - To convert limited amounts of Philippine foreign debt into grants for nature, environment and wildlife conservation projects in the Philippines to be undertaken by international conservation groups;”.
It was on 1988 which WWF purchased some debts of the Philippines and it was redeemed by the Central Bank of the Philippines. Haribon Foundation, an environmental organization in the Philippines, used the funds from the debt swap for a variety of conservation actions, ranging from enhanced management support for national parks to training programmes for national conservation professionals. Some of the projects that been made by this programs was the St. Paul Subterranean River National Park and El Nido National Marine Park in Palawan Island, Olongo Island migratory bird sanctuary, Mt. Pulog National Park and Philippine Tarsier Project. The USAID is also one of the donor or purchaser in this program. DENR and FPE is also the beneficiary on this program.
Will the help of this program, we could not only minimized the debts by the country, we can also preserves and maintain our wildlife and environment. I am hoping that our government would not waste any funds from this program to other stuff and also looking forward for more participation in a project like this. All of us will have the benefits on preserving, maintaining and restoring the environment.Sources:http://www.chanrobles.com/republicacts/republicactno6724.html
http://www.fao.org/docrep/w3247e/w3247e06.htm
http://www.dart-creations.com/article-tree/finan/debt_for_nature_swaps.html
http://www.dri.org.uk/pdfs/EngPub4_DebtConv.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_tarsier#Philippine_debt-for-nature_swap_program
http://www.cbd.int/doc/external/wwf/wwf-commercial-swaps-en.pdf
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Author: Lernie Salamat
Author: Lernie Salamat
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