LEAVE Sierra Madre alone. This was the call of tribal leaders to President Duterte, who was asked to stop at least three major development projects in the Sierra Madre area.
The projects are the Ilagan-Divilacan Road in Isabela, the Centenial Dam in Quezon and the Diduyon Dam in Nueva Vizcaya.
The appeal was contained in a 10-point agenda submitted to the Duterte administration by the participants of a recent tribesmen’s summit held in Quezon City as part of the celebration of Save Sierra Madre Day held every 26th of September.
The summit, which brought together tribesmen from various parts of Luzon, paved the way for various tribal communities that hold certificates of ancestral domain titles (CADTs) or have ancestral domain claims, to tackle problems besetting the Sierra Madre.
The Sierra Madre has 1.4 million hectares of forest, representing 40 percent of the country’s remaining forest cover.
It hosts a number of key biodiversity areas (KBAs), two of which are the Northern Sierra Madre Natural Park (NSMNP) and North Central Sierra Madre KBA.
Aside from legal- and illegal-logging activities, Sierra Madre’s rich biodiversity is threatened by various development projects, such as artisanal and small-scale mining and quarrying activities.
Fr. Pete Montallana, a Roman Catholic priest and the director of Save Sierra Madre Network Alliance, which organized the summit, the tribesmen coursed their appeal to Duterte through Environment Secretary Regina Paz L. Lopez.
More than 60 tribal leaders and representatives signed the resolution.
The participants are mostly Dumagats or Agta tribesmen from Rizal, Quezon, Bulacan, Camarines Norte, Aurora, Isabela, Nueva Vizcaya and Quirino.
“The projects were approved without the consent and approval of the tribesmen,” Montallana told the BusinessMirror in a telephone interview.
Montallana said the projects are being implemented within tribal ancestral lands, which require the project proponents, especially the government, to secure free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) from the tribe affected, a requisite for development projects within ancestral lands.
FPIC is a mechanism adopted under Republic Act 8371, or the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act of 1997, to protect the rights of tribesmen.
He added that the Ilagan-Divilacan Road is being built within the NSMNP, a declared protected area covered by the National Integrated Protected Areas System Act.
The P2-billion, 82-kilometer road project will open access to three coastal towns in Isabela province. Isabela Gov. Faustino Dy III said the proposed road project will start in Barangay Sindin Bayabo in Ilagan City and end in Barangay Dicatian in the coastal town of Divilacan.
The coastal towns of Divilacan, Palanan and Maconacon are inaccessible through land transportation at present.
Reports said the Protected Area Management Board (PAMB) of the NSMNP issued Resolution 11, which reclassified portions of the Sierra Madre as special-use zones.
Proponents of the project, led by Dy, also claimed that tribesmen in the area have also given their consent.
However, Montallana said the FPIC is highly questionable as there are tribesmen who stand to affected by the project questioning the legitimacy of the process.
“We have already informed the DENR [Department of Environment and Natural Resources] about the problem, as well as the National Commission on Indigenous People,” he said.
Montallana said tribal groups at the Sierra Madre have good reasons to have the Ilagan-Divilacan road project stopped because the construction of the road would lead to the cutting of tens of thousands of trees that would further degrade the environment.
Similarly, he said the dam projects in Quezon and Nueva Vizcaya would disrupt nature and potentially cause irreversible damage to Sierra Madre’s natural landscape, destroy watershed and affect natural irrigation systems that for years have supported the way of life of thousands of tribal communities.
“The IPs are intimately connected to nature. To them, the trees, the wildlife are their brothers and sisters. They have taken care of them for centuries while these projects are being implemented for sheer profit of the project proponents,” he said.
1 comment
What is the current status of the road? Has anything been built? I am guessing even if it was being built it would take 50 years to build and to payoff the local officals?