|
ARGUING
that a Supreme Court ruling on its case has “radically
altered long-standing principles of law and legal
doctrines,” the Paper Industries Corp. of the
Philippines (Picop), the country’s largest paper
producer, has asked for an en banc reconsideration and
the reversal of the November 29, 2006, decision of the
court’s Third Division.
The case
involves Picop’s continued use of a 75,545-hectare area
in Mindanao of which the warranty of the Executive
department was limited by the Third Division, which
handed the “common ownership of Filipinos over natural
resources to small groups of tribesmen.”
In its
November 29 ruling written by Associate Minita Chico-Nazario,
the Third Division reversed earlier decisions issued by
the Regional Trial Court in Quezon City and the Court of
Appeals enjoining the Department of Environment and
Natural Resources to respect Picop’s contract, with
presidential warranty that assured Picop’s “peaceful and
adequate enjoyment of the area.”
The
Third Division held that the warranty could not be
considered a binding contract that allows for an
automatic renewal, and noted that Picop had not
submitted a certification that its concession
area—spanning areas of Surigao del Sur, Agusan del Sur,
Compostela
Valley
and Davao Oriental—did not overlap any ancestral domain.
Picop
argued that of the 73 Certificates of Ancestral Domain
Claim (CADC) or Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT)
issued by the DENR as of December 11, 1996, none
overlapped its forest area.
It added
the area within which its Timber License Agreement 43 is
located in a forest reserve, and an integral part of the
Agusan-Davao-Surigao Forest Reserve.
“By
ruling that despite being inside a forest reserve, Picop
still has to secure a certification of nonoverlapping
with any ancestral domain from the National Council of
Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), the November 29, 2006,
decision give imprimatur that the forest reserve within
which TLA 43 is located can be the subject of the
issuance of a CADC or a CADT,” stated Pciop in its
motion.
Under
the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (Ipra) law, ancestral
domains are the indigenous cultural
communities/indigenous peoples’ “private but community
property.”
However,
Picop argued that the High Court’s decision runs counter
to the Regalian doctrine in the Constitution that forest
reserves cannot be the subject of private appropriation.
Picop
was referring to Section 2, Article XII of the
Constitution, providing that “All lands of the public
domain, waters, minerals, coal, petroleum, and other
mineral oils . . . forests or timber... and other
natural resources are owned by the state. With the
exception of agricultural lands, all other natural
resources shall not be alienated.”
It said
the ruling had reversed the doctrine or principle of law
established in earlier decisions of the SC en banc, that
forest reserves cannot be the subject of private
appropriation, as established in a long line of cases
decided by the SC.
It
warned that the decision declaring the 1969 Contract
with Presidential Warranty null and void “opened up 12
million hectares of the country’s forest reserves, 40
percent of the country’s land area, to CADTs—where the
above listed government agencies have no legal basis for
jurisdiction and may have the unintended consequence of
such areas being independent enclaves with their own
armed components.’”
“As
incidents in various countries have shown, such
independent enclaves ultimately result in the breaking
up of a country and result in failed states,” added
Picop. |
