The Philippines’ Payments for Environmental Services Technical Working Group, also known as PES-TWG, held a meeting early this year at the office of the Forest Management Bureau (FMB) at Diliman, Quezon City, which highlighted the formal signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for strengthening the collaboration among PES stakeholders in the country.
The PES-TWG started as an informal collaboration among organizations (NGOs and national government agencies) and experts (academe) involved and interested in promoting PES in the country, under the initiative of ICRAF Philippines through RUPES I.
The PES-TWG saw a need for its institutionalization so that counterparts from the government like the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) and FMB could actively participate in the activities related to PES. Attendance to PES-TWG meetings would be easier if the PES-TWG was made formal.
Thus, upon the start of the RUPES II, ICRAF revived the PES-TWG and continue what was started under RUPES I, which resulted to the finalization of the draft MoU. After two years in the making, the MoU signing was finally pushed through!
Emma Abasolo, current RUPES Program Officer for the Philippines, reported that the partners who signed in the MoU are Forest Management Bureau (FMB) and Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau (PAWB) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources; Forestry Development Center (FDC) of the College of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of the Philippines Los Banos (UPLB); Research, Environment and Economic Center for Studies Inc. (REECS); World Wide Fund for Nature - Philippines (WWF);  National Economic Development Authority (NEDA), Philippine Council For Agriculture, Forestry, and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD), Conservation International (CI) and ICRAF.
“Through the signing of the MoU, we are looking forward to more productive and stronger partnerships in implementing PES in the following years to come,” said Emma.